Possible bug with exposure timeout in Focus window

[Hans]

Hi Jasem and Patrick,

I think there's some confusion here. This is what I see is going on :

The 30 second timeout is just the default value in the exposure-timeout setting
in the options of the focus tab. This part is fine.

The question from Patrick is whether this timeout calculation should start at
the beginning or at the end of the exposure.

I think it should start at the end of the exposure, and thus we have a bug here
that Patrick is willing to help fix.

-- Hans Lambermont

Jasem Mutlaq wrote on 20240117:
> Hello Patrick,
> 
> While this might indeed be an issue. I think 30 seconds for each exposure
> is not a solution.
> 
> --
> Best Regards,
> Jasem Mutlaq
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 9:32 PM Patrick Molenaar <pr_molenaar at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> Last week there was a clear sky and I had some time to put my gear out
>> after months of rain. After setting up my gear I tried to take an exposure
>> for determining the focus. At first the exposure was successful, but it was
>> only about 10 seconds. I had an L-Extreme filter on my Canon camera and no
>> stars were visible. So I tried a longer exposure, about 30 seconds, this
>> time I got an "Exposure failure, Restarting exposure" error message.
>> Each time I tried the exposure was aborted after about 23 seconds. Only
>> exposures shorter than 20 seconds were successful. In the end I gave up for
>> that night as I was unable to focus my camera.
>>
>> The days after that I connected my camera, tried different cables,
>> different camera settings, but every time when the expose was longer then
>> about 23 seconds, it was cancelled before it was finished.
>>
>> Eventually I started looking in the sourcecode of KStars and found where
>> the exposure was cancelled. I found out that in the options of the focus
>> window, there is an exposure-timeout setting, which was by default set to
>> 30 seconds. When I increased this setting to a higher value, I was able to
>> make longer exposures, but when the exposure time was greater then the
>> exposure timeout setting, the exposure was aborted again.
>>
>> In other locations in the sourcecode of KStars I found that the exposure
>> timeout was added to the exposure time, so the timeout only occurs a given
>> number of seconds after the exposure should have finished. For the exposure
>> timeout in the focus dialog this was not the case.
>>
>> Is this a bug in the software?
>> Or was it intended to have a fixed timeout for the focus windows, that
>> aborts the exposure when the exposure time is set to a value longer then
>> the exposure timeout.
>>
>> If it is a bug, I am aslo willing to make a fix for it; please let me
>> know. As my profession is software designer and I have made a contribution
>> to KStars in the past (Bahtinov Focus Assistant), this shouldn't be that
>> diffucult.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Patrick Molenaar
>>