ASIAIR Plus network connectivity dropping

james.lewallen

I'm running into a chronic problem that I haven't figured out how to get around it. I'll set up a plan for the evening and kick it off, checking on it sporadically. at some point the connection will not resume and I'll see Service Not Connected errors only, scan won't find the ASIAIR. Connecting with it's IP address also fails.
It's still connected to the router (in station mode), and/or in wired mode. The tracking and capture progress continue through the night, but I can no longer check on progress. I can of course restart the device if I go outside and continue the plan, but at 2am that's not ideal.
Anyone having similar problems? My next thought is maybe my DewNot heaters are messing with it? Oh, I've tried multiple clients (ipad, iphone, even asiair on macos).

james.lewallen

Back again - moved my dew heaters off the ASIAIR and so now the only thing on the ASIAIR are the camera, mount, and guide scope (all ZWO). I've also tried both wired & wireless (direct and station mode through a hub at the mount).

I'm still in a spot where the connection just eventually drops, and I can't get it back without going outside, turning the unit off, and turning it on again, and of course getting guiding going again and so forth.

Any ideas?

dvasi

same situation here. randomly and illogically Asiair crashes, on the tablet the connection seems to be there but the app is stuck trying to reconnect. the only way to restart is to turn the asiair off and on again. it's annoying to have to stay out all night to constantly check and restart. i've already tried to eliminate the electrical load on the unit by powering the camera, mount and dew heater independently but nothing has changed.

james.lewallen

dvasi At this point my plan is to get a power unit that I can remotely restart specific outlets on (pegasus or something) so that I can remotely reboot the asiair without turning off the mount.

ZUG0HnCJ

I'm having the same issue with the added complication of having had shooting seem to suspend on 2 instances this week. Very problematic given I now can't trust that the unit is continuing to shoot. The issue is mystifying given I have a mini which has no such problems. Frustrating that I paid for their more premium product and it doesn't work as well as the cheaper alternative.

Curious why ZWO hasn't chimed in with a response to this issue?

GiffS

Same problem here just cropped up tonight for the first time ever. Running version 2.3(11.56). Really frustrating because it basically bricks the unit in a loop trying to reconnect and there's no way to reboot it. Hope ZWO gets it together soon.

james.lewallen

Not sure - I've now filed a support ticket in addition to my bug reports. My current theory is maybe it has something to do with the rewriteable storage on the device, since I don't think I've been able to reproduce it when the unit is idle; only during a capture (tracked or not).

JMIKEG

Same here. I'm in Canada, and during the winter want to run things from inside the house. But, the ASIAir Plus keeps dropping off the network. It's on "Station Mode", tied into my house's network. I purposed an outdoor access point designed to deliver signals up to 900 feet. The signal is very strong at my telescope pad. Once it drops off the network, I can't get it back. Using the "Scan" feature has never worked. So, I have to go back outside, physically turn off the ASIAir power switch, and turn it back on to regain the connection. Not optimal.

JMIKEG

I am also surprised ZWO has not commented here.

jiman

I feel your pain.

Let me start with, like many of you I am fully entrenched in the ZWO ecosystem of products. I truly appreciate all the work they have done and for the most part their products work right out of the box.

My current systems makeup is: a AM5 and a AM5N - 2 x tpc40 - ASIAIR and ASIAIR Pro - 2 x 7x2 EFW - 2 x EAF - OAG-L and OAG-68 - 6200MM and 2600MM.

After 2 months of overcast skies, on Sunday (Vernon, BC) I finally got the opportunity to setup one of my rigs. I spent virtually the whole evening fighting to keep the wireless working on the IPAD which sitting right beside the ASIAIR Pro. I would have to switch the IPAD from ASI connection to the house wireless network (home wireless is over 60' away at the other end of the house) and try to connect back to the ASIAIR Plus. Sometimes it would connect but more often not.

After about 30 odd repeats of this exercise, I just left the connection off and let ASIAIR finish the sequence. When finished I went through the shutdown process and called it a night. Quite frustrated.

I don't have any interest in setting up Station Mode but I may be forced to. I should add, each time I would check to confirm I was using 2.5ghz vs the 5. This is quite important as the 5ghz wireless is notoriously unreliable.

Corsair

jiman honestly, don't worry about station mode.

Get yourself a travel router (I use the GL.iNet MT-3000). If you have an ASIAIR Plus/Pro you can then use an ethernet cable from the ASIAIR to the Ethernet port on the travel router.

You would then to connect to the WiFi of the travel router to access the ASIAIR.

It's a much more stable connection since a travel router, while small, is a device that is dedicated to networking so will do it very well.

maxchess

Corsair tried with Travel router, same model as yours. Still dropped connection and froze. No further images. Does yours work OK for 1 hr + imaging session?

andrea.kappler

I just got my ASIAIR Plus for Christmas, so I'm new to astrophotography. I've finally gotten two opportunities to really put it to work and I noticed the same thing too- it was randomly dropping the wireless connection and getting into a loop where it wanted me to Scan for a network to connect to, but the Scan operation did nothing. Although I haven't yet gotten into doing any true imaging of things like nebulae, it worries me that it will do this once I've set up a plan and it'll crash during that plan.

