ASIAIR v2.4 Public Beta Released!

Sonixx

That is a massive update. Thanks for starting to improve on the CAA performance.
I will try some dry runs this weekend. Unfortunately the weather does not allow real tests under the sky.

CS,

Stephan

PMTeam@ZWO

Sonixx

Sonixx 这周末我会尝试一些模拟测试

Thank you

crackout

PMTeam@ZWO Added triggering autofocus function in Live mode

Having this feature in Plan Mode would be nice as well.

PMTeam@ZWO

crackout Already implemented. Now supports triggering autofocus in Live/AutoRun/Plan mode.

5Z5vlw48

Thanks for the update. With which firmware update is it planned to implement the Canon R5 Mark II? Thank you for your answer. clear skies Rudolf

Haggy38

Huge firmware update, so far so good, please add on the CAA cancel rotation on meridian flip, on camera can you include cooling down and warm up in steps?

PMTeam@ZWO

Haggy38

Haggy38 请在子午线翻转时添加 CAA 取消旋转

Set the CAA rotation range to 180° mode. When this is set, the CAA will not rotate 180° after the meridian is flipped.

Sonixx

Was fiddling around with the new beta and the CAA. The new visualisation is helpful and if your focuser has a mechanical rotator you can easily rotate the setup that the danger zone is avoided. I tried to provoke the system to move beyond the displayed limit, but the rotator behaved with no unpredictable movement. We will habe to see what happens under real sky conditions.

However, since you still cannot set a manual zero position without a standard mechanical rotator you may have problems.

Foobaria

Wow trigger AF in live mode, sounds great.

Foobaria

This one looks great too: "Added guide loss beep alert (ASIAIR Plus/Mini/PRO)"

Eric

Stilllll no custom park position, how many people are going to keep requesting this feature before ZWO finally does something about it? Years now.

PMTeam@ZWO

Eric Thank you very much for your patience. This requirement development team is already planning

azskyguy

In a session tonight autorun stopped on image 23 of 24. Hit pause and start and it got going again. That's a nasty bug if it is running unattended. Just stopped the session on its own.

PMTeam@ZWO

azskyguy Hello. Please upload the error log to us after the problem occurs. This way we can find the cause and solve the problem. Thank you for your help.

9kr69ubP

Object databases organisation a vast improvement and J2000 support for custom targets is very welcome.

jsmithsd

Testing the new 2.4 beta release. Equipment: ASIAIR PRO, AM5, EAF, EFW, 6200MC, 290MM Guide camera, CAA.

The software update is very unstable. The CAA routine is not working correctly, when you manually request the rotator to move the ASIAIR display updates but the rotator does not turn. It seems to work correctly when you select 360 degree mode but does not work right in the 180 degree mode. Sometimes it turns but sometimes it doesn’t but the ASIAIR display always updates and you get the message rotator complete. Three attempts in manual rotation and the ASIAIR reboots. I duplicated the reboot ten times. It always reboots on three attempts to manually move the rotator but the rotator does not move.

Tried an auto run and lost connection to the mount after 10 frames downloaded. I duplicated the mount disconnect three times. Once during an auto run I lost connection to the EAF.

Wireless communication works fine and even though I am using an ASIAIR Pro communication range was good. Never lost connection.

The USB portion of the firmware/software code is buggy.

Due to poor weather I have not been able to go on the Sky and test guiding or plate solving.

The enhanced features to the sky atlas are great.

Tried my Mele 4C using NINA and the CAA ASCOM driver works fine and the same setup, all USB cables, etc. had no issues.

ZWO software team: thank you for all the hard work, we are not there yet but moving in the right direction. Until we get this right I will use my ASIAIR plus on the 2.1 firmware and leave the CAA on the shelf.

PMTeam@ZWO

jsmithsd CAA 程序工作不正常，当你手动请求旋转器移动时，ASIAIR 显示屏会更新，但旋转器却不转。当你选择 360 度模式时，它似乎工作正常，但在 180 度模式下却无法正常工作。有时它会转，有时不会，但 ASIAIR 显示屏始终会更新，并且会显示“旋转器已完成”的消息。手动旋转尝试三次后，ASIAIR 重启了。我重复了十次重启。每次尝试手动移动旋转器三次后，它都会重启，但旋转器仍然不动。

This is very strange. We have not reproduced this problem. What is your CAA firmware version? This can be seen in the "About CAA" in the CAA settings page. Please provide this information.
If it is convenient, please record a video, include the CAA location on the software and the actual CAA device, thank you.

In addition, we also hope that you will upload the error log for us to analyze after the problem occurs.

jsmithsd

The new Autrun exposure display shows the number of Autorun sequence events and then when you click on it it shows the number of exposures per Autorun sequence event. It does say they are all LIGHT sequence events even though I setup an Autorun with LIGHTS, DARKS, and BIAS. We can live with that and it is a nice feature. Please work on the USB portion of the code and find out why we drop USB connections even when no CAA is connected. It seems some type of software subroutine timing is off and it misses devices going through the loop. If we can get that stable this will be a good update.

The CAA routine is still not working correctly as I posted before, the CAA sometimes rotates and some times does not even though the ASIAIR display always shows it completed the requested rotation correctly. My CAA is running firmware version 1.1.1

Thank you for all the hard work, keep going and sending out beta drops. We will get there and the CAA support in the ASIAIR will be a thing of beauty.

