ASIAIR v2.4.2 has been released!: Page 13

ASIAIR v2.4.2 has been released!

Haggy38

Absolutely no Issues whatsoever, Focussing, Meridian Flip, CAA, Guiding, etc. My setup:

ASIAIR v2.4.2

Bogota, Colombia
ZWO AM5
ZWO Asi2600MC Pro
ZWO CAA
ZWO EAF
Svbony sv550 122mm APO
ZWO Asi120mm Mini
ZWO Asiair Mini

Hope gets solve for you'll guys sooo.

retman

Haggy38 android or iOS?

V5HL6Ecz

Haggy38

Me too, no problem

ASIAIR v2.4.3
Tablet Samsung Galaxy A10+

Italy - Milano ( Bortle 9 )
Sky-watcher GTI
ZWO Asi533MC Pro ( svbony sv220 - optolong l-pro )
ZWO EAF
Askar 71F - 490mm APO
ZWO Asi120mm Mini
ZWO Asiair +

Haggy38

retman IOS iPad, iPhone and Mac mini M4

Luxo

This is an issue with the app and firmware. Version 2.3.3 and earlier behave correctly.

Corsair

Corsair
Well so far I've tested doing calibration frames in Live Mode. All is working well and as expected using ASIAIR AppFirmware 2.4.3-12.55 on my Galaxy S22 Ultra running Android 15.

Slewing around with the on screen mount controls works fine. Going to Home position works fine. Manually focusing for daylight then night time rough focusing works fine.

Mount Time is correct . We've entered Daylight Saving Time now and the time shown on the mount (under Mount Settings > Mount Info ) is one hour behind the time at my location (shown in the top left of the App and on my Android device itself) with the little warning message now showing. All as expected.

All this has been done indoors due to not so great weather. Hoping I'll get a chance soon to test outdoors.

My use case:
Unguided EAA using Live Mode for Live Stacking. I only ever use Preview, Live, Focus, and Video modes. I don't do Meridian Flip.

My equipment:
Galaxy S22 Ultra running Android 15
ASIAIR App-Firmware 2.4.3 - 12.55
ASIAIR Plus 32GB

HEQ5 Pro mount connected as EQMOD Mount (EQMOD cable from mount to usb 2.0 port on ASIAIR Plus) with its own power supply.
C8 SCT with f/6.3 Reducer and dew shield
ASI294MC Pro camera cooled to 0°C connected to usb 3.0 port on ASIAIR and powered from the ASIAIR.

Corsair

Corsair
Well I've just tested my workflow out. All went well for my use case and even better I'm really liking the new Filter that's part of the Celestial Library now. It works great.

My use case:
Unguided EAA using Live Mode for Live Stacking. I only ever use Preview, Live, Focus, and Video modes.
I don't do Meridian Flip.
I don't have an EAF (so manually focus only). I don't have an EFW (just use a ZWO UV/IR Filter which is attached to the front of the camera). I don't have a CAA.
As mentioned - I don't do guiding.
I didn't use All Sky Polar Alignment.
I didn't use "New Plate Solve".

Equipment:
Galaxy S22 Ultra Android 15, One UI version 7.0 ASIAIR App-Firmware 2.4.3 - 12.55
ASIAIR Plus 32GB
HEQ5 Pro mount connected as EQMOD Mount (EQMOD cable from mount to usb 2.0 port on ASIAIR Plus) with its own power supply.
C8 SCT with f/6.3 Reducer and dew shield
ASI294MC Pro camera cooled to 0°C connected to usb 3.0 port on ASIAIR and powered from the ASIAIR.

After setting up during the late afternoon/early evening first thing I do in Preview Mode is a plate solve and I check for expected behaviour when pointing at the SCP (i.e. mount in Home position) then when pointing greater than 5° away from the SCP.

Mount Settings > Go Home to check Home position set correctly. Tap on Sync Mount.
Mount in Home position, Preview Mode, 2s exposure, Focus is good so Plate Solve succeded nice and fast, tapped on Sync and received expected error message about being too close to the SCP.
Manually slewed away from the SCP using the on screen mount controls. Preview Mode, 2s Exposure, Focus good, Plate Solve succeed nice and fast, tapped on Sync and sync succeeded.
Mount Settings > Go Home to check Home position set correctly. Tap on Sync Mount.

