Right off the bat, I don't generally use the scheduler. But I thought I had a fair understanding how it worked, and decided to attempt a trial with the mosaic feature last night. Primarily I saw it have issues with managing the guider.
I had no issues creating the mosaic jobs. So that part is fine, however issues arose as the scheduled tasks were progressing, and not necessarily because they belonged to a mosaic.
The job settings for my tests only included Track, Align, Guide. Start ASAP, without ALT or twilight constraints. Guiding external with PHD2 with auto-restore calibration.
Hitting play the schedule progressed through, Track, and Align. At Guide it read 'Guiding Started' and Calibration cleared. Reviewing PHD2 after a time I checked, PHD2 was connected but nothing was occuring. I went to the EKOS Guide tab, clicked on Guide, and saw it calibrate, begin guiding, then promptly begin capturing frames.

While capturing frames the progress did not show how many frames had been taken/left to take, it remained 0/2 until complete 2/2. However it would say 50% complete after first frame.
Onward to the next panel, I observer Track, and Align compleet properly once more. Followed by a repeat of the guiding behaviour. Including Cleared Calibration. Which means I had to repeat that time consuming step between jobs.

To Summarise

• Guiding did not start without assistance.
• Capture Progress not counting up.
• Guide calibration reset on next job, not resuming without manual assistance

Thank you.

Attached is the log, and some curious excerpts.
While Guiding, every other frame showed "Could not open file /tmp/kstars/phd2.fits. Error could not open the named file"
While Aligning, I found one example of this:
GPhoto Warnings.

I'm trying things with simulators. More or less the same process I went through the night before and it isn't giving me the same issue. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to why it wouldn't work with real equipment.

I confirm the scheduler job list does not display the updated count of exposures. I'll fix that along with dynamic schedule updates, but the first tab is where most activity notifications will be shown and where you should expect improvements.


-Eric

I found buried in the settings: Options>EKOS>Scheduler> ͏͏▪Always Reset Guide Calibration͏͏
It was evidently a source of confusion for me. This option, while evidently important is not well presented IMHO. In this instance it is certainly not always going to be necessary for each mosaic task, given that they are in the same region of the sky. Perhaps it can be better implemented on the scheduler tab as an additional option with the guide step.

I have been pondering the possibility to include such options inside the scheduler job file itself. That would probably make a mess with user experience if those remained both general and specific to a scheduler session though.
To extend on this, I think we need the ability to save each tab settings to files. Ekos is a client that can connect to different setups, and requires precise configuration of guide exposures, focus configuration, etc. Userdb is one thing, but multiple settings sheets loaded in a blink are a must.
(As a tiny little minor example of something annoying, my simulated setup doesn't include a solver. When I use it, the "offline" option shifts to "online" and stays there when I return to the physical setup.)
That's already implemented for the capture tab, and the scheduler makes use of this. I think we should make the same for other tabs.

-Eric

Perhaps it can be automatically turned off by the guide module for PHD2?