Weather and session start

[David Jones]

I have been trying the simulators and understand most of the basics of ACP. However, the weather control puzzles me. I can get the weather simulator to abort a session and close everything down fine but how would I approach the following 2 similar scenarios?

• I am using a roll-off roof so am using "shutter" control as the roof
• Session planned to start at 10pm

9pm ->Clouds present ->Session (correctly) does not start
10pm -> Clouds clear -> Session could start but doesn't as start time gone

9pm -> Clear -> session start
10pm -> Clouds -> session aborts (parks, roof closes)
11pm -> Clear -> session does not resume and 6 hours or so imaging lost

The reason for this issue is that I live in the UK which is a nightmare for extremely changeable weather and it can be cloudy, raining and clear on and off during a night.

It seems that ACP is good at protecting things (ie aborting) and is well geared to a climate with steady weather but I cannot figure out how to get it to resume a session automatically (including opening the roof) after a weather nonstart/abort/shutdown.

I would have thought that some command like "wait until safe" could be a session command start with "park and close roof if unsafe" as well as "resume if safe" in there; the only wait I can see is related to waiting for a set time.

Sorry if I have misunderstood the controls or fundamentally do not understand what ACP is for but for my scenario ACP just doesn't seem to be able to automatically do what I want??? It feels if I may as well sit up at night and watch the sky

regards

David

[Bob Denny]

David --

You are correct in your observations. ACP is not designed to restart itself (and the observatory) after a weather unsafe event. A big reason is - "where in the observing plan do you resume?" If you have a 2 hour pause, and you just pick up where you left off, now all of your targets are 2 hours west of where you thought they would be when acquired, maybe down in the mud. The idea is to catch weather unsafe events, and leave it up to the operator to create a new plan and start things up himself after a weather unsafe event.

With that said, our product ACP Scheduler is capable of start-stop-start to the point of being capable of 24x7 hands-off operation. Scheduler takes the "when" out of observing - it chooses the times for everything. I know it seems impossible but it really does... I can talk to you on the phone about it if you wish (I know you are in the UK). Send me a private email to rdenny@dc3.com and your UK phone# and I'll do it.

[David Jones]

That is a kind offer. I may take you up on it in the future but for now I will still try to get used to the ACP trial (and now scheduler too) as well as looking at CCD Autopilot and CCD Commander to see which best suits my needs.

regards

David

[Bob Denny]

If you have any further questions, feel free to call or post here. The main differences with CDAP/CCDC are the web/remote capability and the expandability/customization capabilities. And of course, the prospect of going "timing-free" with Scheduler.