It has been brought to the attention of all CN forum members that it appears ZWO has intentionally disabled support for the NYX-101 mount in the current AA app 2.0 firmware update.
It has been proven that the previous AA app 1.91 firmware works fine with the NYX-101 and this revelation has generated a significant amount of negative feedback from current and potential ZWO customers.
What confuses me personally is the NYX-101 is in a higher payload class and the cost difference between the NYX and AM5 is an additional $1000. Therefor it is realistically not a direct competitor to the AM5 to begin with so what possible reason could there be for such a reckless decision?
As we speak, this issue is a smoldering ember but has a real potential to blow-up into a forest fire very quickly. The winds are starting to blow and it might be wise for ZWO to put out this fire while it still can.
Like many others, I was considering the purchase of an AM5 in the near future but have put this decision on hold until there is a good faith commitment from ZWO to support the mount community equally.
Is ZWO afraid of or trying to kneecap selective competition in the swg mount space? If so, this deliberate act will not improve your AM5 sales numbers. In fact, if not reconsidered and reversed it could (and likely will) result in the exact opposite.
The AM5 has been a success standing on its own merit and in its price/payload/performance is at the top of the class. The position of being the standard to which others are measured against is the best position anyone could be in, why on earth would you choose to compromise what you have established?

I sincerely hope this message gets to the appropriate eyes in a timely manner.....

Here is some feedback from current CN members and growing:

I can confirm that the mount connects with ASIAir version 1.91 and it slews. in version 2.0 it don't recognize the device. so ZWO must thinks that Pegasus Astro mount is real competition because they block the connection.

I had been considering ASIAIR for my “next” observatory in conjunction with my MI-250, this is now completely and utterly off the table. I don’t DO that kind of vendor lock in an Open Community.
Hint to ASI: “rent seeking” behavior ultimately results in the downfall of those practicing it. You’ve lost me as a customer, ever.

Yes, I have many ZWO products (I own an AM5 for heavens sake and I don't find these to be competitors) but unless they reverse this absurd decision I will start selling off there equipment and switch to other brands. I can not see how every other mount is ok but this one. I'm hoping it's an oversight and Pegasus is listed to lock out focusers and other equipment that has never worked on ASIAir from any manufacture also ASIair 2.0 was released long before the Nyx even started to ship so again I'm not sure this was the plan by ZWO. I wrote them a stern email about this decision, the more of us that voice our concern maybe what it takes to remove the restriction.

I absolutely agree with you and support this point of view!
A Pegasus powerbox and a mele quieter are more versatile and cheaper then the asi air anway.

This is exactly why I have never used ASIAir, or their EAF or any other devices of theirs other than some CMOS cameras. And even on that front, my next camera purchase will not be ZWO as a matter of principle.
Companies that add to the ecosystem in an open way will always get my business wherever possible.

That sounds pretty despicable of zwo, if that's the case. Strange though that they have been actually adding support for other swg mounts that are more direct competitors, like the ioptron ones.

100% agree. I hope this is an error on ZWO's part because if this is going to become the norm I will sell off all my ZWO equipment and switch to other venders. How many different mounts can be used on an ASIAir: Skywatcher, iOptron, Celestron, Meade, 10 Micron, Astro-physics and others I'm sure I've forgotten but Pegasus Astro gets locked out? This makes no sense. I understand locking the system to their cameras, EAF, EFW, etc but mounts are long time purchases and based on user needs, I don't even seen these two mounts as competitors, they are of different weight capacities.

ZWO fix this error or I'm sure this will spread and blow up in more ways then imagined, wait till it hits Youtube and the countless content creators there and on other platforms. I will for sure share where I can if this is going to continue.

My next mount is going to be a NYX101 and I’m shopping for a monochrome setup.

My AA will be up for sale within a month if this is isn’t fixed. I already have a Mele 3C loaded up that I was playing with but the AA has some value, even with the bugs.

If I’m not longer using the AA, I will have a much wider selection of cameras, focusers, filter wheels to choose from and those represent a much bigger investment than the AA.

Fix the problem ZWO … the whole community is watching you.

I have been looking at the NYX-101, very nice mount. I did not consider the AM5 because of its weight limitation and some minor mechanical features that I like better in the NYX design and interfaces.

I have the ASIAIR Pro and Mini. I have also been following the CN discussion. Pegasus Astro is working on a workaround.

The best argument on the CN forum is about ZWO claiming full support of the LX200 protocol. If this is not the case anymore, then this statement would technically be wrong.

It is Chinese New Year week now. Let's wait and see...

  • w7ay replied to this.

    Obs30 I did not consider the AM5 because of its weight limitation and some minor mechanical features that I like better in the NYX design and interfaces.

    I have been running two RST-135, one of them was from RainbowAstro's very first manufacturing run. In the past few months, I had been looking to see if RainbowAstro would release something that is in between the RST-135 and RST-300 weight class to add to my stable. And even better, if it also has a good optical encoder to make auto-guiding a bit more relaxed. The RST-135 is perfectly fine if you keep the payload under 20 lbs or so, while the RST-300 is a way overkill for my needs.

    It looks like the NYX101 (albeit without the precision optical encoder) might meet that criterion for me. As you mentioned, the non-moving connectors are a hugh plus; I have Gaffer tape all over my RST-135 to strain relieve the connectors :-).

    I would not touch an AM5 after seeing what the time-derivative of the periodic error curve looks like -- there are parts of some of their published curves where 0.25 second guide exposures would be needed to freeze a guide star to get sufficiently accurate estimate of its centroid for my tastes.