I bought the ASIAIR Plus so I wouldn't have to take my new MacBook Pro outside in any kind of weather- or stay outside to babysit it and constantly power it off and on again to reconnect to wireless. I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro Max and was thinking of using the app on an iPad mini, but it sounds like this isn't the solution. I was sitting in my backyard both nights, where the home wireless signal is strong. I thought maybe it was all the notifications I was getting on my phone that were disrupting the wireless connection, which is why I was considering operating the app from my iPad mini, where I don't have all those notifications set up.

I don't know how to set up Station Mode and I don't know what version of firmware is running on the device.

I wish ZWO would chime in with some solutions for us!

JMIKEG

Andrea- My experience is that the Plan continues running whether or not you have communication with the ASIAir. But, it's obviously not optimal to be running blind. And, the Scan feature never works for me, either. I run on Station mode on my house's Wifi. It's COLD in Calgary, and I try to run things from inside. But when the ASIAir drops off the network, I have to go outside, physically turn the ASIAir off and back on again, and reconnect.

The other disadvantage of running blind is not being able to review the photos acquired using my iPad. I have to retrieve the memory stick after the fact to see how things went.

It's all pretty frustrating, but at least the ASIAir keeps running the Plan regardless.

bguthrie

In case it helps narrow down where this is happening. I regularly get Wireless crashes, but there appears to be two things that make it happen more regularly.

First, being in 2.4ghz is much worse. It's not clear to me why, but moving to 5Ghz is significantly more stable.

The second area is when using multiple ASIAir, and multiple tablets/phones. I found that I needed to disable auto connect on all tablets/iPhones except the primary, because if one of the other devices tried to connect to one that had an existing connection, the original one would fail. This also suggests that if you are at a busy place like a star party, and others tried to connect to your device that there is a risk the could crash your connection.

JMIKEG

I had not considered the effect of multiple devices. I often have both my iPad and iPhone running the ASIAir app. I'll try disabling the phone. Thanks.

62i30nL1

I recently posted about having the same issue of losing my internet connection with my ASIAIR Plus. It originally worked very well, but began dropping the internet connection with my iPad a couple of weeks ago. ZWO did respond to my original post by telling me to stop using station mode and switch to the 5g frequency. I've never used station mode and had already had the frequency set to 5g.

During a February 6th imaging session at a state park in Arizona, I spent around ninety minutes trying to get the equipment to hold a connection. It wouldn't even hold connection long enough to complete a polar alignment. I tried switching the frequency to 2.4g and it ran continuously with no problems for five hours.

On February 7th, I took my ASIAIR Plus and my iPad back to my dealer (Starizona). They told me several others had experienced the same issue. Their suggestion was to open the settings on my iPad and switch-off cellular data. I had already switched-off Bluetooth and Auto Connect. They said turning-off cellular data had resolved the issue for others.

Following a meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association on February 7th, a couple of ASIAIR Plus users told me that they had run into the same issue as me. Their problems were resolved by switching to 2.4g.

I'll see if switching-off cellular data on my iPad works sometime this weekend. Hopefully, we'll have clear skies.

JMIKEG

My iPad has no cellular capability, but I still have connectivity issues.

Corsair

Everyone here posting Wi-Fi issues really do need to post the following information with their posts:

ASIAIR Plus Model (ASIAR Pro/ASIAIR Mini/ASIAIR Plus 32GB/ASIAIR Plus 256GB)
Device being used to connect to the ASIAIR (iPad/iPhone/Android/etc)
Device OS version (iOS/iPadOS version / Android version / etc)
ASIAIR App/Firmware version

Would also be helpful to tell us your physical scenario:

Where is your ASIAIR located?
Where are you located with your device?
Approx. distance between you and your ASIAIR?
Are there any obstructions between you and your ASIAIR (types of walls, etc)?
Are you in a densely populated area/what type of area around you?
Are there lots of WiFi networks around you?

Remember that the ASIAIR is not an overly powerful device when it comes to WiFi so its signal can be interrupted by a number of different factors (signal interruption when it comes to WiFi is not uncommon).

james.lewallen

Corsair

ASIAIR Plus
iPad Pro & iPhone 16 mac & M2 Macbook Air
latest on each
2.3.1 (TestFlight)

ASIAIR is mounted to the scope
About 30' from the 5g wifi network (and alternately wired to a portable router in bridge mode)
No obstructions (well, a window)
Rural (5 acre lots)
Only wifi networks are my own; there are a couple

For mine, the important part is I gave up thinking wifi was the problem, but even if i switch to wired mode with a wireless router right at the scope, the connection still drops and won't resume.

So far, support has tried to help, but even with my wired case they were unable to provide any meaningful improvement.

62i30nL1

For what it's worth, I finally got a short break in cloud cover on February 11th and returned to Picacho Peak State Park to try the solution (switching off the cellular data on my iPad) recommended by my dealer. With cellular data turned off, I didn't encounter any issues with my ASIAIR Plus disconnecting. It ran just fine in 5g. Unfortunately, clouds quickly moved-in and I only managed about an hour and a half of imaging.

The site I've been using is somewhat isolated. There are no WiFi networks to compete with, no obstructions between my iPad and ASIAIR Plus, and my iPad is positioned on a table three to four feet from my telescope and ASIAIR Plus. My imaging camera, electronic focuser, guide camera and mount are plugged into my ASIAIR Plus. I don't power my mount through my ASIAIR Plus.

When we get some clear skies here in southern Arizona, I'll see how it works during a longer session.