APT - Unspecified error when ConditionalStop after 23:59

[BrendanC]

Hi all,

Last night I had the most bizarre error.

If I specified a plan to have a conditional stop any time after 23:59, I got an APT Unspecified Error message, the camera (ASI1600MM) was just busy, and I had to stop the plan, disconnect and reconnect the camera.

Any ConditionalStop time before then, up to 23:59, was fine. From 00:00 onwards though, it bombed. Every time.

This was replicable and consistent behaviour.

I went from v3.98 to v3.90 and it still did it. Any other plan, timed to end before midnight, was fine. Any time after midnight, it crashed. Even a plan that had previously worked, crashed. In the end I re-did the plan by just counting sub numbers before the NextPlan, which is how I used to do things before ConditionalStop came along.

Today, as a test, I attached the DSLR. It seemed to be fine. Then I edited the test plan - the camera just said 'Busy', had to be disconnected and reconnected.

Then, out of curiosity, I edited just the exposure time, not the ConditionalStop time - and the DSLR hung again.

After trying everything, I could only come to the conclusion that editing ANYTHING in a DSLR plan was also causing the camera to hang, whether or not it had a ConditionalStop.

So I reconnected the ASI1600. And guess what? It seems to be working again. Plans that stop before or after midnight seem to be OK.

So I'm not even going to go back to the DSLR to confirm whether that's also working again.

Does anyone have any idea what might have happened here? I mean, fingers crossed it works tonight, and I do have a fallback plan, but the only thing I can even imagine might have caused this, is that I deleted a profile in APT. I used to have one for shooting RGB, and one for Ha, which required quite different settings and it was a very handy way to achieve that. But I no longer needed the separate Ha profile, so deleted it.

So perhaps deleting the old profile might have caused APT to get confused about the execution of plans in some way? By going back to the DSLR and then back to the ASI, might I have straightened out whatever it is went wrong?

Any/all thoughts welcome, especially in case this isn't fixed or happens again.

Thanks, Brendan

Edited April 1, 2022 by BrendanC

[BrendanC]

Wow. No takers. I guess I just put it down to 'one of those things'...

[bottletopburly]

Let ivo know may be a bug 

[BrendanC]

I've tried! Posted about it on the APT forum and tagged Ivo in a post on the FB page, no response.

[Yoddha]

Just for the record, it was an "weekend" delay in communication... We are all only humans 🙂

[BrendanC]

No problem Ivo. I'm not actually human, I'm a small rodent with pointy teeth.

[Yoddha]

🤣

Ok, ok... Revealed am I... <(°.°)>

I hope that the problem is fixed now

[BrendanC]

It hasn't recurred. I think sometimes it's possible to have a completely unique set of circumstances that cause a problem once, and once only. The unfortunate thing from my end is that it was one of my first ever shoots with my new camera so obviously I spent ages going through everything until I zeroed in on it being plans with starts after midnight. If it happens again I'll let you know.

[newbie alert]

I was using every up to date beta version until I had various issues... So I've gone back to using the stable releases and not had a issue since... I find ascom to be the the frustrating part of glitches...

[BrendanC]

I quite like using the beta releases because it's nice to help test them, but I'm afraid I also had a connection issue last night with v3.91, despite using the new ZWO drivers. Went back to v3.90 with the old drivers and it was fine so yes, I agree, for now I'm sticking with stable releases.

[Yoddha]

Could you give more info about the issues?

[BrendanC]

Hi Ivo, I was holding back on giving specifics because I don't know them yet!

All I know is that after updating to 3.91, I couldn't connect. I then got a bit mixed up as to whether I had installed the latest drivers as per the downloads page, so after a bit of fiddling, I decided to go back to 3.90, with the old drivers, and it was fine. So I'm back to where I started, but I'd like to methodically go through this some time and ascertain whether there's a problem, or this is user error. It could be that I was actually trying to use 3.91 with the old drivers.

The ASCOM drivers still worked fine throughout.

I'll let you know when I know - unless you'd like me to share the log with you?

[Yoddha]

Hi Brendan,

Could you give are try to make connection with 3.99.1? It it doesn't make connection please send me the log file as maybe there is need to report the problem to the ZWO team...

[BrendanC]

Absolutely, no problem. I'll try it asap over the weekend, making sure I know exactly what state the machine is at each point.

[BrendanC]

Hi Ivo,

Tested it just now.

v3.90 connects to my camera fine with the drivers from the ZWO page (https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software-drivers) and from your downloads page (https://www.astrophotography.app/downloads.php).

v3.99 and v3.99.1 don't connect, although ASCOM connection still works.

I have sent the log file to your support email address.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Brendan

Edited April 24, 2022 by BrendanC

[Yoddha]

Hi Brendan,

Many thanks! Sending you email shortly