Auto Observation should not stop when focuser outside of range (11.4.28.40)

[ALPHA_OBS2021]

Good Morning PRISM,
Our team recently installed the latest update on PRISM: 11.4.28.40

During a run the team received the following error message when auto observations were running the auto focus routine "Focuser movement out of range movement impossible". Our initial focus range is: 13308 enc. steps and 13398 enc and when the focuser was scheduled for the next focus run ~2 hrs late PRISM updated the focus range to " 13233 enc. steps to 13343" and determined the optimum setting was: 13233. I don't mind the software updating the focus range, (note we have the apply offset disabled) as the night goes on and in this case while this was outside of the focuser range set but the stars were still in good HDF (no harm no foul). What is new, is that a warning pop-up appears and disables dome rotation, tracking and prevents the sequence from continuing and forces a complete restart of prism. On this night, this occurred 4 times each occurring at the auto focus section (and no error is in the log, the only way we knew is my intern was doing her 2 hour check and noticed). This error does appear during "auto focus" without auto observation but I don't need to restart the software to continue. The current configuration of PRISM does not provide a work-around so i'm having our team revert back to the previous release to get ready to monitor our NEO targets next week.

We typically adjust our focus range based on the auto -focus perform running the auto observation and its impossible to know when the software would pick an out of range focus setting.


Resolve:
Auto Observation should be more forgiving when an auto-focus is outside the range and not present a pop-up error and stop the sequence. Instead, if the HDF is ok and the focus is an improvement just use that new focus set just like in the previous version and move on.

[ALPHA_OBS2021]

Good Evening Prism,
I see a recent version of PRISM was released on Feb 2, does that release resolve the focus error that stops automated observations.

Marcel

[Cyril Cavadore]

what are the range figures of the focuser (Min-Max) ?

[ALPHA_OBS2021]

The range for the focuser was:
13300 to 13450

On the prism version 11.4.28.40 during a focus run if Prism calcauted the focus to be outside the range I provided it will throw an error and stop the auto observation sequence. Imaging would contiune, but no guiding and unable to stop the sequence. When this occurred had to shutdown completely out of PRISM. And since the current release version auto adjusts the focus range throughout the night there is no good work around to resolve besides just rolling back to a previous version. The problem is easily repeatable.

[Cyril Cavadore]

Why he is computing a value out of range ?
Nevertheless, it should not throw an exception that cause auto obs to stop.
What is your prism version ?

[ALPHA_OBS2021]

I agree, and thank you for letting into the issue. This occurred on version 11.4.28.40 and also on the latest version that was released. I think I can explain why its happening, after version 11.2.3.21 a feature was introduced that would adjust the focus range as the session went on. For example, if I set a range in auto obs to "13300 to 13450" then when the focus sequences start it would do use the following focus range, also like its trying to compensate for weather (in our case we do have aago weather station suppling data so not sure if that why its doing that). So when the range goes outside of whats defined when the sequence is started vs what is dynamic, that seems to be the issue.

1st
13300 to 13450
2nd
13330 to 13470
3rd
13340 to 13480

etc