I thought about using this. But there has been more then one time that I really needed my logs because of issues. And logs are updated until NINA/PHD2 terminates. That, and robocopy will not copy any file that is still open. So, I wrote my own batch script that runs at the very end of my advanced sequence. Thank you for the advanced sequence tutorial by the way. This way, I have a copy of the current logs, profiles, and imagages for each session. And because it is at the 4am, I am asleep when that runs. So, other than me writting the script. No big deal.
Exactly. I actually have my PatriotAstro end of night batch file for this very purpose. Check it out, it may be similar to what you’re doing. It runs as a script after robocopy completes, and includes making sure PhD2 is terminated first so that the logs will be copied. If you go to my website somewhere in the menu system, you’ll track it down. :-)
@PatriotAstro lol, I dealt with NINA and PHD2 with a very simple ham handed manner in my script. taskkill NINA.exe and taskkill phd2.exe. might seem heavy handed, but my imaging session is done and my script is the last thing that runs. I will check out your script. thank you Edited to add: I ended up rewriting most of my script in powershell. I found NINA actually records the path of where you defined to store the images at in the profile. And if you sort the profile directory down by date, the latest profile updated will be what was used for your session. It is updated every time. I just added a bunch of stuff to the powershell script. (zip up log files and copy them to a directory on my google drive, find the drive letter of my thumb drive(I copy to that). I need to add the templates to that zip and copy portion. I will send you a link when I get a clear night to properly test it. By the way, I clear out the logs after a successful copy so that every time I copy them. I only get that nights logs.
@@danielmiller5984 I think our script will be pretty similar. It’ll be interesting to see what you think when you compare yours to mine. I used powershell as well for some of the tasks just out of necessity. Going back to the PhD2 thing… in Nina 3.x, there’s actually a new PhD tools plug-in available. The plug-in has the ability to disconnect and kill the application as part of an instruction. There’s also a trigger now that will look at your RMS during an image, and decide whether that particular sub should be kept or terminated.
@PatriotAstro I have made some changes and not run mine yet under real time environment. Weather, weather, weather. But when I think it is clean. I will send you a message on your site to a link where you can download a zip of everything to a location you can get to and let you take a gander. Again, who knows when that will be with the way the weather has been. I have looked at your script by the way. And you are correct. We are pretty much the same functions. The funny thing is, a lot of people I tell about this type of backups don’t think it is needed. My equipment is old. I have fought a LOT of battles. I have deleted stuff by accident. When this runs, I am fast asleep. So, other than writing the script. I am losing nothing and gaining recovery options.
Thanks Chad. Works like a charm out here in the clear Texas skies. Looking forward to the 'can of worms'. Honestly, my rigs run perfectly because of the vast knowledge you share with the community. Clear skies!
We are in a heat wave (100+ degrees daily for the last 8+ days. I'm in East Texas. No rain (or clouds for that matter) in the last 14+ days and we're not supposed to get any rain until after the 26th of June. The humidity ruins seeing conditions sometimes, but the there are a few hours each night of 'average' seeing. I was reading it's been raining a lot out in Georgia. I'll see what I can do and send ya'll some clear heat wave skies just in time for the new moon. :D -jason
@@ClearAmbientSkies Really hot here too. But the high-level hazy clouds are killing me. The last part of the mini PC series video that I need to shoot is all of the final validation and configuration of any components that require seeing a night sky to complete the process. It’s driving me crazy. But it’s letting me get some other video work done that I’ve had half completed for a while. I actually think I might try to do a quieter2 or Quieter3 mini PC stress test specifically targeting temperature today. I hope I don’t break it. :-) I also acquired a third-party heatsink that I can test attached to it to see how that addresses cooling. I’ve never had an issue before, but a lot of people are worried about the fanless design. Of course I’ve been using fanless designs for as long as I can remember for Astro… :)
Thanks Troy! I appreciate it. I’ve been able to knock a bunch of videos out lately. Gotta get the MiniPC final one sorted soon, then maybe the sequencer update after that. I might drop another one tomorrow too… where are all these clouds coming from?
