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I'm like you Paul, I used APT for a fair while and year, love it and find it easy to use. Very intuitive. But I wanted something automated, especially since I made some stepper controllers for both my newt and refractor. And APT just doesn't do that, although I still use it when I go out to a dark site.
I shifted to SGPro in January. It has been a battle, but well worth it. I can just let it run all night and shut itself down before sunrise. I still have trouble with stuff in it. But its ability to frame targets (and mosaics which I haven't done yet), automate the night's session with meridian flips, focussing etc is brilliant. There was a big whingefest on cloudynights about problems with its automatic focussing - but I haven't had any issues (maybe I have a low threshold of acceptable focus). I just gets my flats at the start of the night, set the focus manually, then automated a few times and let it go. Trouble is the dog goes out to the verandah and has a leak on the tripod during the night
There is other automated software mentioned below, plus Voyager that Diego uses. But I went with SGPro; just because. I'm getting a lot more out of each night now. Just a matter of figuring out which software you prefer.
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