Hello Chen, Ahh Patents! for a long time we viewed Patents as a double edged sword. A lot of in house engineering innovation was necessary to create the kinds of high speed automation capabilities necessary to produce our products to the extreme quality requirements we demanded. In the final analysis we viewed a lot of that as very valuable trade secrets. In many cases we had to take off the shelve equipment and re engineer it well beyond the capabilities of the original mechanism or sensor. We often had to re imagining how to use something that was designed to do a certain function, to be able to do something very different Think of it like re engineering my Ioptron CEM25ec and in the process give it the abilities of an 10 Micron Mount while outwardly nothing has changed.
So thus comes the Patent conundrum. Since you hold so many yourself I am sure you know exactly what I am speaking about. We did tend to more often patent certain things about our products more than or manufacturing processes. Essentially because reverse engineering a product is pretty straight forward and thus finding ways to circumvent patents easier than figuring out the secrets involved in putting together millions of our product each day with zero defect with nothing to hold in your hand or a patent you could read to find out. But if we could at least write the patents broadly enough and still get that patent issued it was worth doing.
I could tour you through one of our facilities to show you how we accomplished the almost impossible, as well as point out countless amazing trade secrets but then I would have to kill you as a result. Since we wouldn't want to deprive these forums of your amazing expertise I suggest for the sake of science we dismiss the tour idea :-)))))))
BTW I learned this lesson the hard way as a young engineer very early in my career. I was showing a vendor through one of our manufacturing areas and proudly showed off to him how I had designed an addition to his product that gave it a completely new function they never considered....... Shortly after they introduced an entirely new product completely based on my unpatented design. To this day that one hurts!!! But it was a great lesson at an early age.

Anyway, back to the PA issue I believe once again you will be proven correct. By not using the auto refresh during PA both the accuracy as well as time involved to PA will be improved. I suppose another simple improvement ZWO could add would be the ability to set some N number as you mention to refresh to. But they have enough to already work on just getting a few other things right and there already exists a very effective solution :-))

BTW This morning I was able to upload the FW update for my 120mini guide camera but sadly a look out the window right now is not looking at all encouraging for tonight. It was supposed to be partly cloudy. But right now that is not the case. Last forecast still says it will be, so I have my fingers crossed Al

Certainly not butting in here at all Ron. I saw someplace else recently the same question you are asking here. The response from ZWO was to use the img file. Which is what I did yesterday. I'll see if I can find that response and if I do, I'll try to post it here.

Just wondering what if any issues are you having with your 120mm mini? I'm just wondering if you are having any, if they match mine? I've watched my guide star just disappear, ( in perfect seeing conditions ) the image screen break up, the star being lost etc. An assortment of issues that once they start, often times making guiding totally impossible.
Lastly I want to make clear I am no computer expert so while I'm am fairly certain I did this update correctly I can't say with certainty that I have. I probably won't know until I get a chance to test it, the next even somewhat clear night. Which here in New England does not look like any time soon.

To do the update all I did was to connect my 120mm mini via it's USB cable to my windows computer. I opened the USB3 folder mention and the camera was immediately recognized. When I hit update ( or whatever that button is ) it appeared that the update only took a second or two. I then got a message that it had been successfully installed. BUT as I said until I can test it I won't be 100% sure. Nor of course will I have any idea if it even helps with my above mentioned problems.
I was able this morning quickly able to at point 120mm mini and guide scope out the window at some stars and confirm that it still works after this update. So at least I know at this point I didn't break it :-)) Good Luck!! Al

"However, perhaps you can check your USB drive (Udisk on the ASIAIR Samba server) or the microSD disk (Disk on Samba) for old logs and squirrel them away, and note the date and time you had applied to update so there is something to compare in the future."

Hello Chen, I would be very happy to try that if you wouldn't mind telling me how???? :-))) You are asking me to do something currently beyond my computer skill levels........... :-)) Al

Thanks Chen, I give this a try but no guarantees :-) Al

Hello Chen it's been a few cloudy nights here, until a few hours of clearer skies early last night, and this morning. Hopefully maybe a couple of hours tonight as well before our next storm rolls in.
I didn't want to risk anything after I did the ASI120mm mini FW upgrade so I have not tried your PHD2 log suggestion above here. I wanted to be sure I would not put myself out of business before I tried out that upgrade. Well now I have a few hours of experience after that upgrade to report on.

The bottom line so far is....... Still very unstable and very problematic guiding. So here are a few details. First of all I used my Iphone 12 to do my PA with and got to under 0.30 Arc Secs fairly quickly. What is interesting is that once I hit finished, I got that fireworks display. I never had gotten that before on my Samsung tablet. Not that I am enamored by that display, but I do find it worth mentioning that for whatever reason it does not happen on my Samsung tablet. Also another very minor difference. When finishing the auto centering after slewing to an object, my tablet says "Finished", my IPhone says "Confirmed". Perhaps why the difference makes some sense to you?

