Focus Time Out but focusing has completed

[Terry Robison]

G'Day

I watched this happen several times last night. The system would perform a successful focus, and then stop with no activity at all. The system status on the web page was showing a flashing Imager “Autofocus Busy” and Activity “Autofocus”. But the log visible in the web page indicated that focusing had completed. After a while, a * COM FocusControl.Halt initiated * was generated and this was echoed in both the the console window and browser panels. While waiting during the period of not activity, I thought the system froze. At this point, I ran the alert script in an effort to determine if the system had become unresponsive. You can see this event at 09:50:29 in the attached log file.

The 09:50:29 == Alert == This has no effect on this script

When the “* COM FocusControl.Halt initiated *” was generated, the system would continue.

Changes to system – update to latest focusMax.

I also seem to have platesolving issues as well.

This is another observation, same issue, the web page showed the flowing at the end of its log:

09:43:55 19:43:55 Position = 6583 Avg HFD = 2.65 Avg FWHM = 1.87
09:43:56 19:43:55 Temperature: 8.8 Filter: Lum (slot 4)
09:43:56 19:43:56 ** AutoFocus Completed **
09:43:56 19:43:56 Focus time: 194 sec

But within the ACP console, the following was were missing.

09:43:56 19:43:56 ** AutoFocus Completed **
09:43:56 19:43:56 Focus time: 194 sec

They only appeared in the console log after the “* COM FocusControl.Halt initiated *” was generated, and the system continued with the plan.

I also opened the log file during one of the pauses, and the lines noted above were not in the log at that time. However, they were written once the “* COM FocusControl.Halt initiated *” was generated.

I was working on guiding, and the test imaging run was invoked via ”Single Object Imaging” / Colour Series from the web browser. I stopped the session (reason for abrupt ending of log file).

Terry

[Ronald Crouch]

I saw pretty much the same thing tonight here. Session started, focus ran great then it all stops with nothing bad being reported. ONLY thing different is the "latest" FM 4.0.27 which updated this week. i was running a 2 object session from a plan. If I reran the plan but removed all autofocus calls the session ran meaning it acquired the light frames. The bad thing is that from what I see FM4's update method does not leave old installers around so backing up a version is not so easy.
Log attached.. It shows me nothing except it focused then stopped. I tried this 4 times and the first time I waited a good 5 minutes before the abort. Then I ran two quick sessions without focus just fine. Then the one associated with this log.
Rats,
Ron

[Ronald Crouch]

FYI the CCDWare support blog for FM4 is full of exactly this same error report using other executive software like CCD Commander. I contacted Steve Brady privately asking for an installer to go back to 4.1.25 from 4.1.27.
Ron

[Terry Robison]

Thank's Ron. I have rolled it back to an earlier install.

Terry

[Bob Denny]

Rumor has it that this bug has been corrected in FocusMax. Check it out.

[Ronald Crouch]

Yes you are correct! Steve posted 4.1.28 today which listed the bug as fixed. I installed but cannot test til late next week most likely. I'm sure Steve nailed it!
Best,
Ron

[Steve Brady]

Hi Ron--
Yes this has been fixed in FocusMax V4.1.0.28 - it took me a day to sort it all out.
Please let me know if you see an issue....

Clear skies,
Steve Brady

[Ronald Crouch]

Hi Ron--
Yes this has been fixed in FocusMax V4.1.0.28 - it took me a day to sort it all out.
Please let me know if you see an issue....

Clear skies,
Steve Brady

Hi Steve! Yes I have run sessions all week with perfect focus and focus/automation interactions. I grabbed the .28 build within minutes of your posting it :-) Thank you so much!!
Ron

[Dick Berg]

Hi Steve,

When I go through the Help/Check for Update/Now menu, and I click on the subsequent "Download" button, this error message pops up. Do you understand what this means? I can only abort the download. I'm currently using V 4.1.0.10. That's working fine, but I thought I would bring it up to date.

[Steve Brady]

Hi Dick--
Your way behind - current version is 4.1.0.28 : ^ ))
The error message is generated after we made code changes for the download process - technical support with my (well known) ISP that hosts FocusMax was not helpful (or willing to help). This is only an issue for old versions 4.1.0.10 or less.

You may goto CCDWare site to download or send me a private email (Menu/Help/About) and I wil be more than happy to send you the latest installer.

Clear skies & good imaging!
Steve Brady