RESOLUTION: to Fuji X-T200 Red Dot 5 second count down (I think 8-)
I was able to book some tech time with Fujifilm tech guys at https://fujifilm-x.com/en-ca/tech-time/.
It was a week and a half away until my next day off so I would try to find a way to consistently reproduce the problem. So I thought I would just turn the camera on and take a picture every 2 secs until the buffer filed up and then the RED DOT count down as it flushed to the SD card. So I turned on the camera, pressed the shutter button and on the first shot encountered the THE RED dot count down. Not what I expected, but totally consistent with the next 2 presses of the shutter button. Hmmm, oh forgot to remove lens cap. Newbee user problem? Absolutely.
The short story is this; the automatic features of Portrait, Shutter and Aperture generate a RED DOT count down while the camera is trying to find a picture in a black screen (lens cap on). I went on to do various tests with lighting that allowed me to vary the length of the count down from 2 seconds to about 30 seconds. I was using the camera in Portrait auto mode originally with a specialty lens that would not feed the camera the aperture or focus information, but the automatic shutter speed feature was a fantastic bonus. My lightning fast brain, not, took me to YouTube and the Fuji X-T200 manual to do some more research. Aperture mode gives only automatic shutter speed which was what I wanted and Manual mode turns off ALL automatic features, so never a Red Dot. While investigating on YouTube I found that you could add various sizes of Grid to your display, which greatly helps me in having a consistent setup. Also found that it had a build in Level feature (but not Pitch), again for consistent setup (thanks Pal2tech). I also found that with the correct charger connected to the USB port will allow me to run all day long with out having to change the battery and re-setup everything after a couple of hours.
Today I had the ZOOM meeting with the Francis at Fuji Tech Time. He confirmed everything I though I had figured out and big bonus We changed the configuration setting CAMERA>ISO>200 to CAMERA>ISO>AUTO1 with settings of DEFSENSE 200, MAXSENSE 6400 and MAXSHUTTER 1/4. So then when I use the Aperture setting (auto shutter time) any Red Dot is about a quarter of a second and i get Auto Shutter speed. Bottom line is I can speed up my event process almost double and “Red Dot countdown” is now a non-issue.
The Fuji tech support was way above expectation. Thanks Francis, you are awesome!
P.S. The best solution still is if I can find a signal of some sort, electrical (Hot Shoe?), relay contact, blue-tooth or wireless, that tells me the camera is ready to take a (or the next) picture. Then I can Just let the camera Clock the whole process. If anyone can point me to an USB or Bluetooth API, then I can write an APP.
Thank you for all your sugestions.