Incorrect Longitude Sync with AVX & GPS

j. taylor

Good Morning...

Glad to hear everyone's back to work at ZWO - ASI. Have purchased a ASI183MMC and taking delivery soon (purchased through High Point Scientific in NJ). Plan to soon add the ASIAir Pro to my inventory.

As you deal with that nasty virus, our prayers and thoughts are with all of you - please stay safe & healthy.

First, the ASIAir has been a wonderful technology, allowing me to connect my guide camera, focuser, EFW, and main imaging camera - everything works very well together. Plate solving works wonderfully, and the connection to SkySafari Pro works nicely for my image planning and to see how DSO will move during the session.

However, I've been using the ASIAir with an AVX mount with Celestron GPS unit connected to the mount, and have seen erroneous longitude information captured in the ASIAir software (using iPad) - have not seen any issues with the latitude.

I use the GPS to capture date, time and GPS coordinates (GPS is setup and on in the hand controller). All of this information shows up in the hand controller.

The ASIAir is connected to the hand controller USB port (bottom of the unit).

When on the Telescope (mount) tab, what I've found is that the longitude appears to be 180 degrees off - I'm located at 97W and strangely the ASIAir is reading the AVX information as 277W (180+97 = 277).

It's easy to miss the error when setting up (and the GoTo functionality fails) - I now check the mount information to confirm the Lat & Long prior to starting a session. Not sure if the plate solving is suppose to update the Lat & Long - but the plate solving information is synching to the mount. In the SkySafari app - I've got the right Lat & Long setup and when I use the GoTo function, the scope slews to the right location.

I don't sync the lat & long information from the iPad via ASIAir.

I've tried closing the ASIAir app and re-opening; tried shutting down the mount (powering off and disconnecting the USB); re-setting the GPS (turning it off and on); and then rebooting everything.

After randomly trying several different things - miraculously the longitude gets set to the right value. The issue is very intermittent. Seems to appear every 2-3 sessions. No obvious rhyme or reason for this erroneous information.

Is this a known bug?

What's surprising - I selected the the Sky Scan mount in the Telescope tab - the information was read correctly but when I went back to the AVX mount - the longitude was showing 277.

Welcome any suggestions - could be (likely) user error. Can reliably replicate the issue but certain have seen it on 5 different occasions.

Thanks - Jim

gundamrx91

Jim I had the same issues last night. I've got a iOptron GEM45 with a GPS module that was working but the ASI sir didn't recognise the position and I had to set manually the coordinates.

I think it's a recent problem because previously I haven't got an issues like that.

I hope ZWO check it really soon.

Giuseppe

PMTeam@ZWO

Hello guys, please update to the latest app version and have a try.

gundamrx91

So far, Google play doesn't find any update for ASIAir.

Giuseppe

j. taylor

Operating on 1.4. Will check for any updates. If on 1.4, will see how or if I can replicate the issue over the next few days, including any screen shots. Jim

w7ay

Version 1.4.1 (with firmware 4.66) has been released to iOS for a few days now.

Clear skies,

Chen

w7ay

By the way, I notice in your signature that you are running ASIAIR 1.4 with Firmware 3.37? That should not work. As far as I can tell, v1.4 app needs firmware 4.55.

Chen

j. taylor

I just checked and I'm on 4.55 - need to update signature. Doing some testing now. Jim

j. taylor

Confirmed that I'm on 1.4.1 and 4.66

Testing now - need to do an 1-star alignment (cloudy skies so I'm spoofing the mount that I've completed the alignment).

Jim

PMTeam@ZWO

J. Taylor wrote:

Confirmed that I'm on 1.4.1 and 4.66

Testing now - need to do an 1-star alignment (cloudy skies so I'm spoofing the mount that I've completed the alignment).

Jim

Okay, waiting for your results.

j. taylor

It's a Good Day

After making sure that I had the latest updates (soft & firmware), including the firmware for the AVX, did some live testing.

Tried unsucessfully to replicate the incorrect longitude error with AVX and Celestron GPS unit.

I did find something odd - the AVX (which has the Celestron GPS unit attached) would show the GPS was linking to the mount, then would show the correct GPS information in the hand controller, but this information was not displayed under the Mount/Telescope tab on the ASIair. However, if I closed the ASIAir, re-opened it, the information was displayed. Will do some more testing, to see if I can replicate the issue. I may need to give the AVX and GPS units a little more time to get synched up before I launch the ASIAir app.

I was able to shutdown (5 consecutive times), then restart, and get all of the GPS information synched across the mount, ASIAir, and SkySafari Pro. Each time I restarted, I gave the mount and GPS a good 3-5 minutes to get "linked" before attempting to connect with the ASIAir. In all 5 tests, all information displayed correctly. Did one quick test, shutdown, restarted, and then immediately tried to connect the ASIAir, and found the information wasn't displaying any information but connected. Gave it a couple of minutes, and when I toggled the "on/off" button in the Telescope/Mount tab, connected and displayed the right information. So, my only conclusion is that the GPS unit may be linked to the hand controller & mount, but the GPS unit's data is unstable or needs a few minutes to write the correct data to the hand controller/mount, and then is read correctly by ASIAir.

So, will be patient when launching the app until the GPS is synched up with mount.

Tonight, hoping to have some clear skies to figure out the Polar alignment - have been using successfully PoleMaster, but nows the time to figure out this great feature.

J. Taylor

PMTeam@ZWO

J. Taylor wrote:

It's a Good Day

After making sure that I had the latest updates (soft & firmware), including the firmware for the AVX, did some live testing.

Tried unsucessfully to replicate the incorrect longitude error with AVX and Celestron GPS unit.

I did find something odd - the AVX (which has the Celestron GPS unit attached) would show the GPS was linking to the mount, then would show the correct GPS information in the hand controller, but this information was not displayed under the Mount/Telescope tab on the ASIair. However, if I closed the ASIAir, re-opened it, the information was displayed. Will do some more testing, to see if I can replicate the issue. I may need to give the AVX and GPS units a little more time to get synched up before I launch the ASIAir app.

I was able to shutdown (5 consecutive times), then restart, and get all of the GPS information synched across the mount, ASIAir, and SkySafari Pro. Each time I restarted, I gave the mount and GPS a good 3-5 minutes to get "linked" before attempting to connect with the ASIAir. In all 5 tests, all information displayed correctly. Did one quick test, shutdown, restarted, and then immediately tried to connect the ASIAir, and found the information wasn't displaying any information but connected. Gave it a couple of minutes, and when I toggled the "on/off" button in the Telescope/Mount tab, connected and displayed the right information. So, my only conclusion is that the GPS unit may be linked to the hand controller & mount, but the GPS unit's data is unstable or needs a few minutes to write the correct data to the hand controller/mount, and then is read correctly by ASIAir.

So, will be patient when launching the app until the GPS is synched up with mount.

Tonight, hoping to have some clear skies to figure out the Polar alignment - have been using successfully PoleMaster, but nows the time to figure out this great feature.

J. Taylor

Hey J. Taylor, thank you so much on this testing. I will cc to another user to check your routine again. Hope to get the same results.

gundamrx91

Yesterday I tryed the last version of the app and updated the ASI Air firmware with success. The GPS issue has gone away :

It seems ok now ;)

Thanks

Giuseppe

PMTeam@ZWO

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