slicecamd: fine-acquire tuning validated on-sky 2026-06-17#455
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slicecamd: fine-acquire tuning validated on-sky 2026-06-17#455cfremling wants to merge 1 commit into
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Bakes in the fine-acquire settings tuned and validated the night of 2026-06-16/17 (both bright offset-star and normal science targets; converging in 1-2 offsets, ~60-90 s slew-complete to lock): - FINE_ACQUIRE_GAIN 0.7 -> 1.0 (slicecamd.cfg.in + matching hardcoded default) - prec_arcsec 0.1 -> 0.35 (MAD scatter early-exit threshold) - goal_arcsec 0.3 -> 0.4 (convergence threshold) - new FINE_ACQUIRE_SETTLE_SEC (default 3.0): time-based settle after each move, on top of SETTLE_FRAMES. Autoexpose shortens the exposure on bright targets, which makes the frame-count settle elapse too fast in wall-clock for the TCS to physically settle; a time-based settle fixes that. Replaces a hardcoded test sleep and is tunable (0 disables) without a recompile. The slicecamd.cfg.in change is required: CONFIGURE_FILE regenerates Config/slicecamd.cfg from the template on build, so edits to the generated .cfg are lost on rebuild. Not compiled in this environment -- build on the instrument. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
Captures the slicecam fine-acquire tuning that was validated on-sky the night of 2026-06-16/17 so it survives rebuilds and checkouts. Both bright offset-star and normal science acquisitions converged in 1–2 offsets with stable behavior (~60–90 s slew-complete → lock).
Changes
FINE_ACQUIRE_GAINslicecamd.cfg.in+.hdefaultprec_arcsec(MAD scatter early-exit)slicecam_interface.hgoal_arcsec(convergence)slicecam_interface.hFINE_ACQUIRE_SETTLE_SEC(new)slicecamd.cfg.in+ loader +.hFINE_ACQUIRE_SETTLE_SEC(new knob)Time-based settle applied after each move, in addition to
SETTLE_FRAMES. When autoexpose shortens the exposure on bright targets, the frame-count settle elapses too quickly in wall-clock for the TCS to physically finish the move, so centroids resume before the field is steady. A time-based settle fixes this and was found to help significantly on bright/short-exposure targets. Default 3.0 s (the validated value); set 0 to disable. Replaces a hardcoded test sleep.Why the
.cfg.in(not the.cfg)slicecamd/CMakeLists.txtrunsCONFIGURE_FILE(Config/slicecamd.cfg.in → Config/slicecamd.cfg), regenerating the.cfgin place on every build — so hand edits to the generated.cfgare wiped on rebuild. The values must live in the template.Notes
prec_arcsec/goal_arcsecremain hardcoded defaults (as before); they could be config-exposed later if useful.🤖 Generated with Claude Code