alaluji Should I leave it like this, without any update, at least until they fix it completely?

The bug that was fixed in 3.3.3 has to do with the external probe giving nonsense temperature readings; see this thread.

https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/14628-eaf-randomly-changes-temperature-to-16-degs/3

If you are not measuring your OTA tube temperature with the optional external probe, or if your ambient temperature does not rise above 20ºC, then the new firmware will not do anything useful for you,and probably no point updating.

You can use the update tool to check the firmware version that your EAF is running. When the firmware updater detects the EAF, it wil also report the firmware version. 3.3.3 was only released at the beginning of August, but if you have a new EAF, it may already have 3.3.3.. You can just abort the updater program, and it will leave your firmware alone.

Chen

After alerting one of my contacts at ZWO of the problem, I was emailed EAF Firmware version 3.3.5.

I first checked to confirm that the EAF that behaved erratically under 3.3.3 is still failing when I use 10 EAF steps. I then updated to 3.3.5, and the slippage and beeps are no longer there (no more rough grinding noise either). I have not exhaustively tested it, like measuring the actual rotation angle -- some of you may remember my building a test rig to measure linearity and backlash when the 5V EAF first came out. But so far, so good.

I should be able to at least test monotonicity by just measuing star sizes tonight. I am too lazy for now to construct a jig for the digital angle meter.

Anyway, you don't have to worry about "bricking" an EAF with 3.3.3. The worst case is having to wait for 3.3.5 to be publicly released to ZWO's update page.

Chen

alaluji If I touch it once in each direction it moves without making a noise, but if I press it in any direction it makes a noise similar to if it were rubbing something with another.

EAF Firmware 3.3.5 is now public. You might want to try it.

I replaced the 3.3.3 in my failing EAF, and that EAF is now working smoothly. No grinding noise, no beeps. Monotonic movement. (Caveat: ambient temperature did not drop below 12ºC in my testing.)

I also replaced the firmware in two other 5V EAF, and they too are working. I probably will be updating all of my other EAFs with 3.3.5.

In any case, don't delete any working firmware that you have from the computer, in case you need to go back to it.

Chen

alaluji I noticed that when doing AF every hour, it showed different final focus values.
Is this so or is there something I should change in some parameter?

Not much you can do about it. There is a bug.

The normal way to autofocus is to use a V-curve (hyperbola curve fit). ZWO uses a U-curve (parabola curve fit). But that is not the primary bug, though.

The good thing about the V and U curves is that they are made of multiple data points (different EAF values), and because of that, the curves are quite accurate even though each point's measurement is noisy. The minima of the curve is the focus point.

However, what ZWO does is to run a second pass (this is the bug). On the second pass, it is using individual star sizes to discover the minima, instead of using the curves' minima.

As a result, once the focus reaches the diffraction zone (i.e., inside the critical focus zone -- the CFZ), where the curve flattens out, it is very prone to star size estimation error. It will stop looking once it finds the start size value starts to increase. Because of this, it will stop early in the CFZ, instead of going to the curve minima.

This noisy reading also causes the autofocus function to stop searching for a minima at different times -- what you are seeing. You can see this "early" abort by looking at the red dot relative to the U curve. You will see that almost all of the time, the red dot stops before the minima of the curve.

This is not always a problem per se, since you are often placed inside the CFZ already. However, when temperature causes the OTA length to change, you can be knocked out of the CFZ almost immediately.

ASIAIR's autofocus will achieve focus for the casual user, but not for someone why wants a tack sharp image of the stars.

As a result of this, I use my own V-curve program (I wrote it for macOS), or a Bahtinov mask when it is not too cold outside.

Chen

chiplouie Does the new v2.0 app still have the error when making the second pass of autofocusing?

Yes; up until Build 42 of the Beta. I haven't have dark skies yet to run the latest Build 46.

I suspect they are not fixing it. I had warned them about it ever since autofocus was still in development, but they won't listen. And now everyone suffers. At least now everyone can actually see the second pass stopping before the true focus is attained.

Not everyone understand the plots though. Those that do know what I am talking about.

Chen

SamoL It doesn't matter which way I want to rotate the focuser - it always rotates in one direction.

Do you actually see the drawtube physically moving only in one direction? Or just the numbers reported by the EAF moving in just one direction?

So far, I have not seen the unidirectional behavior happen to my 8 EAFs, both 12V and 5V units (had increased to 9 after I added an EAF also to my primary guide scope a week ago). But I think I have seen another post here mentioning it.

You can try and fiddle with the Reverse switch, and also initially setting the backlash to zero, to see if those has any effect. I can't think of a bug mechanism on how the sign of the stepper motor could have changed. Very odd bug, indeed. And even odder that it does not happen to most people's EAF (at least not to mine... yet).

Also, try to clear the text fields for coarse, fine, current, max numbers, and retyping in the values.

Chen

P.S., just thought of something -- try entering a number that is smaller than 32767 as the max value, just in case there is some weird sign bug that occured.