I’ve had this problem from time to time at my observatory. When it happens for me, the scope is left not tracking, pointing up, and ACP Expert reports waiting for the mount to park. If I send the mount to Park manually in that situation, the error clears and the roof closes. I have not noticed the “Park” button in APCC greyed out in my scenario, and APCC is where I click to park the mount. It seems to be a problem for me more frequently when the CloseSpecialRoof script executes, so I make sure to avoid opening or imaging when there’s any chance of rain at all. My configuration includes AP1600, APCC Pro, AP V2, ACP Expert, MaxIm DL, SkyRoof, AAG Cloud Sensor, and an optical @Park monitor.
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Ray,Have another look at the screen shot and APCC. Does APCC not have Unpark asbeing Active choice and Park greyed out (inactive)?Mike I purposely left it as is for now in case there was a need for remotelogin to investigate. In previous occurrences I could indeed park the mountvia the ASCOM Park command but that doesn't help understand the cause ofthis situation and offer any solutions so I left it as is after closing theroof for safety reasons. I had hoped there might be some procedure to trybefore resetting things.-Steve-----Original Message-----From: main@ap-gto.groups.io <main@ap-gto.groups.io> On Behalf Of Ray GralakSent: Sunday, January 10, 2021 10:51 AMTo: main@ap-gto.groups.ioSubject: Re: [ap-gto] Parking IssueHi Steve,This is a recurring problem that I've often blamed on ACP but am rethinking this as the screen shot shows ACP attempting to park, the ASCOM
driver says it's parking, and APCC says it is parked.Your screenshot shows the mount is unparked, with tracking stopped,according to APCC.There's no way to know for sure what happened from a screenshot, but becausethe mount is not parked, the driver cannot indicate that the mount hascompleted parking.-Ray GralakAuthor of PEMProAuthor of APCC (Astro-Physics Command Center):https://www.astro-physics.com/apcc-proAuthor of Astro-Physics V2 ASCOM Driver:https://www.siriusimaging.com/apdriver-----Original Message----- From: main@ap-gto.groups.io [mailto:main@ap-gto.groups.io] On Behalf Of Steve Reilly Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2021 6:28 AM To: main@ap-gto.groups.io Subject: [ap-gto] Parking Issue
This is a recurring problem that I've often blamed on ACP but am rethinking this as the screen shot shows ACP attempting to park, the ASCOM driver says it's parking, and APCC says it is parked. I'm guessing that ACP gets the information from the ASCOM driver so yes, it actually isn't parked. This is a rare problem but when it happens, once long enough to have let rain fall on the equipment, it causes real problems. The mount must be parked before my roof can close so using a direct close on moisture reading can't work. I had hoped to find a solution but I don't see this now. The screen capture shows the
roof closed only because I closed it using the close command in AstroMC andthe mount was already in the Park 4 position and had been since 0623. Thelast image had downloaded at 0531 and the shutdown script was executed at0623 if I remember correctly. It was a brief notification from Windows 10but those were cleared after reading. Not sure if any record is made ofthose.ACP doesn't have a shutdown record as it seems that is made after it completes which it didn't. If there is a log somewhere else to backup this event I'm unaware. Maybe APCC can pinpoint the time as it seems to
show the mount parked?
Anyway the issue remains, the roof was wide opened, scope was in the Park 4 position, my inline Microswitches wired in series were both closed (continuity signal to the relay) proving a safe position for the roof to close, the roof was manually directed to close in AstroMC which it did successfully, and yet ACP still shows the mount as "Parking"
as does the ASCOM driver but not APCC. The difference is that ASCOM and APCCshow the mount at the parked position whereas ACP shows what I assume is theposition it was prior to being commanded to park.So the question is, where is the log jam and who is responsible for the
stall? How can I prevent this?
I hopefully will have Good Night System fully configured today but that only notifies me via smart phone of these failures if I set it up
correctly and I have cell signal. It doesn't correct anything. The system isstill in this "Parking"phase and I'll leave it like that hoping that Bob Denny or other person has some idea to tracing the problem. I can stop this and power everything off and start from scratch with a startup script run but that only puts me back at square 1 and doesn't identify the problem. Is it
a communication issue where a request is sent and waits forever and if sowhy can't there be a reasonable time restriction before another request issent or other action is taken?
Wide open to ideas/suggestions.
-Steve
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