ASIAIR Plus just launched! : Page 2

ASIAIR Plus just launched!

Byrdsfan1948

marcdota If I might add my 2 cents here............... I agree that the ASIair PRO's wifi problem has a variety of work arounds. I settled on using an Ethernet cable to hard wire the Pro to my home extender.
Having said that this wifi problem has existed from day one with the PRO......... So essentially, even if we customers have found solutions, we still never got from ZWO all that we paid for with that product in the first place. Instead of a functional wifi feature, we got a non functioning one. Unless one considers a range of just a few feet functional. Keep in mind the wifi feature is a major selling point for this product.
Essentially except for offering to it's customers the Vonets extender AT AN ADDITIONAL COST, ZWO left it up to it's customers to resolve the wifi problem they themselves created in that product.
IMHO ZWO should be very grateful to all of it's loyal customers who were willing to overlook this problem and solve it themselves because they do appreciate just how good a product the PRO otherwise is.
Having said that, this new product the PLUS, does contain what hopefully is a solution to the PRO's wifi problem. Unfortunately just a couple months ago unaware that ZWO was about to announce the PLUS, I purchased a second PRO as a back up. Obviously had I known, or even had a hint that a product with a proper solution to the PRO's wifi problem was right around the corner, I would have waited and ordered the PLUS. Now I have 2 PRO's with the wifi problem. I am certainly NOT going purchase a PLUS as my 3rd one now for $299.
I would hope that ZWO gives some serious consideration to the fact that it would be good business to offer it's PRO customers, in particular those of us who can show we recently purchased one, at least some discounted price towards a PLUS.
Of course there are many other possible ideas this way that ZWO could explore for us....... Hopefully they will do something.
As I said just my 2 cents. Al

Kring

Keep in mind you simply sell the Pro and buy the Plus, and that would probably work out around the same of whatever reasonable discount you may be thinking of. e.g. will cost you $100 to move to new model.

Byrdsfan1948

Kring Of course what you suggest is a possibility, but then why should any of us be so quick to let ZWO completely off the hook here? Don't you believe that they have at least SOME obligation to their loyal customers to help mitigate some part of the wifi problem they themselves created in the Pro? Would you be so quick to accept a non functioning feature in your new car, or TV, or any other consumer product ? Wouldn't you expect that whoever sold you that product had some, if not full responsibility, to resolve that problem at their expense,, and not your additional expense to only get what you paid for in the first place?
To be clear I very much love my ASIair Pro, even with it's virtually non functioning wifi feature. It is otherwise an outstanding product. However that really shouldn't allow us to give ZWO a completely free pass on this issue. Why should they accept that their loyal customers simply take an additional hit on a recently purchased Pro to move up to a Plus as you seem to be suggesting?
Personally I have no intention to sell my very recently purchased backup Pro for anything less than I just paid for it just so I can upgrade to the Plus. My newly purchased back up Pro is even still in the box unopened. If ZWO is content to conclude that it has no responsibility to mitigate for it's customers who recently purchased a Pro, at least some sort of discount, to at least reduce for them the cost to purchase yet an additional ASIair Plus, I'll simply accept the fact that ZWO has made a very unfortunate business decision that ZWO finds acceptable, but I do not.
I will of course live with that decision, because I do so much love my ASIair and other ZWO products But for certain that same decision will weigh very heavily when I give consideration to any future ZWO purchases.
A year or so ago with all the guiding problems we were dealing with with the 1.5 or so FW upgrade I came very close to just tossing my Pro and going back to doing things the way it was done before the ASIAir. Thankfully it seems ZWO has finally resolved those issues. I will be watching very closely to see how they decided to resolve this one. Certainly just how they do will decide just how much more I am willing to invest in them
Again just my personal 2 cents, which it also seems is not shared, by everybody.
Al

Juanchys

We should expect higher fps while taking videos? with the current pro, I only got 10% of the camera capacity.

Kring

I've never heard of any company giving you a free new model because you made a conscious decision to purchase the previous model.... ever. It's an unreasonable ask and expectation.

would it be nice if they gave you free stuff.. sure who doesn't love free stuff.. but every company would be out of business if they gave free upgrades to every customer who ever bought anything.

