Jeff Rothstein:
If I may, let me offer one suggestion: skip the Legacy Sequencer and learn the Advanced Sequencer from the start. The drag-and-drop, step-by-step programming is highly intuitive, especially if you start with Patriot Astro’s templates. As Miguel A said, there are many who will be happy to answer questions as you learn, both here and on the NINA Discord server.
Best,
Jeff
Jerry, I was just about ready to recommend the opposite of what
@Jeff Rothstein suggested in the above quote and start out using the Legacy Sequencer. But after reading Jeff's comment, I am backing out of what I would say. Partly it is because I know from other forum posts by you here on AB that you are looking to set up a remote system. Under such cases, there are many elements that will need controlling and monitoring and I think it well worth learning the Advance Sequencer.
Also, I have no experience with the Advanced Sequencer! I never used the Advanced Sequencer in the 3-4 years of operating my systems! But my imaging sites are all local to where I live and/or soon to be close to where I will park my RV. I never went Advanced because I still have not found a case where I needed it. But I typically set up every night, polar align, run only guiding, autofocus, meridian flip, and one or two sequences in OSC during the night. I still often never link my Pegasus PowerBox to NINA, since it runs great independently of the Switch connection in NINA.
Regarding the comments suggesting to be sure that you focus decently before doing an autofocus, I think this is generally common sense. First off, I always do a polar align before I do an autofocus, and to use the NINA 3-point polar alignment, you want decent (not perfect) stars for the plate solving needed to do that. If you use other means, then you will know the demands on that method regarding star quality needed. If you were to set your autofocus so that it could actually achieve a decent focus with a grossly out-of-focus telescope, then your autofocus routine that you set in NINA would be a terrible routine to do the fine focusing you want during imaging. Example, if you want NINA to be able to take you from an FWHM of well above 10, then that is just asking for trouble and if you want precision, then you would have to add so many increments that the number of increments needed would make the whole process a waste of much time during sequencing. On the other hand, for example, if your focussed stars are FWHM of 2.5, then you want you farthest out of focus start point to be something on the order of 5-6. And then step increments of ~4 each side of focus. NINA will add more anyway if it wants a better read. But I cannot imagine that this would be any different for any sequencer you would use. Patriot Astro has a nice video on the autofocus setup in NINA.
Alan