As far as the guiding. At first it was a total mess. Actually I was not even able to do a calibration. At times it seemed that the camera just stopped taking pictures and would just do totally black. I had instances of Star Lost as well as what appears to be the mount slewing looking for a star. Sometimes it would re find the star and resume guiding other time not. Eventually things seemed to settled down and I was able to star guiding but I'm unsure if the calibration sequence was every totally completed. Once guiding I started my auto sequence. Since I was just testing, I set up a simple sequence of 40, 60 sec subs on M-13. I dithered every other sub. What I soon learned was the dithering really screwed up the guiding until the point where eventually I had to stop it. The subs looked OK but the total error was all over the place. I'm assuming that the frequent dithering probably resulted in guiding number that are not reflective of the actually guiding tightness. After about 20 subs I paused the Autorun, and stopped the dithering, I resumed the Autorun and for the next 19 subs had guiding results often under 0.65 error. I had also increased my camera gain to 50. During the 20th sub the guiding just stopped again.
I also noticed that when I tried to slew to M-81 my tablet said it was below the horizon. But in fact it was very high in the sky. On the Go To page it did appear to show as to be below the horizon. Which was wrong! I decided to restart my tablet and it showed properly and I was then able to slew to it. Something is very weird there.
With all the issues I'm mentioning here do you think it might be a reasonable idea for me to delete the ASIair APP and then reload it? Or do you think perhaps my ASIair OS might be corrupted? I did make a back up when I got my ASIair new and I do know it was done properly. Should I give those ideas a try? Al

Hi Chen I've missed our daily exchanges. Good to hear from you... I've reached the same conclusion. There is a fundamental flaw here that is not being addressed, or at best, not being properly resolved. YES!! First of all I did spend a fair amount of time last night dialing back in my guide camera focus because I had, had, to remover it to to the FW update. I also made changes to my gain last night as you suggest. For exactly the reasons you suggest.

Yeah thin high clouds. That right now looks like that maybe my issue tonight if I even get a few hours to experiment. There has to be a bug, or two, or three, here !!! I was getting better MUCH BETTER guiding with exactly the same equipment when I first started using guiding back in FW 1.5 than I am now 4 months latter.

I don't know what the problem at ZWO maybe, but clearly they seem to be very unconcerned about this obvious problem. I just finished watching a video on You Tube about setting up the old fashioned Windows lap top control platform including PHD2. I am one more bad night of guiding problems away from pulling the trigger. Honestly if I was the SVP at ZWO I'd fired everyone, and hire YOU!!!! Al

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKX-NVrl_U0

Hey Chen BTW I just finished this old Byrds tune in my studio with one of my recording buddies. I know the photos are pretty bad but hopefully not the music. I thought I would have some fun combining my two hobbies Al

Chen here is my E-mail Tetonman50@aol.com Let's continue this conversation there if you wish Al

Chen, WOW sorry to hear about that power outage. Same story in Texas I guess. HAHA yes I know about the frustrations of trying to type, using the screen of a tablet, or Iphone as your keyboard !!

Anyway I'll post my experience of last night here for you to consider, and I'll wait to hear back when your better able to respond.

We had a few hours of reasonably clear sky last night before the clouds ahead of today's latest snow storm ended the night. It was certainly a night of very contrasting guiding experiences. I again used my Iphone to do my PA and quickly got to 30 arc seconds, and the simile face and the fireworks display. I again only mention that as a very obvious difference to my Samsung Galaxy 10 Tablet where I have never gotten that display even when my PA was far better.

Once I was PA'd and done a sync to mount, I switched back to my tablet, because of the much bigger screen size. I slewed to M-42 simply because it is currently perfectly located from where I can locate my scope due to the snow. The mount found it, and centered it perfectly. I then set up a test Autorun sequence. Last step was to calibrate a guide star then hopefully start guiding and imaging. I was able to calibrate and get the sequence started but then immediately ran into the same guiding problems as I have been having. Lost star, huge swings in RA and DEC, etc. A total mess. I tried tweaking ( lowering ) the aggressiveness setting which were both set to 55. I ended up with the DEC at 40 and the RA at 35. But still that made no difference. Essentially I was unable to guide. So I shut down the Samsung and tried switching to my Iphone.

BINGO! Immediately there was a HUGE difference. I was able to start the guiding, and it stayed reasonably stable. I then added a dither every 5 shots and started another Autorun sequence. I was able to run two sequences targeting different objects in different parts of the sky. The bottom line was that the total guiding error stayed mostly between 1.00" and 2.00" . It would vary up to around 4" after a dither, but then fairly quickly settle back down to the 1" - 2" range within 30 seconds or so. It often was slightly below 1.00 as well.............. Now I know that for you, these are not great guiding numbers. But for me, with all the problems I've been having they are outstanding. My RA fluctuations were typically very tight around the 0 line of the graph with most of the error coming from the DEC adjustments. Lastly I even set up a third short sequence that required a Meridian Flip. Everything went perfectly. After the flip the ASIair found a new guide star, I believe re calibrated, and in a few minutes started guiding and then continuing with the imaging.

OK so what's the difference? The only thing I changed here was moving from my Samsung Tablet to my IPhone12. I know your going to say that should not make any difference, but I am seeing a huge difference, and now for the second time!! The fact the the Tablet does not show the Fireworks PA display which initially to me was only worth a comment, is now is suggesting to me that there clearly is some difference here. I checked to make sure both the tablet and Iphone show the same FW and they do, 1.5.3............ It seems that the upgrade to the ASI120mm mini FW I did a few days ago at least has not put me out of business. However I am not at all sure if it has helped at all however.

OK so does any of this make any sense to you? My thought is to uninstall the ASIair app on my Tablet and then re install it. But I am just shooting in the dark.......... Since the next few days will be snow filled I won't get another imaging chance until the week end, so I will wait to hear from you before I do anything else Good luck with your weather related issues out your way And of course good luck to our latest Mars Rover as if goes through it's 7 minutes of terror about 3:45 PM my time today Al

Chen I did not see anything from you in my spam folder. But I did send you an e-mail as you suggested above here. Let me know if you got it. Al PS no worry, no typos!!! I'm the king of typos!!!