PMTeam@ZWO

jsmithsd Hello. I have reported your problem to the development team. I suggest you try another CAA connection cable to see if the problem still occurs. Thank you.

minimoto71

jsmithsd I had a similar issue ( the CAA refused to rotate until I tried at least 3 times ) and in my case it seems it was caused by the USB Hub or the Camera Hub ( I had to move the guiding camera to the hub because there are no more USB connections available when adding the CAA to the ASIAir ). I have had 3 sessions with the CAA connected to the ASIAir apparently without issues. Still have to make more test to be sure that was the issue.

azskyguy

The trouble with the exposure count is there is no reason to do it this way. It doesn't solve a problem but instead it creates one. First time I used it and exposures did not increment I thought system was frozen. Please get it back the way it was. As stated above, I've had one real lock up which is another matter entirely. Overall, thee are many good features, but I still don't trust the rotator and one time it almost broke the USB port as cables were wrapped too tightly.

hyiger

Meh. I'll wait it out until the 2.4.X releaes I'm done with being a beta guinea pig. It's good thought that there is finally movement in the software. I'm patiently awaiting filter offsets.

PMTeam@ZWO

hyiger Filter Offset is already in the plan, thank you for your support.

igblaar

Hi ZWO team,
First of all, thank you for the continued work on the ASIAIR platform. I wanted to share my first impressions after one night using the 2.4 beta release.

Equipment:
ASIAIR Plus
Wave 150i mount
ASI2600MM
EFW 7x36mm
ASI120Mini guide camera
EAF
CAA (integrated)

I tested the system in Preview, Autorun, and Plan modes. On startup, the CAA was correctly recognized — a clear improvement over the previous version.

When performing the first GoTo, the CAA rotated unexpectedly, which I believe was to the angle previously defined in the CAA settings. I tested both 360º and 180º rotation functions and both worked properly, with no disconnections.
The improvements in CAA integration are evident. The mechanical zero is now clearly shown, and the interface for controlling the rotator is more intuitive. I also feel that the rotation behavior is now more logical — perhaps thanks to an improved algorithm.

One suggestion: It would be very helpful to have a "Home" or "Zero" defined position in the CAA menu — similar to the one in the EAF settings. This could be used to set the rotator to a known reference position at the end of a session. The current option ("Return to starting position") didn’t work as expected in my Plan mode session and left the rotator unmoved at the end.

Aside from that, I’d like to highlight the great improvements in the SkyAtlas and object catalog — excellent job!

Thanks again for the ongoing development. The CAA is getting closer to full, stable support — keep it up!

Brannonq

I have been on 2.4 beta for a couple weeks now and I am having problems with meridian flip. I am using the ASI2600MC Air and AM5n mount. The issue is it will start the meridian flip hours before it is supposed to. It will go into meridian flip hours before the object is supposed to cross the meridian and then stop due to an error. For example, imaging the Dark Shark Nebula, the meridian should not happen until 6am-7am but the ASI air is attempting to do the flip around 3am. It will try 30 times and then shut down. I have a security camera in the back yard and the mount is not moving at all during this time. It happened again last night but I caught it, had to stop the auto run and restart. The interesting thing is the countdown on the main display shows the correct meridian flip time but the ASI air tries to do it hours before. Between the ASI2600 Air corrupted images, exposure failures, and now this, I can't ever get a full night with some issue with the ASI system. My coordinates are accurate and the ASI software shows my correct location when I log in. I have previously submitted a bug report and included logs but was told the logs were incomplete so I am including an example again.

autorun-log-2025-05-28-222908.txt

37kB

PMTeam@ZWO

Brannonq Hello. We have fixed the meridian reversal in the 2.4 test package. Are you still experiencing anomalies when using the latest package?

azskyguy

First of all, I appreciate the effort that went into this beta release. Having the additional catalogs are great, and there are many other useful features.
Imaging last night I had a bunch of problems, and they weren't issues seen on previous nights with the same software.
I'm using an AM3 mount, with an Askar 103, and your 2600MC Pro Air. For some reasons, it did not want to plate solve when it came to polar aligning. (As before, the all new plate solve method (experimental) doesn't work. It worked great in previous firmware, so I used the default method.
Then I had trouble guiding, which has always been fine with this gear. Last night my old calibration didn't work. Went to recalibrate, and while the scope was guiding I got no error data.. everything read zero but clearly there was movement of the guide star.
Anyway, here's hoping there is another update soon. It's very inconsistent, and still plagued by poor WiFi reception.
Seems like each update it gets worse, constantly cutting out and losing WiFI.

Brannonq

Had another issue and not sure if this is v2.4 related. I shot my flats inside this morning with a light panel. The flats were from a Duo Narrowband filter and normally when use the Autorun Flat option and let ASI select the exposure time I get a flat that is about 1/3 of the histogram and I can clearly see the vignetting and two prominent dust motes at the bottom corner of my sensor (they are always there and use them to judge the quality of my flats). When the exposures showed up they were entirely a uniform grey color and did not look like flats at all. I tried multiple times and even manually shot them in preview mode which gave inconsistent results (some looked liked flats, some grey). In addition, I noticed my cooling was up and down rapidly from -10 C to -7 C, back and forth. This was inside my house which was 24 C. I reinstalled v 2.3.3 and everything worked like normal on the first attempt and the temp stayed constant.

PMTeam@ZWO

Brannonq Hello. Is the flat field exposure time calculated correctly using v2.3.3? If it is convenient, please record a video of the problematic version for us. Please send it to email luffy.liu@zwoptical.com, thank you.

tomas-kocanda

Brannonq I reported exactly the same issue about week ago - using bug report from beta as well as in beta testers FB group. No reply. 100% confirm exactly the same problems - impossible to make correct flats.

azskyguy

Once again tonight system simply stopped dead in the middle of a sequence. Was shooting 19- 300 second images. On image 14 system just stopped. Guiding continued. Had to hit pause, and resume. This bug makes me have to constantly monitor the system, which is not a good use of my time. Please fix.
Thanks.

PMTeam@ZWO

James203 Hello. This requirement is in our plan and will be supported in future versions.