Your videos are great Chad. Robocopy would be fantastic for me as I control my observatory remotely over internet+VNC. How did you create a network link between your two computers over internet connection for robocopy?
Thanks, I installed Remote Copy but I had no idea where it actually did its work. There was nothing in the plugin description about going into the advanced sequencer, so I never thought to look there, because I've been avoiding the advanced sequencer up until now. But at least it was an excuse to dip my feet in there and see what it's like. But I just set the destination to a new folder on my main PC, and so Remote Copy just started duplicating all of my images and folders again, and once it gets going it doesn't seem to want to stop! I stopped the sequence and it kept copying, I closed the command prompt window, and it kept copying, I had to shut down NINA to get the bloody thing to stop! But I'm sure once I think it through and decide what I actually want to copy, to where, it will work perfectly.
Hi Chad, I hope things are going well for you. I'm pretty sure your RUclips 'follower' hordes are missing you a lot. On the off chance you still get notices of postings here, I hope you'll indulge a belated question from a new NINA user relating to the Remote Copy Plugging. I just wondered what differentiates Remote Copy from simply selecting your Google Drive (or any other location that shows up as a choice) as the place where NINA places your images as they are captured. I'm pretty sure I must be missing something or the Remote Copy Plugging would not have been developed. It just seems like NINA already allows you to have your captured images placed wherever your imaging computer has access. Best Wishes...Gary
Hi Chad, this is the solution to saving time at the end of each session. I would like to know if remote copy can be implemented in the basic sequence, since I am not familiarized with the advance sequence yet. Greetings from BelloCielo - Chile Jaime
It is only available as part of an advanced sequence. However, I think if you add the plug-in, it tells you the command that it uses, which means you could manually run that command at a command line yourself, so that it maintains your session synchronization similarly. The plug-in just performs all of this for you, including terminating it at the end automatically. But there’s really no reason you couldn’t use this commandline tool yourself as it is built into windows. Maybe that is an option for you in the short term.
Thank you Chad, I think I must get into advanced sequence. Stop been lazy. At the end, came to simplify the capture session. Greetings from BelloCielo - Chile.
Hi,. Thanks for the timely videos! I'm setting up a NUC, and would like to use a micro SD card for Remote Copy. It appears the read/write speed can be slot slower than the internal drive! I'm interested because the size and weight is "micro" compared to a 2.5" SSD or HDD. Clear skies, Paul PS It also seems that deleting source files does not effect destination, yeah! I hope there will be a feature to have the source files purged automatically, as when the internal drive is small.
If you haven’t watched my first video in the mini PC series on performance that I released in the last week you may want to go watch that as it relates to the performance of drives and microSD cards. They are soooo slow… you can likely find an alternative depending on the system you are using. Even an external 3.2 USB SSD drive can have a relatively small footprint. As far as that plugin removing files from the source, unless he had something beyond robocopy to it, I doubt it will happen. Often people are too paranoid about automation handling deletion. They want to be the one with control of the delete key at the moment of truth. :-)
Will it send image file over wifi without internet access? For something like 5 minutes long subs, what should be the timings? Will it accept the destination folder on a different computer over WIFI?
As long as it’s reachable on your network any destination is fine. Wi-Fi without Internet is not a problem. The only timing that you can configure is the stop timer. If you’re doing five minute exposures, the default is fine. You will only need to move one file within that two minute stopping window. Remember, it wakes up every one minute to see if anything new is there. With a five minute exposure it will wake up four times with nothing to do, and on the fifth time only have to move a single image file.
I thought about using this. But there has been more then one time that I really needed my logs because of issues. And logs are updated until NINA/PHD2 terminates. That, and robocopy will not copy any file that is still open. So, I wrote my own batch script that runs at the very end of my advanced sequence. Thank you for the advanced sequence tutorial by the way. This way, I have a copy of the current logs, profiles, and imagages for each session. And because it is at the 4am, I am asleep when that runs. So, other than me writting the script. No big deal.
