ASIAIR Beta v2.0.0: Page 5

ASIAIR Beta v2.0.0

Obs30

Astrobert Interesting! How does your setup look like?

I have an Avalon Instruments M-Uno mount controlled by the new StarGO2 Pro (SG2) controller. The SG2 is an aluminium case containing the motor controllers and a Raspberry Pi 4B. The SG2 Pi is running a local INDI server and drivers for the mount, the motor controllers and the INDI SkySafari driver.

The mount and the ASIAIR Pro are both connected with ethernet cables to a satellite of my home wifi mesh. Since both Pi's, the ASIAIR and SG2 are using the Pi 4B, their local built-in 5GHz wifi is too weak to actually work with them efficiently. Therefore, they are set-up with the wifi mesh.

Now, what I would love to do, is to use the native INDI driver of the mount on the ASIAIR. So far I was not able to do that. Both ZWO and Avalon looked into this and only found the current following work around: Using the SkySafari driver on the SG2-Pi by choosing the "LX200 Basic" on the ASIAIR (IP address of the SG2 and port 9624). The LX200 Basic driver does not provide the INDI Guide commands, but can slew. The guide commands are required for polar alignment and ... guiding, obviously ;-). So I can neither use guiding nor PA on the ASIAIR.

KStar/EKOS, PhD2 and other INDI based tools, however, can access any remote INDI driver. Now I can either start KStars/EKOS on my MacBook Pro or I ssh -X pi@IPaddress to the SG2 and start the remote KStars/EKOS on the SG2 with the windows popping up locally on my MacBook through XQuartz (hence the -X option). It does not matter which or where I start KStars/EKOS, I just have to provide EKOS the correct IP address of the SG2 INDI server and it finds the native driver for the mount automatically. I connect my ASI camera to the SG2 Pi, run the PAA in EKOS and once its finished, I plug the camera back into the ASIAIR.

The guiding camera is connected to the SG2 Pi and I access it remotely from my MacBookPro via PHD2 and its local INDI client.

Now this sounds all very complicated, but it's not, since everything is running on the same MacBook now. Either via Terminal window or locally and connecting to the INDI servers and apps on either the SG2 or ASIAIR.

Obs30

Obs30 Now I could do all of this with StellarMate or EKOS, but the ASIAIR GUI is so much nicer and easier to use. And more stable as well.

Obs30

Astrobert The initial bug has been fixed. But in the fixed version the PA does not work any longer.

Unfortunately, as explained above, I cannot test this with my set-up.

Kring

The new UI design is slick. Much better use of screen space.

w7ay

Build 39 of ASIAIR v2.0.0 Beta now allows you to tailor the size of the GUI. (Display Zoomed in Personalized Settings.)

At 125% zoom, you no longer have to use your pinky or the Apple Pencil to change the Slew Rate slider on a 12.9" iPad, for example. And you can once again read the RA and Declination values.

The images in the windows are not zoomed, just the GUI elements. For example, a camera Preview image remains a constant size that is independent of the Zoom level. You had always be able to pinch zoom the camera image, and you continue to be able to.

I found the 125% Zoom to be quite comfortable with a larger iPad, while the original 100% was squint-city. Ditto on macOS with a Mac Studio Display set to the next higher resolution from default.

150% could be useful if you have poorer eyesight, and also to be able to more easily read the Polar Alignment numbers, which almost require magnifying glasses at the (original) 100% Zoom.

The ADU values are now also easier to read at 125% Zoom. I literally had to use a magnifying glass with the earlier Beta. The icon to tap on for the planetarium appears to have also shrunk a little from a more squarish rounded rectangle to a skinnier one, which is good news for those of us who don't use it .

The App icon has also reverted back to the icon used in ASIAIR v1.9. I remember someone complaining about the messy looking app icon in the two earlier v2.0.0 betas.

The ASIAIR Zoom behavior works well too in macOS.

IMHO, definitely a better GUI experience than the two earlier betas, especially on macOS, where you have no ability to change the ASIAIR app window size.

Chen

Kring

Seems like it’s getting close. The last two major items that have to be fixed are no landscape mode, especially frustrating on iPads that live in landscape.

And the need to understand the security you are putting in place and how the social aspects will be policed and kept clean. It’s best to share proactively how you will secure and manage then stay quiet and let smart users figure out if there are massive security issues or the social aspect get taken over by hackers and you have a mess on your hands.

overall, great job on 2.0 - finish strong!

one last minor thing, you still have not disconnected the crosshairs. The crosshairs should be part of the UI, not painted on the picture. When you zoom the photo the crosshairs should stay the same (attached to UI), not that the crosshairs zoom along with the photo

w7ay

Kring When you zoom the photo the crosshairs should stay the same (attached to UI), not that the crosshairs zoom along with the photo

It is correct as it is.

