It would be nice to be able to set how wide the autofocus graph is. My telescope is very fast, so the focus range is tight. There is no reason to search more than a 300 steps away from start. Right now it wants to search 1000 steps away, which is beyond the range of my focuser. Please make it so we can choose the autofocus range.
"Manual" control of Autofocus
c131frdave
You can reduce the steps in the EAF Settings - Autofocus.
I reduced them to the limit- 10- and it still had too wide a range. If you could customize the range it could be helpful.
- Edited
c131frdave I reduced them to the limit- 10- and it still had too wide a range.
Which EAF step size were you setting?
For manual focusing, the step size is in the main EAF Settings window, but for autofocusing, the ASIAIR uses the step size that is in the Auto Focus Settings under the "Auto Focus" selection in the main Focuser Setting window.
If it were me, I would have implemented a tabbed GUI for "Parameters," one tab for manual, and one tab for Auto Focus, to make it clear that different settings are used in the two cases.
If you are already doing that, and the initial starting point is too far for you, try turning on the Reverse switch.
I have found that a good step size is about 0.2 to 0.5 of the critical focus zone of the OTA. Smaller than that, and ASIAIR will miss the minima because it aborts too early on the second pass with a noisy reading, and too large a step size will make the minima less accurate. I have no idea why ASIAR wants to do two passes, when the minima from the curve match of the first pass is precisely what you want to use.
Chen
Yes, I know that. For manual focusing, I have fine set to 2. Coarse set to 20. For autofocus I have it set to the minimum value available- 10.
What I did was remove my rotator so there is more room between fully retracted and the focus point and it worked perfectly. With steps set to 10, it started the graph with a FWHM of about 11 and then worked it's way down to focus, which is 2.2. Using manual slow step of 2, I couldn't beat that, so I'm pretty happy with it.
- Edited
c131frdave What I did was remove my rotator so there is more room between fully retracted and the focus point and it worked perfectly.
If so, perhaps using the reverse switch that I mentioned earlier, might work. ASIAIR will start from the other end where you have more room.
Chen
It didn't work because it still travels too far on the other side. No matter, I have the solution. Thanks though.