Voyager autofocus

[peter_4059]

I decided to have a look at Voyager yesterday. One thing that interested me was the autofocus options and in particular that it appeared to fit a spline through the points on the v-curve rather than determine best focus by the intersection of two linear regression lines.

I got the demo installed and all equipment set up, was able to plate solve and take an image however I couldn't seem to get the VCurve first light wizard to complete the process without encountering an error.

Has anyone successfully got this to work with a newt? Any tips?

Cheers,

Peter.

[garymck]

I have, works beautifully. I initially had issues, turned out it was a settings issue in the moonlight driver. I had not correctly set min and max travel. If you have issues contact Leo the developer. He is super helpful.
Gary

[peter_4059]

Hi Gary,

I think I've got the travel set correctly but will give it another try tonight.

Peter

[peter_4059]

I've been experimenting with it again tonight but can't seem to get the V-Curve wizard to complete. I did try entering some manual values in the VCurve setup screen for slope left etc and got the local field focus working eventually.

I'm not sure if it has the functionality that SGP does in terms of framing an object (right click-centre here on the image) so despite what looks to be a good all field focus routine, I'm not convinced it is going to suit my preferred workflow.

[garymck]

Have you looked at the wiki? A comprehensive guide to every aspect of the program.

https://voyager.tourstar.net/

I gave up on SGP as it fell over on me too many times. Much prefer Voyager.

Gary

[peter_4059]

Just following up on this thread. I got in touch with Leonardo earlier this week an he offered to remote connect and take a look at what was going on with my installation of Voyager. He spent over an hour testing and tweaking autofocus and other settings and the outcome was quite impressive.

I need more time to play with this however I'm quite impressed with how it performs in terms of autofocus so far. Coming from many years of SGP, it takes a bit more time to learn but the level of one on one support from the developer is extraordinary.

Worth a look in my opinion.

[RobF]

Hi Peter

This is on my To Do list too, so read your posts with interest. From scouring Cloudy Night threads, get the feeling it could be a more productive (efficient?) environment, but there will of course be a learning curve and things in SGP that aren't in Voyager.

(By efficiency I mean more data for a given number of dark hours)

Rob

[peter_4059]

Rob,

The learning curve is much steeper than SGP in my limited experience and the workflow is different however the potential autofocus improvement is a high priority for me.

I need a few more clear nights to form a proper opinion and the next week is not looking so good :(

[RobF]

Know you've had challenges with focus, although working with a refractor the SGP routines have been pretty good to me.

At the end of the day pointing, solving, meridian flips, focus, guiding are the fundamentals, so if it does those well will be very interesting.

(Are you still using PHD2 from within it?)

[Imme]

I agree, SGP autofocus has been spot on for me using a refractor and I've never had a crash.

[peter_4059]

My focus has been on autofocus however I have played with other functions like platesolve and guiding. I have not nailed these but that is more likely to be setup. I've found the setup process more difficult to get right however to be fair I've had a lot more time playing with SGP. In many ways it offers similar functionality so I suspect it would have similar capability. The one thing that I think SGP has the advantage on however is "centre here". Voyager does not have a lot of centering/framing capability yet.



Yes - it would probably be a lot easier to get a refractor however I like the 10" f4 format.

[The_bluester]

Funny enough, the "center here" function in SGP is one thing I am not happy with (Another being its habit of snapping to the background when you click a radio button in a dialog)

What it misses and I hope Voyager picks up on is a centering mode where you click on the image and get a target reticle where it is going to center, which APT does and SGP does not. I find it quite often seems to centre on part of the image I did not click on and it goes merrily off somewhere unexpected. Thankfully I generally start with target co-ords set so I can recenter back where I was easily enough. But it runs off somewhere other than where I clicked often enough to be irritating.

[RobF]

There was talk at Astrofest that this poor centering behaviour can happen with QHY cameras not following standard ASCOM protocols, assuming you have one.

+1 about SGP going to the background. Makes life a bit more interesting on a laptop at 1am when you're half asleep :lol:

[peter_4059]

More questions regarding Voyager autofocus - anyone using an OAG?

One issue with the OAG is what happens to the guide star during autofocus. In some cases, the guider loses the guide star during autofocus and ends up driving the mount off the object. In SGP there is an option to suspend guiding during autofocus for this reason. I haven't been able to find an equivalent thing in Voyager. Just wondering how other Voyager users that also use OAG are managing this. I thought it might be possible through scripting however I'd like to initiate autofocus based on temperature change and haven't been able to work out a way to do this in the scripting options either.

[peter_4059]

Go a response from Leo on this over night. Voyager stops the guiding during autofocus so no settings to adjust.

[RobF]

I installed it last night and messed about for an hour or so. Managed to get it to seize if PHD2 and mount weren't already running. Also some problems on exit.

Does it start PHD2 and EQMOD on startup for you Peter?
Thought I had the right boxes ticked and running as Admin.

[peter_4059]

I've got it set to fire up phd2 on connect but I've kept eqmod-run to fire up eqmod mainly because that's what I've always done. Did you manage to get the autofocus working?

[RobF]

What's EQMOD-run? Is that something that hosts it? Can't Voyager host EQMOD itself?

Didn't get as far as autofocus, but might try again tonight for a while.

[peter_4059]

eqmod-run is a utility that is part of the standard eqmod install that keeps eqmod open. I assume Voyager can host it however I like to be able to keep eqmod running and shut down these other applications.

[lazjen]

I've had a few sessions with Voyager (I've bought a licence) and after some initial trouble with the V Curve wizard (focuser related, not the software), I got it working well.

I've barely scratched the surface with it, but I've already has some basic DragScripts going to run a session - plate solve to target; run a focus routine (that sometimes slews away and then back again when done); start guiding; wait for the guiding to settle; ensure the cooling is the correct temperature; then iterate over image capture + dithering.

I got that little bit going on the second real night of use. I intend to expand it to drive more events, e.g. refocus periodically, etc.