Problem with ASIAIR PLUS : Page 2

Problem with ASIAIR PLUS

andybutt

Nebula42 try the following routine

“If you want to manually move the mount RA axis by the 60 degree angle, you have to first tell ASIAIR that there is no mount connected in the Telescope Setup window.

Then go to Polar Alignment window and follow the instructions there (it will tell you when to move the 60 degrees).

After polar alignment is complete, Home your mount, reboot the mount's electronics, star align the mount, and then connect ASIAIR Telescope back to the mount.”

This was an answer posted by W7ay some time ago

Nebula42

andybutt
This is what I did
But AA+ tells me to move 20 degrees west

stevesp

Check if you enabled advanced features (quite for sure)
All sky polar alignment moves ar 3 times of 20° but pointing to an area far from North Pole
The standard polar alignment moves ar 60º once in one step, pointing the North Pole

Nebula42

stevesp
Enabled advanced: how to activate or deactivate?

Nebula42

stevesp
andybutt

Hi
So it was on the question mark : all stars align. I removed it and it works.

The problem is : I asked for M13 via the go-to in AA+ and the scope was targeting almost the floor, he took a picture try to solve it then he moved on top around 90 degrees, took a picture and failed solve.
Maybe I put the wrong time.
How can I received that mess.

The procedure that I did before :
Turn on the mount
I put all the info : time, etc etc
Quick align
Home Position
Turn on AA+
I removed All Star align
PA
when the PA was done
I connected the hand control to AA+
I asked to go to M13
And I had that problem

Any ideas please ?

andybutt

Select explanation mark at top right of screen. Turn off all sky polar align. This was my first question. Hopefully this should solve the problem.

PMTeam@ZWO

Hello. Could you submit a log to us after a failed PA rotation? We will check the logs.
(App-About-Bug Report)

Nebula42

Hi
I will try when I will have. Clear sky and totally dark
Thank you for your help and patience

andybutt

Try asking it to go to home position before the goto

Nebula42

andybutt
I did it, it does but approximately, there is like 10 degrees missing.
When you set it. Which time you use ? How is the setting about the hand control about (time)

w7ay

Nebula42 I did it, it does but approximately, there is like 10 degrees missing.

The Daylight Saving Time bug in ASIAIR will cause an error of 1 hour in Hour Angle, or 15 degrees.

Try doing a GOTO (not slew) between two targets that are about 1/2 hour east of the Meridian, and about 1/2 hour west of the Meridian. They don't have to be real stars, just coordinates that have different Right Ascensions -- simply use the same declination angles. If the time settings are all kosher, then the mount should automatically execute a meridian flip between those two targets -- i.e., the mount moves from one target to the other target via the pole. If the time in ASIAIR is bogus, then the GOTO between the two pier sides will simply move the OTA directly about 15 degrees from one target to another (if their declinations are similar).

This will narrow down what bug you are facing.

Chen

Nebula42

w7ay

Hi
Thank you
I'm in Germany
Just one question : should I put the real time or the UTC time with the daylight savings?

w7ay

Nebula42 Just one question : should I put the real time or the UTC time with the daylight savings?

Nobody knows for sure, since ZWO never published the code where they compute Local Sidereal Time from Local Date/Time and Longitude.

ZWO is somewhere conflating Daylight Saving Time into the equations, where Daylight Saving Time has no place to be.

Local Sidereal Time should be determined only from UTC, Julian Date and Local longitude. Somehow, ZWO people haven't taken any beginner Astronomy classes or read any astronomy textbooks, and they try instead to deduce Local Sidereal Time from Local Time (which includes Daylight Saving Time). Utter rubbish.

Celestial navigational only needs the Julian Date, the UTC and how many degrees of longitude your are from UTC.
Julian Date is easy to compute from Unix Time (it tells you how much time has passed from the time the Sun crossed the celestial equator in Spring). The internet or a GPS unit gives you precise UTC (which is different from British Summer Time in that UTC has no Daylight Saving offset), and you can get local longitude from GPS or Google maps. I don't know why ZWO turned such a simple thing into a bug they have not been able to fix for over 5 years now.

Chen

Nebula42

w7ay

Hi
There is a problem, I saw that the Asiair warned me, the DST needs to be OFF.

So, the only option, tell me if it's okay.

For example : it's 23:00

In summer, I can put 22:00
Time zone 1
DST (Daylight saving time) : OFF

In winter, I can put 22:00
Time Zone 1
DST : OFF

On the laptop, I will leave the real time for the plan or autorun (plan for taking pictures) but I will remove the automatic time mode and zone.