Now I did the Polar Alignment. This went smoothly. I don't use auto refresh but manually refresh. So whenever I make a chance I wait for 5 seconds for the mount to settle then tap refresh. PA Total Error of around 00°00'20". Happy with that.

Then went back into Preview Mode. Then went to Mount Settings > Home. Then after the mount returned to the Home position went to Mount Settings > Sync Mount.

Interestingly, I decided to run the above Polar Alignment routine again, and when I did I didn't notice any significant change in the Total Error. It still stayed around 00°00'20". So there's that.

With Mount back in Home position, I opened the Celestial Library, went to Name Stars, and found a bright star in order to manually refine focus with a bahtinov mask. Tapped on Centre. Then when the ASIAIR took me to the star map I tapped on the option to Go To the target. ASIAIR slewed to the star, centered after about two goes, plate solved, succeeded. Star was centered nicely when checked in Preview Mode.

Went into Focus Mode. Began the process. Put in bahtinov mask. Dragged green box over star and tapped Zoom. Zoomed into star perfectly so I could manually adjust focus. Once done took off bahtinov mask, left the Zoom mode, stopped Focus Mode routine.

Mount Settings > Go Home. Once back in Home position, Mount Settings > Sync Mount.

I tested browsing to a target (NGC 300). Once again - the Filter worked great in the Celestial library. Centred on target. Then tapped the optiion to Go To the target. Again, after a couple of goes, ASIAIR centered and plate solved successfully.

Took a 30 second exposure in Preview Mode to check all was well. Worked great.

Went into Live Mode. Selected 30 second exposure. Bin 1. Time spent capturing set to 20 minutes. Select Master Dark and Bias (yes, I know, don't need bias frames for my camera but I thought I'd do it anyway as a test). Didn't do Flat frames as I didn't have a lot of time and just wanted to get the test done. Anyway, I've tested out doing all calibration frames previously with the same setup and it's worked great (did it indoors due to the weather).

Ran the Live Stacking in Live Mode for 20 minutes . Target captured nicely.

Then went to Mount Settings > Go Home. Mount returned to Home position.

Turned everything off and packed up for the night (I don't have a permanent setup and can't unfortunately).

Conclusion:
ASIAIR App-Firmware 2.4.3-12.55 worked as expected for my workflow. No issues. I'm happy with it.

FYI: I did screen recordings through the whole thing above and will put together a video that I'll share when I can.

Luxo

Sure slew works .. it’s GOTO with platesolve that has an issue - the platesolve never finishes.

And you haven’t tried autoguiding.

Corsair

Luxo
And, like I said, I'll test when I get the chance. Weather and available time have to coincide.

And I've clearly stated I only do unguided EAA in Live Mode so rely purely on mount tracking to keep me on target after the ASIAIR does a Go To, platesolve, centre, platesolve routine.

So I won't be testing guiding. I won't be testing Autorun. I won't be testing Plan Mode. I won't be testing Mosaic.

I also don't use an EAF, EFW, or CAA. Nor do I use dew heaters.

I have a comparatively simple setup. Will see if it works with just the basics.

flappah

Ive git two rigs. The first, an SQA55 with Star Adventurer GTi, asi120mm mini, EAF, asi533mc pro and an ASIAIR plus work fine enough. PA, goto, plate solving, guiding. All work as expected. So no problems there.

The second rig is an FF80 scope with EAF, EFW, 220mm mini, asi585mc-pro and CAA on an AM5 do work with an AISAIR but the CAA support is a mess. So i converted the whole rig to Nina. Nina has at least the 90 degrees support for the CAA.

Now I’m busy setting up a third rig with Intes Micro scope and from what I gather from Luxo from his comments on CloudyNights is that the more exotic combinations have issues with the 2.4.x release of the ASIAIR. So I expect issues with this third rig.

Sonixx

From the posts above it seems there are only very isolated problematic cases where the root cause of problems is unknown.
For the vast majority of people the current stable version just seem to work fine.