    I am looking forward to see periodic error curves on the NYX-101. If it is similar to the Harmonic gears on the RST-135, I may go for it to get the extra payload capability. Since Pegasus advertises it as "Harmonic" (a trademark) and not as a generic strain wave gear drive (which you have to do if the strain wave gear is not manufactured by Harmonic Drive Group (with engineering done in USA, Germany and Japan), there is hope. As long as Pegasus can precision machine parts as well as a company that machines robotic arms for a living.

    The other is how repeatable is the altitude and azimuth adjustments. The RST-135 had to go through an iteration of mechanical update before they got that mostly (not completely) right. And I notice from the images that, like the RST-135, the Pegasus too includes a hex slot in the azimuth knobs. It is from details like this that you get the assurance that the designer actually uses telescopes and mounts themselves. Who cares how good a tripod mounted mount is, if it takes you forever to get it polar aligned (so far, Avalon appears to be the only company to include motorized polar alignment).

    One thing that did bother me is the NYX uses stepper motors instead of servo motors. However, they do claim a resolution of 0.1 arcsecond, so that should let us do 0.25" type RA axis guiding. I suspect the declination axis may have less resolution, since they didn't brag about it. Anyway, something that I will be monitoring.

    It does not bother me if the ASIAIR does not support the NYX-101, since I will not be using the ASIAIR if that is the case. I don't let the tail wag the dog.

    Chen

        Let me explain, because of serial port of pegasus conflict with the mount, we didn't handle it well,this is a bug of ASIAIR, not intentional absolutely , we will fix it after Chinese new year!

          Walf@ZWO because of serial port of pegasus conflict with the mount

          Are you trying to say that in your attempt to exclude other Pegasus Astro products from ASIAIR by singling out the "Pegasus Astro" USB manufacturer string, ZWO had inadvertently also locked out the Pegasus Nyx-101 because the mount's USB port is using the same manufacturer string as the ports of Pegasus' other products?

          Why did one of your reps claim that nothing whatsoever was changed between v1.9 and v2.0 in regards to the Pegasus mount?

          Chen

              w7ay
              Hi Chen,
              I thing we should not discuss design details publicly，
              but please trust me, we are not excluding pegasus intentionally.

                Hard to believe when Pegasus Astro is the only one impacted even though a lot of other vendor use FTDI usb-serial adapter with the EXACT same VID and PID and the only difference in the USB Descriptor is the manufacturer string .... I'll say nice try but nobody buys it.

                Currently it looks like pegasus is the only one.
                because the serial port of pegasus box triggered the processing mechanism of ASIAIR,
                lead to misjudgment.
                we will fix it after Chinese new year!

                We would like to officially address the issue of poor connectivity with Pegasus Astro's mount. We recently received user reports that he cannot control his mount when using Pegasus Power Box with the ASIAIR. We found that the Pegasus Power Box has one USB to serial port built-in and this caused confusion to the ASIAIR leading to communication failures to the mount. Our initial bug fix solution to quickly resolve this was to filter out the Pegasus Power Box's serial port when there is a Pegasus serial device connected, while we devised a better long term fix. However, the unintended consequence of that quick fix was the disabling of communications with the new Pegasus mount. This was totally not our intention, nor is there any plan by ZWO to prevent Pegagus Astro mount being used with the ASIAIR. We are genuinely sorry for any inconvenience caused to affected users. We are working to resolve this issue quickly and will intend to release a new version to resolve this after Chinese New Year.
                We are very aware that the astronomy community is a small, friendly environment and ZWO remains fully committed to providing support to the user or vendor who uses various mounts with the ASIAIR. But we have limited time and energy and will focus on the equipment we have already supported and try to provide the best user experience. The goal of ASIAIR is to make astrophotography easy and fun, it would never change.

                thank you

                w7ay

                Hi Chen,

                Thank you - as always ;-) - for the deep review of the different mount configurations.

                Basically, i.e. electromechanically speaking, I am very happy with my Avalon M-Uno mount with the RPi4-based StarGO2 controller. Although this controller lacks full support for the ASIAIR (no guiding!), it is a very well built mount, relatively light weight for the allowed payload and does not require any meridian flip.

                Having said that, I am still looking for that “perfect mount“ that is ultra-portable, while providing full support for all types of interfaces (ASCOM, INDI, INDIGO, native). The NYX-101 is extremely close to all of this. Your review pointed out a few more aspects that I had not been aware of yet! Thanks! Makes the case for the “Goddess of the Night” even stronger! … and my local astro dealer has introduced the full Pegasus product range after Christmas… so tempting.

                I am sure ZWO will fix the communication issue with the NYX-101.

                I am still waiting, though, for the full support of the StarGO2 … different issues, different thread.

                  10 days later

                  Has there been an update to this? I've had limited success connecting wifi but it will drop after a while.

                  10 days later

                  OK folks, the ASIAIR Beta 2.1 (Build 15, firmware 10.70) that just dropped in TestFlight tonight, finally has a release note that says

                  "- Fixed the problem that Pegasus Astro Mount unable to connect."

                  Chen

                    dorothy2846 is this true??

                    That the line appeared in the Build 15 release notes? Yes.

                    I don't have an Nyx-101, so I have no way to test the veracity of the statement.

                    Since the Nyx was working before ASIAIR v2.0, and all it takes is for ZWO to undo a couple of lines of code, the statement is probably true.

                    Chen

                      5 months later

                      Any last news about it? Is finally the latest AA version working fine with this mount? I'm considering having one for my 9.25HD..
                      If so, is everything fully working like guiding, meridian flip, etc?

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