Remote Access to ASIAIR: Page 2

Remote Access to ASIAIR

Tech@ZWO

777liner
On the to do list, but do not have an estimated date yet.

avpinedo

Tech@ZWO I think you have to give priority to this, the rotator and the flat panel for people who want to ride remotely, you would gain a lot of market.

Corsair

As a workaround - in regards to remote access - Is this not possible by setting up a VPN on a travel router (such as the GL.iNET MT-3000)?

So you would connect the ASIAIR to the travel router via Ethernet, the travel router would have a connection to the Internet and be a VPN host.

You could then use a computer (not sure about the a mobile device... maybe) to connect to the VPN hosted by the travel router in order to be on the same network as the ASIAIR. You could then connect to the ASIAIR running the ASIAIR App using Bluestacks 5.

avpinedo

Corsair This is how I do it now, with a PC and bluestacks, but I should have zwo in a native way, now from my mobile I can connect to my light bulbs, to my vacuum cleaner, to my surveillance camera, I don't understand why I can't do it same with asiair natively, I consider it very important

Corsair

Because the ASIAIR is not an IoT device.

https://www.digi.com/blog/post/how-do-iot-devices-communicate

There's a lot that goes on behind IoT devices that allows them to be monitored and controlled remotely. It's always why it can be a big security issue.

Corsair

A router that has the ability host a VPN Server (such as an Open VPN Server) would be the way to go with this for now.

This has been done. Just look at this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ASIAIR/permalink/2728332997329906/

Maffo

I'm using ZWO Telescope Network with my Seestar S50 with great satisfaction; it's a Beta version, but it's really very useful. With a very simple 4G router or home WiFi connection, I can connect to my device anytime from anywhere. Truly an excellent service. It would be really very useful if ZWO integrated this simple yet effective feature also for my ASIAIR in next firmware update.

DansAir

This looks like a pretty dead topic, but I'll just reiterate the request for the ASIair device and app to work with my phone whether near the scope or going out to dinner. We don't want to sit in the backyard or otherwise babysit our rigs for hours on end anymore. I just want to get my ZWO rig going with a several-hour Plan/sequence and leave the house. Right now all I can do remotely is watch the rig with my $25 security camera and kill the power with my $20 smart switch, but I can't do a thing to monitor/control my $$$$ ZWO rig. That seems very antiquated by today's smart home standards. I'm willing to buy a "deluxe" ASIair with this capability. I'm not familiar with the VPN workarounds, etc., but those don't sound like something I want to mess with.

Eric

DansAir

Agreed, I wish there was a much simpler solution to making a fully accessible remote control option from anywhere rather than having to jump through a million networking loops. It took me a LONNGGG time to get it sorted on my end, we live in a kind of isolated little canyon next to a major metro area and we have to have Starlink for our internet provider because there's nothing else except very awful DSL. Starlink works great for us, but because they, unsurprisingly, have very different network/NAT/GCNAT configurations than something like Google Fiber or Comcast or Centurylink, that put virtually unbreakable constraints on how to setup remote access. I tried all the normal things people have, quite unclearly, posted about over the years as solutions. Setting up router based VPN's, trying all sorts of port forwarding, exceptions, changing routers and trying to setup standalone devices, etc etc. None of worked, mainly because of certain lockdowns placed by Starlink. The only solution that has worked for me is a Tailscale setup, installing Tailscale on my home PC that's on the same network as our home observatory Air's, running that PC as an exit node and programming in that pathway to the Air's themselves. Then running Tailscale on my phone I can access the Air's from anywhere using the App and not having to worry about running remote-in things like AnyDesk or TeamViewer or some other nightmarish convoluted remote-pc control options to access bluestacks. Tailscale works just fine, but the download of the 2600mm/mc files for preview and things of that nature are PAINFULLY slow, even on my blazing fast work network. I usually get <1MB/s download speed, which is...woof

Corsair

Remote access is not something the ASIAIR can do or will ever do. It's a tiny little compute device with a sole purpose that it has to dedicate all its limited hardware to.

You can connect the ASIAIR to a network either via Station Mode (Wifi) or ethernet cable (ASIAIR Plus/Pro only - and if using this method you should turn off Station Mode).

However, it is up to you to then setup remote access to that network.

And that varies depending on the equipment you're running, how you've setup everything, the type of internet connection you have to the network the ASIAIR is running , etc.

Then you also have to consider all the same points to the the place where you are connecting from remotely.

This then also impacts the speed.

So if you have a "blazing fast" network at one end but it has to go through slower connections before getting to the ASIAIR at the other end - it will only ever go at the speed of the slowest connection.

Point is this all comes down to networking.

And I, personally, don't want the ASIAIR to act like an IoT device. That opens up a whole other can of worms.

heyjp

I just shipped a 9.25” Edge scope setup with ASIAIR to StarFront Observatories in nowhere Texas, Bortle 1 skies. They now have 600+ telescopes installed there for remote operation. Of the 600+ scopes, the y said over 100 are using ASIAIR! Impressive!

Starfront provides all the credentials to use OpenVPN to access your scope (whether using NINA or ASIAIR or whatever,

I have been using TailScale which is a very easy to use VPN setup and free for small scale geeks like we astronomers.

Tailscale has a free client app to install on your smartphone, tablet, Mac or Windows machine. You setup a TailScale account, then add your devices. You need to then have a TailScale running on the remote network… a Mac, Windows, or even an AppleTV. Then you can access any device on the remote network where you have one of those “subnet servers”. For example, I have TailScale installed on my AppleTV at home. So if I’m traveling, I can access all devices on my home network (telescope, printers, etc) from my iPhone, iPad, or Mac…. Thru the AppleTV at home.

For zstarfront, I shipped a travel router GL-MT3000 with my scope. The GL-MT3000 has TailScale already installed, you just sign-in to the admin portal, enable TailScale, and bind it to your TAILscale account by your email address. Easy-Peazy.

That being said, ZWO could supply a TailScale client pre-installed on ASIAIR which would allow you to bind it to your account and directly access it from anywhere in the world, without the need for a separate subnet server.

It works flawlessly for me without a lot of geeky configuration scripts etc.

Jim in Boulder

cz550

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