While this does not help our friends who have indeed real issues, in the grand scheme of things the ASIAIR is a great product which just works for tens of thousands of users. Nobody else to this day came close offering a similar package.

After all the recent ZWO bashing I think we should stop for a moment and appreciate the team behind the the Asiair. That hopefully will continue improving and innovating ( and have a more rigid testing regime).

Thanks for listening,

Stephan

franco

Sonixx is it too much to ask that a commercial product does what it claims to do?

Sonixx

Hi Franco,

Of course you can expect what has been promised. I am basically using all the features of the ASIAIR, except planetary imaging, and everything works reliably.

And it seems that it is the same for most people. Some people have issues, but I feel this is just a small number and I hope their problems are worked on by ZWO.

Since the really sh.. release, I feel much of the bashing is just for bashing sake. ZWO apologised and the situation seem to have improved for most.

What kind of issues are you experiencing with the latest regular release under which circumstances ?

People who have issues must have something in common, hence my post a few days earlier.

There were not many responses with actual issues, bit maybe one source of problem could be a too narrow field of view.

franco

Sonixx what ZWO did was provide a way to link together a bunch of disparate open source software in a exquisite tiny red CNC aluminium box and allow you to control it all from your phone - brilliant! The early versions could be forgiven for being a bit rough around the edges but several years on, nothing much has changed in terms of reliability. Just because it happens to work for you doesn't mean the people for whom it doesn't work, should remain silent.

gm6wS8xS

One reason I was so quiet – the bad weather – there was no opportunity to test extensively.
I had the opportunity to test the Asiair 2600MC and Asiair+ with IOS 2.4.4 Testflight over two nights.
Plate solving has, as far as I can tell, become significantly better and faster.
Meridian Flip is working again.
But since there's no changelog for both, it's difficult to make a statement after two nights.
How are you supposed to test then?

It wouldn't be a problem if the communication was working.

magore

I thought I would take time to report that I am NOT having any of the recent reported problems as of Oct 8th. I have been doing multi-target imaging with plate solve and all works fine.

The only thing I did not test recently was allsky polar alignment which in the past (as of a month ago) was failing depending on what part of the sky I used for stars. Specifically when using a few overhead quadrants split by the meridian and prime vertical polar alignment used to fail with rising errors. FYI I always avoided areas near the lines themselves avoided crossing them. Testing all of these areas is time consuming. For example NE directions worked. SE did not.

On Oct I used my asiair plus with am5 mount, zwo filter wheel, zwo Asi290mm guider asi294mc camera. zwo focuser. AM5 firmware was up to date as was my asiair plus.

Corsair

magore good to hear it.

What are you using to run the ASIAIR App by the way?

magore

Corsair
I am using a Google pixel 6 running android 16.

fA426YZQ

franco The problem is not the ASIAir in general. The problem is when you push the limits of anything (Car, Airplane and yes the ASIAir), you will encounter difficult to solve issues that do not offer great return on the work involved to solve them. The typical engineering problem, 90% of issues are easy, 10% of issues are really difficult.

When the FOV is very small, the indexes for plate solving get very large. For 8' - 11', they are 1.5 GB and for 2.0' - 2.8' they are around 13.5 GB. Consider that the 'disk' size is 32 GB for a lot of these units, it does not leave much space. I believe luxo's scope has a relatively tight FOV.

The Raspberry Pi 4B (for the pro series) is very slow and memory limited. Even the Raspberry Pi 5 does not get much better. Plate solving tight FOV is going to be very slow and regularly time-out. The Raspberry Pi and as a consequence, the ASIAir just does not have the horse power needed for tight FOV plate solving. There are also very few stars in the FOV and the contrast and other options are used for typically planetary or lunar imaging makes plate solving even worse as fewer stars are often visible. Once plate solving is broken, meridian flip and polar alignment are also dicey.

Lastly, you design for the average and cover as wide of a range as possible. The ASIAir is not a perfect astrophotography solution. It is a very good one, providing a great astrophotography suite at a very inexpensive price and allowing for very low power requirements. If the ASIAir is not sufficient for what someone is using it for, then their only option is to get something that is sufficient. There are others out there but having the simple menu integration that ZWO has done, I doubt you will find one that is inexpensive and as easy to use. These generally use a full-up computer and not a lightweight arm computer and use direct or VNC connection.

