EAF randomly changes temperature to 16 degs
w7ay erossi @SamoL
Hi Chen, SamoL and erossi,
Our devs made a temporary guide for Linux and Mac users to update the EAF firmware before the formal tool release.
I attach the tool and FW for your reference, you may try it first.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16wk5sSxh2nC5NUGO-7Mx_IS8RgkBLpXM/view?usp=sharing
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@tech@zwo#57425 Our devs made a temporary guide for Linux and Mac users to update the EAF firmware before the formal tool release.
I attach the tool and FW for your reference, you may try it first.
You need to change access permission for that file. My gmail account cannot access said file.
Also, not everybody trust Google either.
Please create a web site with a trusted server, instead of mooching off free servers. They are only "free" because they make money through ad tracking.
Chen
@tech@zwo#57425 Great news, thank you for the quick tool development, will test it ASAP, though as @w7ay said, we do not have access to that file.
w7ay I guess they want to temporarly prevent an average user from using a prerelase potentially device bricking tool.
w7ay I've managed to take a look at the firmware updater, quite a lot of Windows kernel HID calls, we might be lucky. Anyway, let's see if the new tool is going to work.
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erossi Anyway, let's see if the new tool is going to work.
At this point, I will let the other people be guinea pigs, and will apply the updater when they finally release it.
They can't expect us to help them test something, when they are placing road blocks along the way. It is not as if they are doing us a favor (although that seems to be their attitude). They don't appear to realize that they are asking us to do them a favor by being alpha testers.
As it is, this bug has been there (and reported) since the 12V EAF days. And they had never bothered to investigate it for years until a customer measured the behavior carefully and described the bug. And now they post a file to the Google drive (of all places) that nobody can read. Why are they expecting us to do their homework??
ZWO knows my email address for crying out loud (just this past week, I received email from one of their software team asking for some help related to spherical geometry -- it is not as if they have lost my email address).
If they had wanted me to help with the EAF bug, they could at least have the courtesy to email the firmware update package directly to me; or even better, the Xcode project for it since they know that I still write Cocoa applications in my retirement.
By the way, with just using ∆T readings, it looks like I can stretch the frequency of needing to do a full V-curve from every 0.5ºC to every 2ºC. But, I need to establish my own V curve, since the ASIAIR auto focus algorithm stops just as it enters the CFZ (often times even before it has reached inside the CFZ) and if the EAF movement is not reversed correctly, it gives you zero ∆T tolerance to maintain focus, or never be in real focus at any temperature.
Chen
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w7ay You're absolutely right about the whole homework thing. This is unacceptable, @tech@zwo it's been two days and we still do not have any kind of access to the tool you've supposedly released. We're doing you a favour by testing it before an actual release, please be cooperative as we're willing to possibly brick one of our EAFs for "science" without asking anything back except a fix for a bug that has affected your device since day zero.
@w7ay as a side note, I'd like to thank you for everything you've been doing for the community here. Thank you so much. Had a chance to read up a bit of your background while checking other threads here and being a programmer myself I must say I am massively impressed. Congrats!
Another important topic that should be discussed is the absence of any recovery image for the ASIAIR Plus. I know there's a self healing script, but that does only reinstall and reconfigure the 8.83 deb packages for ZWO drivers, INDI, etc. There's no real recovery if something else breaks, i.e. the initrd image. Apart from the shady marketing of the self healing device, we just have a PI CM4 that can be easly booted into "eMMC rw mode" via the USB C port by running rpiboot
from the CLI and powering up the ASIAIR while keeping the reset button pressed. Unix users can easly dump the eMMC image using dd
(and writing it back too, making a backup was the first thing I did when I got mine), Windows users not so easily... @tech@zwo you should consider writing a tool to allow non tech savvy people to backup and restore the eMMC image, that would help quite a lot of community members.
erossi it's been two days and we still do not have any kind of access to the tool you've supposedly released.
Its their weekend, @erossi. Wait at least until Monday morning China time. (The entire China uses a single time zone :-).
This is a standard modus operandi for ZWO. They (more often than not) do a release (be it alpha, beta or public release) just before they take off for the weekend, or for their annual company wide vacation to a different province or country, or for some of the China-wide week-long holidays.
I think it is part of the company culture.
Congrats!
Humbly accepted.
Chen
Hi w7ay erossi
Sorry for the delay, I changed the Permission settings. the guide is on updating the FW via commands, or you can wait for the FW update tool released, expect next week. Thanks.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16wk5sSxh2nC5NUGO-7Mx_IS8RgkBLpXM/view?usp=sharing
@tech@zwo#57521 thank you so much! I'm really sorry for my previous reply, completely forgot about the time zones, I've been way too harsh, pardon me. I'll test the tool once I get back from work, will report here the results.
@tech@zwo#57565 Hi, sorry for the late reply, tested out the command line tool and worked out perfectly, actually it's way faster than the Windows variant. I've also noticed that's capable of writing firmware to the EFW, that's really nice. Well done guys!