When the in-sequence focus check triggers an autofocus run, the imaging sequence is immediately continued as soon as the AF is finished. However, as AF usually (?) pauses guiding, that one has a good chance to be off, and need time to get back to the proper position. So far I have to discard all the exposures after an AF run
Would be great if that could be handled similar to dither, waiting for the guider to be within limits, and/or apply the additional dither settle time from the guide configuration....
(not sure if that is a bugreport or a wishlist item)

Could you please post the logs?

Uh, so that needed some investigation to locate. Seems there is no notification that the in-sequence HFD check runs and triggers an autofocus? But I'm quite sure it was the event starting 2019-07-25T00:54:53.991. It was after frame 58, and I had set the focus check interval to 29.(*)
I attach the kstars log, as well as the PHD2 one. There you can see that after the (~1 minute) autofocus the position is some 30" off and it needs ~20s to get back (slow cadence and 50% aggressiveness). But EKOS only does the (short) settle after changing focus (0.5s) and then directly starts with the next exposure.
I think it would be very helpful to have a (separate) settle time there, or better a loop that monitors guide error and waits until its in a good range. I know there's an option for this for the sequence, but that one (as I understand from the help text) would abort the whole sequence if the limit is exceeded

(*)BTW, there seems to be an issue there, too. That day this 29 sequence worked, the following day I had updated to the latest git versions, and there it suddenly did the check after 16 or sometimes even less frames. I think you had worked on that part (from git log), so maybe you have an idea what might cause this?

From my perspective everything went well in the focusing sequence at 00:54. When guiding continued after a successful autofocus, the guiding star was 25" off in RA and PHD2 brought it back with four corrections. It seems like you do not have the checkbox for guiding deviations selected, since capturing continues while guiding is off significantly.

I think the version with guiding deviation is a easier and more flexible way handling this situation rather than another static settling time.

- Wolfgang

Thanks for looking at this Wolfgang!

Yes, as I wrote I didn't use the sequence option, as the tooltip says it would abort the sequence if the limit is exceeded, which didn't sound like what I wanted. It should only wait, similar to after a dither move. Would it be possible to treat return from AF the same way as a dither event (at least if 'Suspend Guiding' is checked)? That would (IMHO) be a reasonable choice, and wouldn't need separate options/limits.

But I'll play with the guiding limit setting and see how it behaves.

As long as you are capturing with the Scheduler running, the Scheduler will restart capturing as soon as the guiding deviation is below the limit. This restarting works very robust meanwhile. But if you use the Capture module standalone, one single deviation aborts the entire sequence and you need to start it manually. That's why I always capture with the Scheduler.

I always use a limit of 2.5" on my midrange scope and 3" for wide field. It's sometimes frustrating to see how often captures get interrupted, but at the end the frames you get have round stars.

Indeed I (still) use the capture module standalone. I first wnated to know what all the different parts in a sequence are doing etc., and have not yet looked at how to set up everything via the scheduler. Guess I'll need quite some reading to learn how to do this...
But I'll have a try at using the guide limit and see how it behaves. 3" seems a good start, thanks for the suggestion.

(Though I still think it shouldn't abort and restart, but rather know AF can mess up guiding and wait/check, just like for dither...)

It's not that complicated: select a target, select a capture sequence, select the completion condition and press "Start". For experimenting, use a profile with simulators.

Personally, I would recommend using the scheduler as soon as possible. The complexity comes with the steps (e.g. I skipped focusing for a while) and when you try to shoot multiple targets. With one target, it should not be too complicated.

- Wolfgang