Thanks to everyone who has helped so far.,
johnpd
Yes the scope is balanced. The Pro camera does have some weight, and the ASIAIR is on the opposite side along with a small counter weight, that allows me to balance the tube. The focal length shows 749 on ASIAIR. I do not get an option for alt-az or equatorial in synScan, it shows up as alt-az. I first tried the north with the tube parallel to the ground. So I was trying other positions just in case.
If I use the SynScan app alone its works perfectly. Granted, this app is for "Visual" astronomy. From home position it moves the telescope close to the target, then I manually center, then press the "its centered" button on the SynScan app, it begins to track the sky and all is well. Each additional GoTo becomes more accurate in getting the telescope to center the object. I was gifted a huge 1kwh portable power station. I can use this for weeks with the Telescope. 🙂
@ASIAIR@ZWO
I was unable to find any logs. I have an SD card, and there are no log folders or files there. I have also connected the ASIAIR to the ethernet (wired) and was able to Samba into the device and look at the drive there. Also no logs. I noted in the ASIAIR manual that logs only appear after a completed "autorun" which I have not initiated any. I have not been able to SSH into the system, as the default port is closed or SSH is closed.
@franco
I disabled centering, started at home position and ran a GOTO. It came close, so I plate solved and had it "sync then GOTO". Repeated a couple of times till everything was centered. I did notice that as I continued to GOTO to different objects in the sky, the position seemed to alter, cant pinpoint when it happened. Like GoTO M31 00h 44m 00s / +41 23' 36" Current RA/.DEC 04h 29m 42s / +80 42' 05". I mean way off and it was pointing to the wrong point in the sky and the telescope was not slewing, if I then used the SynScan app and had it GOTO m31, it was able to track to the correct position. So after that I just turned of the mount, started over and the ASIAIR worked fine again.
One interesting comment is that if in preview mode I attempted to capture with an exposure time of 2+ seconds, it would not plate solve correctly. Most of the stars appeared as streaks. So 0.5 to 1 second kept the stars from appearing as streaks, since the mount's tracking was off at this point. Maybe in the "Auto Center" option, allowing us to select an exposure of less than 2 seconds might help. Change the buttons to a slider there.
So one thing I noticed is I need to still use the SynScan app to at least align the first star or its Tracking algorithm wont work right. I was able to view and live stack the Pleiades last night using the following steps.
1) Set telescope to home. North and tube parallel with the ground.
2) use SynScan app to Goto first object. When it told me to manually center ...
3) I used the ASIAIR app and captured an image in preview with 0.5 exp. Made sure the correct target was in goto. Plate solved and it asked if I wanted to align then goto target. I tapped that. After a couple of iterations, my target was visible.
4) Back on SynScan app I pressed "object centered" and made sure object was tracking. I have to keep this app on as tracking is described by the SynScan manual as a "long event" and requires the app to be active or run in background mode or the tracking will stop.
5) Now on the ASIAIR app I switched to LIVE and with the object now tracking I started Live Stacking 2-5 second exposures. After several minutes I got a nice sharp image and saved the live stack.
It would be nice if ASIAIR would alt-az align then begin tracking from within ASIAIR. And allowing faster exposure times in the auto center option might solve the constant plate solve fail issue.