What do you think?
Thank you

Nebula42

Hi
Thank you for your help and patience

Corsair

Nebula42
Actually, I'm pretty sure it would be more like:

In summer, IF the place where you live uses DST, then: you need to put the time back 1 hour. So:
Local Time: 23:00
Time to put into ASIAIR: 22:00
DST: Off

In winter, the place where you live will not have DST, then:
Local Time: 23:00
Time to put into ASIAIR: 23:00
DST: Off

I live in Australia. Everywhere but one state - Queensland - observes DST.
So in the summer - during DST - it is like this in Australia:
Queensland: 22:00
Everywhere else in Australia: 23:00

This means that if you are in the "Everywhere else in Australia" zone then you would have set the ASIAIR back one hour.
i.e. Local time: 23:00, ASIAIR Time with DST Off: 22:00
However, if you live in Queensland, then you would have set the ASIAIR time to be the same as your local time:
i.e. Local time: 22:00, ASIAIR Time with DST Off: 22:00

Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

For reference: https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/12251-daylight-saving-time-reminder

w7ay

Nebula42 What do you think?

Yeah, follow what Corsair said.

You typically do not have to set the time in the hand controller. Simply turn the Daylight Saving Time (DST flag in the mount off, and let the ASIAIR (in the tablet) push ("sync") the time and location to the mount. From monitoring the USB traffic, ASIAIR appears to "sync" by itself right when it connects to a mount (it used to be haphazard, but the recent versions of ASIAIR appear more consistent).

However, there may be mounts that are stubborn and will reset the time back again. For those mounts, you will need to set the handcontroller's local time manually. FWIW, I do not have to do that with the RainbowAstro mount. I don't even use my hand controller when using ASIAIR -- I simply turn DST off.

Much of this "stubborness" comes from the GPS that are in some mounts (i.e., the mount will try to use GPS). If you have GPS in your mount or handcontroller, turn the GPS off, although just turning DST off will often do the trick.

Basically, ASIAIR only understands Winter time. China does not use Daylight Saving -- Korea also does not use Daylight Saving, but the RainbowAstro mount understands it perfectly. So it is no excuse.

So, just undo the "Spring forward, Fall back" like you do on your clocks and always use Winter time as the local time for your mount even in Summer (turning the DST flag off will also adjust the UTC offset).

All this is because of a huge bug in ASIAIR code. The ASIAIR is using Local Time (which therefore involves DST) as part of the computation for the fundamental time for astronomy called Local Sidereal Time (LST).

LST depends on UTC (Universal Coordinated Time, referenced to the Greenwich Meridian) and your local longitude. It does not depend on Local Time -- I don't know which school ZWO went to, to learn the wrong stuff. And after years of being told to use only UTC and longitude (I even emailed their higher ups directly), they persist on using Local Time, all for the sake of the lowest common denominator - moronic customers who do not know what UTC is, and only know the time on their "smart watches."

Chen

Nebula42

w7ay

Nothing is working. With the update of the AVX MOUNT and Nexstar hand control and the real time.... Everything is a mess....
When I ask for Arcturus. It does 15 degrees east instead of going west....
Nothing is working.....

Nebula42

Thanks for your help

w7ay

Nebula42 Nothing is working. With the update of the AVX MOUNT and Nexstar hand control and the real time.... Everything is a mess....

Do you have GPS on your NexStar? If so, you should try turning it off.

The east-west thing can also happen if the mount thinks you are in the wrong hemisphere (north vs south). Check both the mount parameters in ASIAIR and in the hand controller to see if they are correct and agree with one another.

It can also happen if ASIAIR had jammed the wrong time information into your mount.

You did disable Daylight Saving Time in the mount, right? Since the beginning (and still not fixed in these years; in spite of postings here telling them not to use local time for anything involving celestial navigation) ZWO has a bug in ASIAIR where they use local time (thus involving DST for no rhyme or reason) instead of using simply UTC to determine the Local Sidereal Time (which determines what hour angle your mount needs to be set at, relative to the RA of the target. The only way to get around that is to disable DST from your mount's hand controller.

If your mount's hand controller has a UTC display, check that item to see if it agrees with UTC that you get from the web.

The real solution is to dump the ASIAIR and use a real program to control your telescope.

Chen

Nebula42

w7ay

On the laptop, I have the summer time
It was 23:00 (summer time)
On Asiair, I changed the time : 1 hour less (22:00)
It was 23:00 on real time : summer time
On the hand control, I put :
Standard time : I put 22:00
Zone 1
DST off
For the coordinates : I used Google Earth for the real position that I put in the hand control.
On Asiair plus, I put exactly the same coordinates

When I started to do the quick align. And PA
The mount sent it on the wrong place

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