The crosshair should always be centered at the precise center of the photographic plate (i.e., the optical axis of a collimated system).

Chen

astrosatch

w7ay It is correct as it is.

The crosshair should always be centered at the precise center of the photographic plate (i.e., the optical axis of a collimated system).

Chen

When it was first introduced it wasn't like this. The crosshair stayed in center of screen no matter what you did with picture. I could zoom in on particular detail or star anywhere on picture and put it on center of crosshair to check drifting between subs for instance. I liked it better then. It actually had purpose for me. They should at least implement two options for each purpose.
Andrej

Kring

w7ay I’m not saying to not maintain center… it should always be centered.. but the crosshairs themselves shouldn’t expand as you zoom into the picture, they shouldn’t get thicker. They are painting the crosshairs literally pixel for pixel onto the image. That’s not proper UI design and it makes zooming in for precision not possible.

crackout

Trying to register an account but I do not receive emails with the confirmation code (I tried different addresses).
Is this service stopped in the beta phase?

w7ay

The auto-guiding dark frame procedure (and internal format) must have changed from the previous beta to Beta build 39.

When I first tried to guide with dark frames tonight, I got a "dark frame corrupted" message. That forced me to ask it to collect a new set of dark frames for guiding.

Curiously, it now seems to take longer to collect the dark frames, and when dark frames are used, the guide frames backgrounds are now pitch black -- with the previous beta, the guide frame background was the same noisy gray as when you didn't apply dark guide frames.

Almost certain it is doing more than just rejecting bad pixels.

Chen

astrosatch

w7ay Curiously, it now seems to take longer to collect the dark frames, and when dark frames are used, the guide frames backgrounds are now pitch black -- with the previous beta, the guide frame background was the same noisy gray as when you didn't apply dark guide frames.

Almost certain it is doing more than just rejecting bad pixels.

Did you test it under the sky? What are real life effects on guiding?
Andrej

franco

I miss the histogram having a reset button. If I take a preview shot of a bright planet, I need to reset the histogram limits so that I can see it. I know that I can drag the sliders but I find them almost impossible to use on my phone.

The other thing that has changed is being able to stack directly from the video mode. Before you could hit the icon and do a stack, now you have to go to the SD card storage and select planetary stacking.

w7ay

astrosatch Did you test it under the sky? What are real life effects on guiding?

Ran it for two nights so far. No issues.

As I mentioned in the earlier posting, I had only found the dark frame to help when conditions are not optimal. I only saw an improvement when I tested before leaving astronomical twilight -- when I got more available stars for multi-centroid guiding when the dark frame subtraction was turned on.

A small guide scope and tiny sensor may fall under the "not optimal" criterion, however. I.e., people who cannot earlier get 12 stars to guide with.

I have not tried to stress test the autoguiding with this more recent beta. I just noticed a darker background with less noise.

Chen

w7ay

astrosatch What are real life effects on guiding?

I don't know if this is an optical illusion on my part, but as the night got cooler at the time I went to do a Meridian flip (I always do my own manual flip), I thought I noticed that the background of the guide frame became less black. More grayish tone, but still pretty noise free.

So, either I am imagining things, since I wasn't monitoring guiding through the night, or ZWO did not compensate the dark current noise with ∆T. They do have the sensor data for the camera; so on paper, they could have done this, at least partially.

You can probably experiment with it by making ASIAIR recalibrate dark frames after the temperature has changed by a couple of degrees to see if it mattered (or use a cooled camera so you can change the temperature :-).

Chen

astrosatch

That's odd. Did any stray light entered into telescope after meridian flip? On my balcony there is wall east of telescope and I have to delay MF several minutes because otherwise half of tube is looking at the wall.🙃 Not a problem under sky on the field though.
I have yet to upgrade to version 2.0 to test. Soon.

sompi68

I would also like to try version 2.0
an extra tester doesn't hurt.
I hope that the beta stable and available to all comes out.
Greetings

astrosatch

sompi68 I would also like to try version 2.0
an extra tester doesn't hurt.
I hope that the beta stable and available to all comes out.

There is beta 2.0 available for android.
https://www.pgyer.com/air_test

sompi68

astrosatch an extra tester doesn't hurt.
I hope that the beta stable and available to all comes out.

thx

sompi68

hello, tried little because of the clouds that covered the sky. ok with the CGX mount, the only problem encountered is a problem with skyatlas, it does not center the target I have chosen, for example I tried Vega and YLirae hit me. otherwise it would seem that everything is going well

PMTeam@ZWO

sompi68 Could you PM me your location and time info, so we could reproduce that un-center issue.

« Previous Page Next Page »