Enjoy your AAPro or make a second conscious decision to upgrade to Plus and pay the cost like the rest of humanity.

Not trying to knock you personally, there's a lot of people that feel entitled to free stuff but if you worked hard and invested to produce something, then reinvested profits and worked even hard to improve your cool idea... you'd be OK giving it away for free? you'd be out of business in a week and feel crappy too.

darkmatter

Kring But what if the performance of the previous product is not as described due to engineering errors? Putting the wifi antenna inside a Faraday cage is just bad design and we all know what the resulting wifi range is like. I regularly lose connection while I'm within 3m / 10ft of the Asiair.

Jarno

Byrdsfan1948

Kring

I don't know where you could possibly have gotten the idea that I am asking for anything for FREE. Perhaps you might more carefully reread both my posts to get a more accurate understanding than it appears you currently have, of what I am actually suggesting.

But just to be very clear, I am NOT suggesting that ZWO give me or anyone else a Free new PLUS. To be even clearer, if I were at this point to give serious thought to purchasing a PLUS even though I just very recently purchased my 2nd PRO, I would certainly expect, " LIKE THE REST OF HUMANITY", to pay for it.

I don't know how I can make my thoughts and what I am trying to point out in my above posts on this matter any clearer. I guess it comes down to how one feels about paying for something but not really getting what you paid for. In this case without further owner trouble and expense, an essentially non functional , PRO wifi feature. IMHO in light of the announcement of the PLUS which finally deals with that problem, a feature we all already paid for, but really didn't get in the PRO, I believe that a very reasonable consideration would be for ZWO to at least consider offering current PRO owners some modest discount towards the purchase of a new PLUS. I am NOT looking for anything for FREE.

Again I realize that you and others may not agree, but I'm simply voicing my opinion

wvreeven

darkmatter It's not just due to a Faraday-cage. Raspberry Pi's are known to have poor WIFI signals, no matter what case is used.

w7ay

wvreeven It's not just due to a Faraday-cage.

Take a look at my measurements here to see what the ASIAIR v2 metal enclosure did to the Raspberry Pi 4 signal:

https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/10846-asiair-and-asiair-pro-wifi-signals

I had posted that soon after I bought the ASIAIR, as a warning to people not to expect ASIAIR WiFI to actually work. And not to exacerbate the problem by mounting the ASIAIR on the OTA.

Half of the problem is caused by the ASIAIR transmitter being weak, but by what is called the Reciprocity Theorem in antenna theory, the AIAIR WiFi receiver can barely hear your tablet also.

The problem, as with everything related to detection theory, is ultimately caused by poor signal to noise ratio. Lowering the signal of course causes a problem, as does raising the noise (other devices, like neighbors' WiFi, Microwave oven, etc that uses the ISM bands). It might even work fine if you are out on a mountain top or, or in the middle large field, with no other ISM devices in sight.

Chen

aruckle

While the external antenna is a welcome improvement for the ASIair Plus, I am interested to know if the ASIair Plus has more output 12v DC power available to accommodate the current needed to operate the Cooling unit in the Higher End ASI cameras? ( ASI 2600, ASI 2400, ASI 6200, ASI 533 ) Both the ASIair v1 and ASIair Pro have warnings abut being the 12v DC source for those cameras. Is this a wait and see answer or has there been any info released concerning this issue?

aruckle

w7ay I am curious to know if you maintained the ability of your M1 mac to continue to run the ASIair app or if you decided to update the operating system which blocks the ASIair iPad App from running on the M1 mac?

aruckle

w7ay

aruckle I am curious to know if you maintained the ability of your M1 mac to continue to run the ASIair app or if you decided to update the operating system which blocks the ASIair iPad App from running on the M1 mac?

I have no interest in using the ASIAIR app with the mouse and keyboard paradigm. The app is written to use the touch interface. Even if ASIAIR runs on macOS, I would still use the iPad.

By the way, I am running ASIAIR on the Apple M1 silicon, but it is the M1 that is in the 12.9" iPad Pro.

For what its worth, I just checked, and the ASIAIR v1.7 ipk that was released today still does not have permission to run on macOS. We should see yet another round of hand wringing posts :-).

Chen

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