Please use this category to discuss the Voyager Advanced beta test. This category is only visible to beta testers and you can post about the beta here and still be in compliance with your confidentiality agreement.
Please do not post about the beta anywhere else on this Forum or on any other platform, and use the support email if you need official support.
Thanks!
Hello to everyone here
Geremia, Voyager advanced beta tester in Naples, Italy.
Cheers
Geremia
Good morning from Shawinigan Canada
Itās -30c this morning and I had my first run with Voyager Advance without issues.
I will have some suggestions in the next few days!!
Clear Skies !
Martin
Great to see people checking in!
I started with running Advanced on one pier. No issues so I installed it on all three of my piers.
Ran all night the night before last, all good!
Looking forward to hearing from other beta testers.
Cheers,
Rowland
Hoi all here from NL, yep ist to bad weather 
here for days
I am checking in from Southern California. I downloaded the beta last night and I am familiarizing myself with the Advanced features. I plan to do my first test tonight. The weather is looking good.
Glenn
Lynn from Texas,
Ran RoboTarget direct Saturday night for a few targets, and modified a dragscript to run it a few hours Sunday night till the clouds rolled in (of course) Other than my usual idiot user errors, both session ran with out issues. Rain and work next few days, least it will give me time to add a few targets.
Lynn
Iām from Northern California,
I got Advanced running last night with RoboTarget scheduler in my perpetual script. Iām a fairly new user to Voyager so Iām still working out some bugs in my script but the Advanced features ran great.
Chris
Maybe it can be useful to someone
for those who use a CMOS with āBayer Matrixā, in the Shot section, it is not possible to configure it at the moment, Sunday morning with Leonardo we found a WORKAROUND, just set a simulated filter wheel and choose a filter, so you can select it in the Shot Tab āFilter to Useā section and conclude the slot
Geremia
Thanks Geremia.
Leo has fixed this and it will be coming in the next update to beta testers, but your workaround is a good one. I have actually been running this way accidentally - I changed one OTA from a mono camera to a color one with filters and forgot to change the camera type to OSC!
Cheers,
Rowland
Hi Rowland, just wanted to clarify. A base sequence may have filter shots set already, but it seems that you must also add āshotsā to each target otherwise the sequence cannot be run? It was mentioned that adding āshotsā to a target overrides the base sequence slots?
If I have a base sequence set with exposure slots defined, but no target āshotsā, I get an error.
I will provide screenshots in the morning to explain further what Iām encountering.
Hello from Southern California; Just finished my first night with Advanced version, and it runs smoothly. I assume it would be fine to post some suggestions/questions here and looking for helps from the group? Or shall I directly connect with Leonardo via email?
Thanks,
Yizhou
Hi Dan,
You must define shots in the target.
Shots int he base sequence are ignored.
Cheers,
Rowland
Hi Yizhou,
Glad to hear you had a smooth nightās operation - seems like everyone is having that which is great.
You can ask questions here, we just canāt give official support which is obtained by contacting the support email address as usual.
Cheers,
Rowland
Checking in from very cloudy England.
Just getting my head around profiles, base sequences and sets and how I may want to organise things. Will probably become clearer after using it live. May have to setup a profile with simulators given the weather forecast! I also need to think how a new DragScript might look.
Am I right in assuming that if the sequencer finds no eligible target say, due to a moon down constraint on all targets, it will keep cycling round until one does become eligible or until however night end is setup.
Chris
Hi Jon here from the Gulf Coast,
Got advanced installed yesterday and figured out how to set targets and shots. One issue came up which Iām sure was my fault. I have my dragscript set to wait and offset night start by 15min prior to astronomical night after my dome is open and mount homed so things get rolling and focusing is complete a few minutes prior to actual night. I had set a -10 min offset in Robotarget and when run within my dragscript I got the error ātime not reachedā and my dragscript ended with a exit code and shutdown. Moral to the story, I think, is to make sure any offset in RoboTarget, that is prior to night, has already been reached prior to it being called in the dragscript. Will test that next clear night.
I manually ran it after night had started and everything in the scheduler seemed to work fine.
Some thought also needs to go into setting up your shots. If you set up shots on a target they are done in the order that they are in the list. So, for example, if you are trying to time your exposures to take red first, green second, blue third and luminance near the meridian you have to plan that out carefully in the shot section. I made the mistake of not realizing this. Anyways, so far so good.
Jon
Hi Jon
I thought about your last point and perhaps you could set the target up multiple times, once for each filter and have different constraints on each probably based around hour angle.
Chris
Hi Jon -
Thanks for the report!
It sounds like you might not have caught the āSKIPPEDā status return from calling RoboTarget in your DragScript. That status is returned if the night start time has not yet been reached, and you need to check for it, wait a bit, and then loop back to call RoboTarget again. Once the BEGIN Time has been reached, as specified by you (night start +/- night start offset), RoboTarget will begin to schedule targets and image them.
It is very important to catch the three possible status returns from your call to RoboTarget in your DragScript. I discuss this in my blog post in the āRunning RoboTarget from a DragScriptā section:: Part 4: Voyager RoboTarget at Runtime - Rowland's Astro Blog
Hereās the key code to include:
Cheers,
Rowland
Chris -
Thatās exactly how to handle the case where you wish to allow some filters to image at lower altitudes than others.
You can use wider ranges of the HA constraint for filters you want to shoot lower down.
Iāve been imaging that way for years - sometimes itās called a āstaircase sequenceā - but now Iām going to try imaging all my filters when the target is closer to the meridian. Iām experimenting with +/- one hour and +/- two hours of the meridian (the HA constraint). Of course if you have limited clear skies and want to finish targets sooner, this wonāt get data as quickly. But it will get higher quality data.
Cheers,
Rowland
Hey all
Iāve already had the chance to test Advanced the last two nights and again right now. So far itās working pretty much perfecty. 
One question: In Rowlandās blog post (thanks btw, a very useful read!) I saw the following:
Any constraints that have the āActivateā field checked will override the corresponding constraint, if one exists, in the base sequence. Otherwise, the base sequence constraint is enforced.
However, that does not seem to be the case for me - at least for the Hour Angle End constraint (havenāt tested the others yet). In my base sequence file Iāve checked āExit Sequence if Target is after this HourAngleā and set its value to 0, but it seems to be ignored by RoboTarget (the ephemeris image still shows the area after the meridian in black instead of in red like I wouldāve expected). This feature would be super useful to me because that constraint must always be the same for all my targets.
And a small suggestion: it would be nice if creating/loading a target from RoboClip would also automatically fill in the Position Angle constraint value.
Cheers,
Samuel