First of all I would like to thanks @Rowland_Archer for taking the time to write these blog posts. Together with @Voyager videos they make the transition into Voyager Advanced much easier.
I have been running Advanced for the last two nights and I am very impressed and happy with the functionality and GUI. Last night I woke up at a point when RoboTarget did not find any suitable candidate sequence to run before the end of the night and it was looping every 60 seconds getting the same result. At that point I aborted the dragscript and closed for the night. But I was wondering what is the best way for Voyager to just run my End of Session Block in these situations. I know there are SKIPPED and TIMEOUT status codes and was wondering if there is anything like a “LET´s CALL IT A NIGHT” status code for these situations.
Wouldn’t that be dangerous as a target might become eligible later on in the night?
I have only had the chance to try advanced using simulators so far but have come to the conclusion I need a couple of low priority targets that are well positioned for a large part of the night set with a shortish maximum imaging time for sequencer to fall back on when nothing else is around. I have added a couple of faint targets that sit high in my sky for the next couple of months that I would be happy slowly acquiring time on.
The out of target conditions , aleready recognized will firing an event for the dragscript.
You will have possibility to manage this event for sending and advice (signal like email telegram and so).
Like Chris said have no sense to exit from scheduler, something else can become elegible during the scheduling rescan.
Well, that´s the thing, no target was going to become available before the end of the night, either the narrowband ones were very low or the moon was out for the broadband ones(those were my constraints). So it would be nice to have a status code signalling that. It would not be dangerous because you have to decide whatever you want to do with that information. In my case, as this is a remote observatory, I would have coded the dragscript to end the session and close the roof.
You cannot predict if do not have target to do so is not possible to close automatically the RoboTarget, you can manage the future event if you want to report warning to you.
There´s something I am not getting. I had broadband target with highest priority that would be shot until it was below 45 degrees altitude. Then a High Priority narrowband one that would take over, with the same altitude constraint. And finally another broadband target that would stop when the moon rose. RoboTarget run these three targets and, after that, none of the other three targets I had in the database would become eligible before the end of the night given either the minimum altitude or the Moon Down constraint. So the only possibility that any target becomes eligible is that I had entered another eligible target in RoboTarget during the night. Right?
I don´t want RoboTarget to automatically close when it is out of targets, but just to have the chance to automatically end the session and close the roof. I live 2400 km away from my observatory, so I don´t want to risk any open roof time if there is nothing to shoot.
@Voyager you mention an out of target condition. Is that the SKIPPED status code or is it another one? If it is the SKIPPED one I don´t know if I could use that combined with a check of wether I am within the night start and end limits to goto the Terminate Session Block of my dragscript. That´s because even if RoboTarget has no eligible target at some point during the night it does not mean that a target could not become available later in the same night . So if there is another out of target condition (which has a visibility of the whole night) that I could use for this purpose please let me know.
Its not possible to stop RoboTarget for out of target at now for the reason I’ve wrote before.
Anyway, I can put an exit after X minutes of no target mode like option if you want but this means the action will exit with OK only. In other words this means end of the night because if you recall the RoboTarget it will restart to scheduling as before entering again in No target mode. You can close all and put a delay and retry for all the night but at your decision but when you call the RoboTarget the roof must be open to avoid damage. Or you can go for finish of your dragscript and declare yourself night finished.
For your info:
OK SKIPPED is when the night is not yet coming.
ERROR is for an internal error
TIMEOUT if the night is Finished.
Thanks a lot Leonardo, there is no need for that. I can put a counter in the dragscipt.
I understand now that the out of target condition is only for the instant the scheduler is run.
I just thought that if I could see that there were no black areas (where all constraints are met) in the Ephem graphs of any of my targets after some point during the night, then I could use that information to decide wether I terminated the dragscript session and closed the roof.
Scheduler enter in this condition when no target is elegible, exit will be when a new target is elegible (check every 60s) or if the night is finished.