AstroImg@ZWO I have been using this last update for two nights now, here are my first impressions. First of all, stop forcing firmware updates down our throats, especially when they are not fully tested. At a minimum there should be an option to revert to an older firmware version when problems occur.
There are a lot of changes in the UI, but they are of a cosmetic nature, there is nothing new that is actually useful and improves the user experience. I do not remember anybody here asking for flying through a starfield animation, random zoom changes during GoTo mode or fancy spinning wait wheels - it makes for a flashier UI but it adds no real value. The previous Solar, Lunar and whatever modes are now a Single Solar System mode, who cares? What everybody wants is mosaic mode and automation and after eight months of waiting they are still not here.
Jumping directly into enhance mode instead of preview mode after a GoTo is really dumb, whoever made that decision has never used the S50. Just undo that change already, or if you really think it is useful, add a user checkbox to turn it off.
Something happened to the WiFi connection, as others have discovered, it now drops randomly and then reconnects sometimes, other times I have to do it manually. During a two hour session last night I had it happen maybe ten times, it's a real pain. I was meters away from the S50 and nothing has changed in my setup, except for the firmware update.
I see only one positive result of this firmware update, the percentage of successfully stacked subs has increased from about 30% to maybe 90%. But this is not consistent, it took me 11 minutes to do a 10 minute capture, then I moved to another target a few degrees away and the same 10 minute capture took half an hour. And this 90% efficiency is not even something new, this is how the S50 used to work all the time in February-March 2024.
If I were to summarize the net result of all the forced firmware updates done since I got the S50 in December 2023, probably at least 10 of them, it would be one step forward, two steps back.
