As everyone probably knows by now, ASIAIR Beta v1.4 can join your home network.
Initially, I could not get it to work, and the tips here might help the next person who also has similar problems.
First, some background. I am using ASIAIR app on iOS (iPad pro) and the home network is a mesh network (eero) which has multiple routers sprinkled around the house.
In the past, I had been using a TP-Link WiFi travel router (TL-WR902AC) that is attached to a tripod leg, and supplied by 5V USB power, with the ASIAIR hardware a few inches away. The reason I used this particular router is that it covers both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz ("ac" class instead of "n" class WiFi) and it can be powered by 5V (I power it from a USB port on the RIGRunner 4004U -- my main 12 volt hub -- that is also on the leg of my tripod).
ASIAIR v1.4 apparently will only allow you to use 2.4 GHz when used in Station (STA) Mode. I don't know if it will allow 5 GHz in the future.
My home network also has an 11 character SSID name that has two spaces in the name (read on and you will see why this may be an issue).
When I tried to configure ASIAIR in STA mode to my network, it shows multiple devices, all broadcasting with the same 11 character SSID -- this is typical of mesh networks,
After selecting one of the nodes of the mesh, and giving ASIAIR my network password, the app spun the progress wheel for a while, and finally emitted an error message: "Connect Failed. Please retry."
Thinking that ASIAIR may be confused by the multiple nodes, I decided to reconfigure the TL-link as an extender. But this time, I configured it to extend my mesh network instead of extending the ASIAIR access point. I gave it a different SSID name from my home network SSID name, so that ASIAIR can find it easily. I also gave it a long name with spaces in the SSID.
When I checked by connecting the iPad to the extender, I could go out to the world wide web. However, ASIAIR still fails when it tried to use the extender as the WiFi STA node.
I finally changed the name of the extender to a short name "extend" that has no spaces. This time, I was successful with configuring ASIAIR to use STA mode. I can control my mount through ASIAIR in STA mode from anywhere in the house, with the iPad selecting the home network's SSID.
I came to the conclusion that the ASIAIR STA mode not to like one or more of these things - (1) mesh WiFi network, (2) network with long SSID, or (3) network whose SSID contain spaces. I don't know which of these three is the problem, but after I removed all three of the potential problems, I can now access ASIAIR v1.4 from my home network.
A couple of additional comments:
Before you decide to use STA mode to access ASIAIR from the home network, you might want to keep the following in mind. Your ISP might provision your cable modem without announcing it before hand. In my case, with Comcast in the west coast of the USA, they do somewhere around 1 am and 2 am, just when we are using the telescope :-). This may or may not affect your router (it may not affect a router that does not include an integrated cable modem).
In the case of the eero mesh network, eero also regularly updates the router firmware (once every month or two) with security patches, and also at about 2 am local time. The network will go off the air for a few minutes. So, it may still be preferable to keep using the ASIAIR as an access point (AP) instead of as station (STA) mode.
Further, ASIAIR may be too far from your home WiFi router (bear in mind that the ASIAIR Pro is in a metal enclosure, which won't help), so you may need a WiFi extender anyway as the portal for ASIAIR. Just because ASIAIR can now join the home network, you may still need a WiFi extender. It just depends on how far away your router is away from your telescope set up. STA does not mean that you can always get away from needing a WiFi extender.
Clear skies,
Chen
