Running sequence during cloudy sky

Maybe I missed something, but is there a way to setup voyager in order to keep trying to continue sequence, when clouds pass by for, let’s say, 1h? Out of my experience, it will consider the sequence failed…

Thanks
Miguel

1 Like

Great question - I accomplish this through the Resume logic of Dragscript.

Which I suppose prompts the question - are you running a DragScript?

Paul thanks for the reply. I usually use dragscript to run a series of action pre and post sequence, but nothing related with logic. Can you point me in the right direction, please?

Thanks
Miguel

You have two way and all passing for DragScript:

  1. use the Emergency Events source and management (weather, Viking, safety monitor, text file) DragScript Flow of Control - Voyager Wiki

  2. use the repeat block in case of error of Sequence Block or based in a time interval (you have a preloaded example on DragScript Editor) DragScript Examples - Voyager Wiki

In the second case, if the clouds become rain you can seriously damage your setup.

All the best
Leonardo

I have experimented with using the repeat block in case of error together with an override from my weather station in the event of rain.

It seemed to work OK. It means that I don’t interrupt if the part of the sky where I am imaging remains clear, or there is local cloud drifting across the imaging field. But I am no Dragscript expert.

I don’t have any safety equipment such as a cloudwatcher yet so I do not emergency events set up, but I use a dragscript to call the sequence. If the sequence ends in an error (Failed guiding due to cloud most often) the script increments an error counter, stops the mount, waits ten minutes and then restarts the sequence so long as the error counter has not reached 15. If the cloud has passed it will keep going, if not it will error again. if the counter reaches 15 it errors out and parks the mount to wait for dawn to shoot sky flats.

Thanks all for the answers. I understand the dangers around it, thanks for the heads up.
@Blue would you mind to share that small piece of dragscript you just described?

Thanks
Miguel

I will have a search, I think I put a copy of it here on the forum once before.

Edit, found it. The mount initialisation stuff has changed as I have a different mount now, but the rest works more or less the same. It is a two sequence script, but if you only have one target for the night you can just change the script to make it jump from sequence one to the flats or end of night section instead of the second sequence.

Thank you so much for the help!

Best
Miguel