EAF Max Steps: Page 2 - ZWO User Forum

EAF Max Steps

enaiman

rac You missed the need to run the latest Beta version.

w7ay

rac I tested the 3.3.7 driver with the very latest ASIStudio

It does not appear to be supported yet with ASIStudio (at least, not with ASICap v2.8).

It might only be available for now on ASIAIR v2.1 and later.

Chen

rac

The message does say ASI Studio 1.8 OR ASIAir 2.1 beta. I will try the latter when I get a chance.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I don't have the hardware platform to test ASIAir.

w7ay

rac The message does say ASI Studio 1.8

Yeah, that is why I menation that I am running ASICap v2.8 -- that is the latest copy I have for macOS).

I can however set EAF to larger than 60000 on ASIAIR v2.1 Beta (Build 26, Firmware 10.74); note "Current Position" and "Limit":

BTW, that Coarse icon is still bogus and misleading. The EAF does not slew faster. It simply slews with a longer step each time.

Chen

rac

87,564 steps, fantastic. What a welcome sight!!!

I guess that Course doesn't actually mean fast although the icon shows a running person. The only time that I see a faster speed is when using the hand controller, when has slow and fast speeds. It would be logical to request slow and fast speeds from software, now that the larger numeric range is available. Meanwhile, the hand control may by a good option for longer transits.

Tech@ZWO

Released ASIStudio V1.8.1. https://www.zwoastro.com/downloads/asistudio
It can set the EAF max steps to 600000 in it if you upgrade the EAF firmware to V3.3.7.

w7ay

Tech@ZWO It can set the EAF max steps to 600000 in it if

Has ZWO tested to see how long (time) it takes to move the 5V EAF by 600000 steps?

Chen

tjey

Any update on when the new SDK will be released?

rac

SDK V1.6 has just been made available.

tjey

Will the existing EAF ASCOM driver work with the new SDK? If so, are there instructions to get it work?

rac

The instruction from tech@zwo, see earlier post, is quoted below. I am not quite sure what it means.

We released the EAF firmware V3.3.7, and ASIStudio v1.8 to support the 600000 steps.
The newest EAF SDK will be released tomorrow, you can replace the sdk file in the ASCOM installation folder or NINA installation folder to set 600000 steps.

Tech@ZWO

rac Norton anti-virus keeps deleting the installer fir ASIStudio V1.8.1. I assuming that something needs to be done with the download package to prevent this.

Sorry for that, i forwarded to our team to handle this.

rac About how to replace the EAF sdk file, here is a picture for your reference.
Refer to the picture to change the EAF SDK file name, then replace the file with the same name in the ASCOM/ZWO folder.

rac

Norton anti-virus keeps deleting the installer fir ASIStudio V1.8.1. I assuming that something needs to be done with the download package to prevent this.

rac

I disabled Norton, downloaded and installed ASIStudio 1.8.1. In conjunction with firmware 3.3.7, ASIStudio allows MaxSteps to be set to 600,000 and the step number to go beyond 65,536. It set it to 70,000 and the focuser moved to that position. The only issue I could was that in Sharpcap and Firecapture a lower number (70,000-65,536=4,464) was displayed. When I used ASIStudio back to the original position (5,164), the number in Firecapture agreed with ASIStudio once again when the position moved below 65,536. I downloaded EAF SDK but couldn't tell which "SDK" file to copy or where to copy it. See images attached.

tjey

yes, I think the ASCOM driver (used by Sharpcap & Firecap, but I don't think ASI Studio uses it) is using the old SDK, which looks like it wraps around at 65535 steps.

The instructions earlier aren't clear, as my installation of the ASCOM driver doesn't seem to have the files in the SDK

I haven't yet tried replacing the EAF_Focuser_ASCOM.dll and EAF_Focuser_ASCOM_x64.dll with the EAF_focuser.dll from the Win32 and Win64 directories in the SDK, but I think that might be what is being suggested.

I won't get to try this until this evening or tomorrow though.

tjey

I got a bit more time than I though, and tried copying the files from the SDK to my ASCOM installation as follows:

copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM.dll" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM.dll.bkp"
copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM_x64.dll" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM_x64.dll.bkp"

copy "EAF SDK\lib\Win64\EAF_focuser.dll" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM_x64.dll"
copy "EAF SDK\lib\Win32\EAF_focuser.dll" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\ZWO\EAF_focuser_ASCOM.dll"

and then I was able to set the MaxStep to 600000, and move the focuser to position 70000.

rac

Thanks, eventually I suspended Norton and downloaded the SDK. it was actually downloading but Norton deleted the EAF_Focuser.dll files before I could see them. It seems that something needs to be done so that Norton doesn't see these files as a threat when downloading them.

If I had seen these files, I think that I would have been able to figure it out from there. Will an updated EAF ASCOM installer do this automatically?

I now have 0 to 600,000 steps working. Thanks to ZWO Design for fixing this problem. The EAF is now much more suitable to use on SCTs. I have set my current position to be 300,000 so that I should never reach end of mirror travel in either direction. Others have found the minimum travel limit and set that to zero.

Tech@ZWO

rac ASCOM driver V6.5.14 does not support it yet. we will release the new version asap.

In addition, do you use Norton browser extensions or the Norton program? If it is the former, what browser do you use?

rac

It was the Norton program. Download was actually OK, the dlls were deleted as son as I unzipped tte downloaded fike.

c-sanders1

I just upgraded to the ZWO EAF Firmware 3.3.8 and I still cannot go beyond 60,000 steps. What am I missing some other software update?

Tech@ZWO

c-sanders1 Need to set the max steps in the advance settings to 600000 first.

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