There is a difference between being silent and having unreasonable expectations. I do not expect my Subaru to perform demanding off-road driving like a Jeep does. It can do some but is definitely not the ideal solution and I need to limit my expectations of what it can do. This product is an inexpensive device that offers the ability to control astrophotography sessions very well. It is also easy to use even for a beginner. Other products offer a lot more capability but at the cost of simplicity.

Luxo

Nope that is not the issue with the platesolving.

With 4 hours of dark last night with some buddies, we lined up 4 ASIAirs with 2.4.2 (iOS) and 2.4.3 (Android) installed. The rigs ranged from a RedCat 51 on an AM3 to an Esprit 120 on an AM5, all with EAF. Cameras were ASI1600 and ASI2600MM (the RedCat was shooting mono with narrowband filters).

All could polar align OK.
Autofocus was OK.
GOTO with plate solve is interesting - but it is broken.
What happens is that it slews to the target, executes a first plate-solve, then moves somewhere near the target and no further moves occur. Platesolving however continues to take frames, and never finishes because the mount doesn't move exactly onto the target, where as ASI2.3.3 does move exactly;y onto the target.

This is close enough for those with little refractors to think its all good, but the Esprit 120 confirmed what I experienced - watch closely and its only makes one attempt at moving the mount after the first plate solve.

The only positive note was the plate solve is much faster.

Autoguiding was a mixed bag. On the little rigs it worked but on the Esprit 120 it did not, it starts, multi-star guiding starts, but after a few minutes it loses stars and sits there showing GUIDING in green text, but its not actually guiding - the mount was tracking blind. Again, little rigs could get away with this and never notice, but on a longer focal length it becomes quite obvious.

Rolled all four back to 2.3.3 in preparation for the next two weekends.

Corsair

Luxo
I'm assuming none of them had "New Plate Solve" selected under experimental features in the about section?

And you're saying the plate solve issue was present for people on both Android App 2.4.3 and Apple App 2.4.2 ?

What. version of the Android OS and what model Android devices are they using?

What version of iOS/iPadOS and what model Apple device are they using?

Can you also test what happens when you only have the absolute minimum connected when using 2.4 3 / 2 4.2?

I.e. OTA, mount, main camera only

Disconnect from the ASIAIR and/or cameras any CAA, EAF, EFW, etc.

So the only thing would be:
Power in to ASIAIR
camera to usb 3.0 port
Mount to usb 2.0 port
Nothing or only one power out to camera

Don't do autofocus routines, guiding, etc etc.

So you'll have to manually focus the OTA (very it roughly or as close to focused before polar alignment).

With that setup and after Polar Alignment succeeds do this:
Open Mount Settings > select go home. Check it returns to Home position.
Open Mount Settings > select Sync Mount.

Now, while in Preview Mode, choose a Bright Star to Go To in order to manually refine focus. See if you have success in platesolving, centring, and enabling Mount tracking to stay on target.

If it works - go to focus mode and use a bahtinov mask to refine focus.

Once achieved, go to Mount Settings > Go Home then Mount Settings > Sync Mount.

Now see if you can Go To a target.

magore

Corsair
Ok. More details
I was not using New plate solve and not using All sky

Corsair

A few general things I found is really important in general
1 - calibrate focuser backlash!
2 - focus guidescope
3 - calibrate guidescope tracking
4 - adjust guide scope exposure and gain together. Faster for strainwave like AM5 sauce as 0.5 seconds
5 - make sure plate solve exposure is good enough for the filters you use
6 - if your having WiFi issues use an app like WiFi Analyzer on Android to see what channel your on and how congested it is. (The last time I checked ZWO was using WiFi country code CN which restricts WiFi channel possibilities to 1 channel in most areas. I hacked mine via ssh to my country CA and added several other WiFi profiles I use when traveling)

Luxo

Corsair - weather has turned ugly again, could be 10 days to the next clear evening, they’re rare.

Need a planetarium to test this stuff properly. And there isn’t one in my city.

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