v3.80 Crashes While Adjusting Focus [maybe]

[lambjl1]

Hey Ivo,

I've encountered this problem 2-3 times recently: Several hours into a 10-hour imaging session, typically as I am adjusting focus via the focuser buttons, APT v3.80 simply "disappears". There's no warning/error box--it's just gone. I restart it, it connects to all of the equipment once again and I restart the Cooling Aid. Then it works fine for the remainder of the session. It only appears to crash when I'm doing something within APT rather than crashing out of the blue with no mouse or keyboard input. I did not encounter this problem with earlier versions of APT.

Not sure if the log file gets overwritten when I restart or if there's even anything useful in it. What can I do to help you to diagnose the problem?

Thanks

Jay

[lambjl1]

I'm attaching the 2019-12-2 portion of the log. The crash occurred at about: 2019/12/03 00:36:31 (UT 2019/12/03 06:36:31)

[Yoddha]

Hi Jay,

If it happens again, please try to remember and log what windows were opened, what you were doing and what APT was doing. This will be in help when trying to reproduce the crash.

[lambjl1]

Ok. Will do. I know the following were open:
PixInsight
PHD2
Bahtinov Grabber (probably)
PowerPoint
Microsoft Edge (browser)
Excel
Pegasus Astro Ultimate Power Box v2 control window
Celestron NexRemote
Stellarium (probably)
Several Windows Explorer windows

[Yoddha]

Sorry! I mean in windows in APT

[lambjl1]

Ha Ha. My bad.

Focus Aid
Histogram

Will confirm if/when it happens again

Jay

[ggkids]

It did happen to me in the past while I was using Bahtinov help. Nothing had been written in the log file every time.

Clear skies,
Giovanni.

[JST200]

Hi Jay,

Just an observation...

The list of the apps that you have running, whilst imaging, is interesting. Some of them can be very resource intensive.

Of course it depends on what you are doing with the apps and the power of your PC, but I have a 4Ghz 8 cpu 16GB memory laptop and:

• PixInsight - can easily take 100% processing power (on all 8 cpus) and nearly all of the 16GB mem
• PHD2 - often takes 50% of the cpu (it does seem to take less cpu if cpu is being used by other apps - I'm not sure what affect this has on PHD2)
• PowerPoint - a big slide set can take a lot of memory.

And of course the other apps all take their toll on processor and memory.

Now because APT and PHD2, in particular, are realtime process they are very susceptible to any cpu and memory constraints. I know when I have tried to run Pixinsight, at the same time as imaging, strange things have happened.

Therefore, for the sake of stability, I try not to run any apps that aren't required during my imaging. So typically I only run:

• APT
• PHD2
• ASTAP (as called by APT)
• Cartes du Ciels
• EQMOD
• DeepSkyStacker Live

Although I occasionally run Chrome, I avoid Pixinsight, Excel and other possibly resource intensive apps.

It may be worth running Task Manager, whilst you are imaging, and watch what resources are being used whilst you doing an image run. I would suggest trying to ensure you don't consistently:

• exceed 60% cpu - this will ensure that that there's enough cpu capacity to allow for peak usage from imaging processes
• exceed 75% of the "memory in use" portion of "the memory composition" display - this will ensure memory isn't being swapped to disk, which takes time and it's own amount of cpu.

Hope that helps?

Cheers, Jim

[lambjl1]

Thanks for the comment, Jim

Totally agree about PixInsight and other cpu-intensive programs--I've killed an imaging session before when I tried image_integration while imaging. I just use it to read in an image and look at image statistics and to compare earlier-acquired images, but it's a cpu hog for sure. I have a hyperbolic fit routine in Excel I use for checking focus--a poor man's autofocusing routine minus the "auto". I sometimes have PowerPoint open as a "note pad" where I can deposit screen shots of this or that that I want to look into later--no big slide shows.

All good points though

Jay