Hey that's great that you started this ! Please tell me this lives in a branch in github somewhere (we can arc it to phabricator later )

We need to add things like which dome/roof driver is in use, make a distinction between roll-off roof and dome with shutter, which safety system is in use and what its status is (I see weather is already there), enable or disable closing on bad weather, we need a flexible close order (like dome park first, then close cap, then close shutter). And a hysteresis setting, like if we closed down and things are safe again wait with opening for X time. Retries, how many ? Logic like if dome park fails do we still want to try to close the shutter or not ? Maybe even pre and post scripts or curl calls per action. And a wake-human alerting system, which may be just another script to be called so to defer the actual implementation to the user. Do we need to support multiple mounts in an observatory here too ?

-- Hans

github.com/sterne-jaeger/kstars/tree/ekos_observatory

Awesome. Do you generate kstars/ekos/observatory/observatory.ui with some tool ? and if so how does that work ?

I use QTCreator for development. It contains a graphical editor to generate the XMLs.

Hi,

I was wondering if someone can help me understand the logic behind the Ekos Scheduler. In the attached screenshot I added eight targets to a schedule and assigned each Priority to 10 and constrained Altitude > 30, also Twilight is unchecked since I am using simulators. Thanks to all those who contributed to this thread. Lots of activity up until 6 months ago.

Right now the time is 0830 on December 11th. It is true that four targets meet the criteria of Altitude > 30: NGC 2683, NGC 2903, NGC 2841, and NGC 3198.

I was expecting the scheduler to bubble those four targets to the head of the job list with a Start Time of now; after all, they are visible. Instead it says I need to wait 7 hours for M33 to come around to the east again. I've tried clicking buttons to alter the behavior but the only control I seem to have is changing the priority. The up and down arrow buttons don't appear to do anything.

I was hoping to create a schedule of hundreds of targets and have the scheduler run those jobs that meet my criteria (including also weather.) For example if it is cloudy at sunset it would wait until the weather cleared at say 2am. If the weather goes from good to bad then suspend imaging, close the dome, and wait for conditions to improve again.

I'd like to run the Scheduler once, and have Ekos work continuously, day after day, waiting for darkness and good weather, and when that happens check to see which of the targets meet the criteria (i.e. Altitude > 30), and then begin imaging.

I understand that it is a lot to ask for but I was wondering what the roadmap looked like. Thank you, again.

Maybe having dozens of targets and a magic scheduler simply picking the optimal target and after two weeks in a row you can come back and everything is ready - well, that's slightly too ambitious - currently at least...

The scheduler always runs the list top down. If you choose the "Sort by altitude" option, the scheduler will sort the targets by altitude putting those with the closest earliest setting time first (roughly). But after this happens, the targets are run in sequence in a non-preemptive manner. The second one will only be started when the first is finished.

In case that the first one isn't finished but it hits its constraints (altitude, moon separation, ...), it will be postponed to a later time until these constraints are met again - and all others have to wait until the first one is finished. This is not optimal, but that's how it is working currently.

I personally never use the "Sort by altitude" option but I simply set a termination time so that the next job may start when it makes sense.

Does that answer your questions?

- Wolfgang

Thanks Wolfgang.

I keep seeing tooltips that make mention of "Sort by altitude" but I see no way of engaging it. I've tried clicking all buttons but nothing approximate what you described.

Thanks again.

Disable "Sort by altitude" in the EKOS Scheduler options. Then you can change the order manually.

Ahhhhhhh, I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Wolfgang said: "I personally never use the "Sort by altitude" option but I simply set a termination time so that the next job may start when it makes sense."

I like your idea best. It takes care of an important criterion of mine: I have a relatively small east-facing visibility window due to trees. It's best that I control this.

This would be a fantastic feature to have. For me, in Ireland, it often happens that clouds roll over for 20min and then its clear again. In these cases, the scheduler runs the shutdown procedure and I'm sleeping soundly so there are no human's around to restart everything:-)
Derek

Shutdown when the weather turns bad should be working already. The scheduler listens to the weather driver and shuts down everything. The question is how robust and reliable this is - no idea.

Additionally, the observatory module has also features for closing the shutter and the dome.

But I do not have an own observatory, so I cannot answer how this all works in real life.