Here was my first night out, which I'm sorting through some issues with if you follow the thread.
First night out...
On my second night out with KSTARS/EKOS:
I immediately began the evening by using the hand controller on the AVX to run a 2+4 alignment and polar align.
Connected to EKOS/INDI and got the equipment running.
I ran a focus routine to focus, then picked M101 as a target and slewed to it using the EKOS mount control.
Here's where I started running into a new issue. I went to the align tab, and told it to Capture & Solve/Slew to target. Every time it said solving for
M102 not M101. Then it would say it's off target, and slew to M102. I repeated this multiple times with the same problem. I eventually pointed to a few different targets and Capture & Solved with Sync, then came back to M101 and it worked this time.
I loaded up PHD2, calibrated, and started guiding.
Went back to EKOS, loaded up my LRGB sequence, and pressed run sequence.
Imaged for about an hour and started to notice how grainy my images were, then realized I forgot to turn on the cooler for the camera. I don't know if this can be saved into the sequence or not, but if It can, I must have forgot to set the temperature in my sequence. So I turned on the cooler, and it ran for the rest of the evening at the correct temperature.
About two hours into my 4 hour session, I think the guide camera locked up. The sequence aborted, and I went into PHD2, which seemed to think it was still working, but there was no guiding data, and the screen was not refreshing. This required quitting PHD2 and restarting, new calibration and started guiding again.
I went back to EKOS, and even though PHD2 returned to normal, EKOS was not displaying any guiding updates from PHD2. But since I knew I was guiding again in the other program, I resumed my sequence. I never saw any data coming to EKOS again for the rest of the session, but EKOS seemed to think I was guiding, and continued the sequence despite not seeing any data in the EKOS guide windows.
Also, one other issue came up. I noticed that on focusing, the focus routine did not automatically come up on filter change. I'm not sure if this was supposed to happen or not. So about 2 frames into my second filter, I pressed the auto focus routine, which stopped the sequence queue mid frame. It focused, but then I had a problem resuming the queue for some reason. I had to stop the queue and restart it, and this resumed.
At this point I noticed the setting to refocus focus every hour, so I turned this setting on, and after one hour it automatically paused the sequence, and said waiting on focus. The focus automation never happened. I went to the focus tab, and had to press the Auto Focus button, and after it completed, the sequence automatically resumed. So it seems it was waiting on my input for the focus routine? I'm not sure why it didn't work automatically then return to the sequence.
Other than these issues, I completed 1 full sequence on a single object. Very happy to get this far. I think there are a few more issues for me to work out to have this fully automated. Some things I have not attempted yet are a meridian flip, and multiple object sequences. I've also not taken any darks, flats or bias frames yet. I'll build a sequence for those and attempt it soon.