Hi!

How can I automatically recover focus (ZWO EAF) following passing clouds?
Last night I had scheduled four targets (about 10 hours) and the viewing was good. However, during the night (I was asleep), passing clouds caused the the automatic focus procedure to fail. This process was repeated several times during the next 5 hours, causing the focuser to travel further and further away from the original focus position. I'm not sure when the clouds had passed, but I know for sure that there were at least a couple of hours of clear skies before I manually focused in the morning. 

I would really like the scheduler to either reset the focus position following a failed focus attempt, or, skip to the next target on the list (hoping for clear skies at that target).

Are there any settings in the focus or schedule modules that allows this? I have attached a few photos of the settings I currently use.

Clear skies!

The autofocus routine is supposed to return to its original focus after a failed focus attempt.
I assume what happened is that somehow the focuser was moved far enough while the clouds were there,
and didn't return (though it should have) when it failed, so that all subsequent focus attempts failed.
Not sure why it didn't return to its original position, but would be happy to look at a log if you have a
debug log saved (e.g. with at least focus and capture).

With respect to your settings, I would use SEP for the detection instead of Gradient.
I don't have your focuser so I can't comment on the various step size or travel parameters.
You might increase the tolerance to 10%, though not sure.

Hy