Exactly. I actually have my PatriotAstro end of night batch file for this very purpose. Check it out, it may be similar to what you’re doing. It runs as a script after robocopy completes, and includes making sure PhD2 is terminated first so that the logs will be copied. If you go to my website somewhere in the menu system, you’ll track it down. :-)
@PatriotAstro lol, I dealt with NINA and PHD2 with a very simple ham handed manner in my script. taskkill NINA.exe and taskkill phd2.exe. might seem heavy handed, but my imaging session is done and my script is the last thing that runs. I will check out your script. thank you
Edited to add: I ended up rewriting most of my script in powershell. I found NINA actually records the path of where you defined to store the images at in the profile. And if you sort the profile directory down by date, the latest profile updated will be what was used for your session. It is updated every time. I just added a bunch of stuff to the powershell script. (zip up log files and copy them to a directory on my google drive, find the drive letter of my thumb drive(I copy to that). I need to add the templates to that zip and copy portion. I will send you a link when I get a clear night to properly test it. By the way, I clear out the logs after a successful copy so that every time I copy them. I only get that nights logs.
@@danielmiller5984 I think our script will be pretty similar. It’ll be interesting to see what you think when you compare yours to mine. I used powershell as well for some of the tasks just out of necessity. Going back to the PhD2 thing… in Nina 3.x, there’s actually a new PhD tools plug-in available. The plug-in has the ability to disconnect and kill the application as part of an instruction. There’s also a trigger now that will look at your RMS during an image, and decide whether that particular sub should be kept or terminated.
@PatriotAstro I have made some changes and not run mine yet under real time environment. Weather, weather, weather. But when I think it is clean. I will send you a message on your site to a link where you can download a zip of everything to a location you can get to and let you take a gander. Again, who knows when that will be with the way the weather has been. I have looked at your script by the way. And you are correct. We are pretty much the same functions.
The funny thing is, a lot of people I tell about this type of backups don’t think it is needed. My equipment is old. I have fought a LOT of battles. I have deleted stuff by accident. When this runs, I am fast asleep. So, other than writing the script. I am losing nothing and gaining recovery options.
Thanks Chad. Works like a charm out here in the clear Texas skies. Looking forward to the 'can of worms'. Honestly, my rigs run perfectly because of the vast knowledge you share with the community.
Clear skies!
Fantastic! But what are these clear skies you mention? I can't seem to find an hour... :(
We are in a heat wave (100+ degrees daily for the last 8+ days. I'm in East Texas. No rain (or clouds for that matter) in the last 14+ days and we're not supposed to get any rain until after the 26th of June. The humidity ruins seeing conditions sometimes, but the there are a few hours each night of 'average' seeing. I was reading it's been raining a lot out in Georgia. I'll see what I can do and send ya'll some clear heat wave skies just in time for the new moon. :D -jason
@@ClearAmbientSkies Really hot here too. But the high-level hazy clouds are killing me. The last part of the mini PC series video that I need to shoot is all of the final validation and configuration of any components that require seeing a night sky to complete the process. It’s driving me crazy. But it’s letting me get some other video work done that I’ve had half completed for a while. I actually think I might try to do a quieter2 or Quieter3 mini PC stress test specifically targeting temperature today. I hope I don’t break it. :-) I also acquired a third-party heatsink that I can test attached to it to see how that addresses cooling. I’ve never had an issue before, but a lot of people are worried about the fanless design. Of course I’ve been using fanless designs for as long as I can remember for Astro… :)
This is way cool Chad. I will implement it ASAP. BTW, I am watching your remote computer setup series ...which is excellent.
Thanks Pat! You've been nailing it with your videos too. I'd watch for the back garden alone! I love it back there! :)
Love the feature and the great overview Chad! Can't wait to see what you are doing with the batch file.
You likely find out tomorrow. :)
Love your work chad!.. looking forward to your new sequence templates!
Thanks Troy! I appreciate it. I’ve been able to knock a bunch of videos out lately. Gotta get the MiniPC final one sorted soon, then maybe the sequencer update after that. I might drop another one tomorrow too… where are all these clouds coming from?
