Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Wed, 06/21/2017 - 20:34
You can go through the motions of uploading files, but they never get into the processing queue or in your list of images. Also, the upload counter never changes beyond 0/n no matter how many files you try to upload.
I am having the same issues with the VPhot uploader today. About 30% of the files I upload are visible within the images tab.
Me also can't upload images today.
Edit: Now it's back to work.
I cannot select more than one image to upload at a time. I tried both Chrome and Edge. Some of them did upload, but others did not.
Ed
It is interesting that a few members have had upload problems recently while about ten members continue to upload a total of 1000-2000 images every day over the past week.
We are looking into it but it may be more of an internet issue than VPhot??
Ken
Ken: I wondered the same thing, sometimes this is a browser or Internet issue. I will continue to work on the problem from my end. It would be interesting to contact the members who are successful and find out what platform and what version they are using for their browser that leads to multi-image downloads.
Ed
Ed,
I have been watching these messages, but I have not had any problems. In am running Win7 with Chrome browser. My internet connection is via Comcast broadband. I have not seen an issue with getting images into VPhot in the last few weeks.
I have no idea if it is related, but I have noticed the topic in another forum discuss problems with plate solving at astrometry.net at roughly the same time this topic has been active. If VPhot uses this service, it might be related. For what it is worth, the images I have uploaded to VPhot have been plate solved prior to upload.
I do occassionaly see the issue with VPhot quick upload where I cannot select multiple files. I think this is always when I am at my observatory site where my internet connection goes up to a satelite and back down to earth. This is infrequent and I generally am just trying to get an image or two uploaded to check quality while observing.
I hope you figure this one out. I know it can be frustrating,
Cliff
I can upload upload a hundred here and there with the wizard.
It would be interesting to hear about the 10 folks who can handle the work for 1000 to 2000 per day. How the heck do they manage that? Could the rest of us learn something about production and operations?
Ray
Hi Ray,
I'm not in that 'top 10' group that does over 1000 per day but I do quite a few per day so I thought I'd share. I think I could do over 1000 per day if the target was fairly bright and I did nothing else the whole night but in my experience its pretty tough with typical amateur gear. I'll guess that the people doing over 1000/day are running multiple systems. I'm aware of one person who runs several systems although I know he doesn't use Vphot for processing.
Anyway, here's what I do. A typical night is about 300-700 images depending on whats being worked and the time of year. The bulk of the images are time series of the same target but there are also targets from a monitoring list, SN followups and various other items mixed in during the night.
Aquisition is controlled by ACP Expert (scheduler) which is what makes this possible. It is very good at utilizing every last minute of a night. I've spent quite a bit of time learning how to maximize cadence and efficiency using this tool. It also automates calibration frame acquistion.
Calibration is done with CCDstack since it is able to automatically match the correct dark and flat frames based on the FITS header. It allows calibration of an entire night in one go. ACP is able to calibrate images as they are acquired but it slows down cadence so I don't use that feature.
At the moment I use Vphot to do the photometry. I'm considering moving to LesvePhotometry since it can be given a set of files for different targets and will locate the correct sequence for each so the entire night could be processed in one go. This would speed things up considerably compared to using Vphot. An added benefit is that it can also apply the correct transforms at the same time.
It typically takes me 1-2 hours per day to do the data processing. A good percentage of that time is just waiting for processing and uploads to complete. Target maintenance from night to night is pretty minimal since I normally stick to a time series target for several nights. SN followups are automatic and take no manual intervention. I'm looking into the possibilities for automating monitoring target selection using the new Target Tool since I'm told a programatic interface is in the works.
While uploading is working its extremely slow today. I don't think its the internet anywhere near this end as other things move right along as usual.
This afternoon, VPhot repeatedly refused to upload 2 FITS when Server Load was "None." Whereas, this morning, 14 FITS uploaded fine when Server Load was "Heavy."
I was eventually able to upload the 2 FITS, one at a time only, using "Simple" mode. But something does seem broken with VPhot Upload.
My info to address posts above: Internet 65 Mbit/sec, fully updated Firefox. All FITS were platesolved by PinPoint and calibrated with MaxIm (about as standard as things get.) All other AAVSO and other web functions are just fine.
I'm getting behavior similar to yesterday - the quick upload appears to send the first frame and then it hangs. Yesterday this condition persisted for a couple hours before it started working normally again.
I'm using chrome for the upload running under windows 7 ultimate 64-bit.
Until yesterday I've never experienced this problem. Was there a recent change?
My uploads worked this morning, but VPhot's Processing Queue has serious problems:
I'm at a loss to understand what's going on with VPhot...
All:
George Silvis will try to reboot system to try to resolve the slow/stuck queue.
Ken
Eric:
Yes, the queue order of processing is 'not' the order shown in list but first in first out. We will change the wording at some point.
Ken
All:
George Silvis tried to reboot remotely. It is apparent that the connections to the VPhot Server on the Amazon Web Services are not working properly. We are asking the AAVSO IT support person for help.
This may explain at least part of the recent problems??
Will keep you posted.
Ken
Ken: got it--thanks! (and thanks, George)
If the list can be sorted by priority (i.e., by time, it seems), that would be useful to estimate when our own will be done. But I understand that simply rewording the web page is much faster to implement, at least to start.
I did my data reduction of an exoplanet time series off-line with Canopus after recognizing that the queue wasn't moving. There's a set of more than 200 images that begin with " 20170630__R_." These have become a lower priority to reduce using VPhot for me. If it helps speed things up for others who are behind me, feel free to delete my files from the queue when it gets back up and running, provided that is possible to do.
Was able to access the server. It indicated that it had recovered from a BSD event (Blue Screen of Death)
Back up and running. Queue is 1000 files.
George
The queue is clearing nicely, down to 546 already. Thanks, George!