Your videos are great Chad. Robocopy would be fantastic for me as I control my observatory remotely over internet+VNC. How did you create a network link between your two computers over internet connection for robocopy?
Hello,
Great video…
I assume this plug-in is of no use if you don’t use the complex sequencer and only use the simple one….?
Cheers
Right, this is a plugin and it creates 2 new advanced sequencer instructions to provide its functionality. You would need to use that sequencer.
Thanks, I installed Remote Copy but I had no idea where it actually did its work.
There was nothing in the plugin description about going into the advanced sequencer, so I never thought to look there, because I've been avoiding the advanced sequencer up until now. But at least it was an excuse to dip my feet in there and see what it's like.
But I just set the destination to a new folder on my main PC, and so Remote Copy just started duplicating all of my images and folders again, and once it gets going it doesn't seem to want to stop! I stopped the sequence and it kept copying, I closed the command prompt window, and it kept copying, I had to shut down NINA to get the bloody thing to stop!
But I'm sure once I think it through and decide what I actually want to copy, to where, it will work perfectly.
it was likely running that command in the background. :) You'll sort it out, it is worth the time spent!
Imaging night starts at 28°C...!! It barely gets that warm in july in the daytime up here closer to Santa's home. Lol
It gets hot here! (And humid). :)
Hi Chad, I hope things are going well for you. I'm pretty sure your RUclips 'follower' hordes are missing you a lot.
On the off chance you still get notices of postings here, I hope you'll indulge a belated question from a new NINA user relating to the Remote Copy Plugging. I just wondered what differentiates Remote Copy from simply selecting your Google Drive (or any other location that shows up as a choice) as the place where NINA places your images as they are captured. I'm pretty sure I must be missing something or the Remote Copy Plugging would not have been developed. It just seems like NINA already allows you to have your captured images placed wherever your imaging computer has access. Best Wishes...Gary
Hi Chad, this is the solution to saving time at the end of each session. I would like to know if remote copy can be implemented in the basic sequence, since I am not familiarized with the advance sequence yet.
Greetings from BelloCielo - Chile
Jaime
It is only available as part of an advanced sequence. However, I think if you add the plug-in, it tells you the command that it uses, which means you could manually run that command at a command line yourself, so that it maintains your session synchronization similarly. The plug-in just performs all of this for you, including terminating it at the end automatically. But there’s really no reason you couldn’t use this commandline tool yourself as it is built into windows. Maybe that is an option for you in the short term.
Thank you Chad, I think I must get into advanced sequence. Stop been lazy. At the end, came to simplify the capture session.
Greetings from BelloCielo - Chile.
Hi,. Thanks for the timely videos! I'm setting up a NUC, and would like to use a micro SD card for Remote Copy. It appears the read/write speed can be slot slower than the internal drive! I'm interested because the size and weight is "micro" compared to a 2.5" SSD or HDD.
Clear skies,
Paul
PS It also seems that deleting source files does not effect destination, yeah! I hope there will be a feature to have the source files purged automatically, as when the internal drive is small.
If you haven’t watched my first video in the mini PC series on performance that I released in the last week you may want to go watch that as it relates to the performance of drives and microSD cards. They are soooo slow… you can likely find an alternative depending on the system you are using. Even an external 3.2 USB SSD drive can have a relatively small footprint. As far as that plugin removing files from the source, unless he had something beyond robocopy to it, I doubt it will happen. Often people are too paranoid about automation handling deletion. They want to be the one with control of the delete key at the moment of truth. :-)
Thanks!
Wow! Thanks sooo much! :) It is truly appreciated! Let me know if you end up with any questions.
Will it send image file over wifi without internet access? For something like 5 minutes long subs, what should be the timings? Will it accept the destination folder on a different computer over WIFI?
As long as it’s reachable on your network any destination is fine. Wi-Fi without Internet is not a problem. The only timing that you can configure is the stop timer. If you’re doing five minute exposures, the default is fine. You will only need to move one file within that two minute stopping window. Remember, it wakes up every one minute to see if anything new is there. With a five minute exposure it will wake up four times with nothing to do, and on the fifth time only have to move a single image file.