ASIAIR v2.4.2 has been released!: Page 14

ASIAIR v2.4.2 has been released!

Luxo

Northern Sydney. Member of NSAS and BMAS. You'll find me on CN easily enough...

malc

I last reported 13 days ago that v. 2.4.3 on Android phone app now appeared to be working for me. I’ve since had 3 further imaging sessions where everything has now functioned perfectly. I’ve tried 2 telescopes, a RedCat 61 (300mm) and a Tak FSQ106 (530mm) with ASIAIR2600MM Air Duo and ASIAIR2600MC Air Duo cameras, the MM with a narrowband HIII filter and the MC with an Optolong L-extreme filter. Mount is an ap1200gto. As I reported last time, what made the change from non functioning to working appears to be the Guide settings, amending from the default 2000 for all three, to:

Callibration Step 600
Max DEC Duration 450
Max RA Duration 450

I’ve also had no problem with plate solving tho haven’t used the "new plate solve".

Luxo

Ok… I’m not surprised platesolving would appear to work for you with that combination - using a premium mount which is balanced implies it will be on target within a minutes or two of arc, and short focal lengths.

It’s a whole different ballgame at 3000mm. While my CW350 does GOTO quite well an error of a few arc min is very obvious, whereas on your scopes you’d never notice.

Yet version 2.3.3 nails the target every time to arc seconds.

franco

Luxo it's a bit hard to understand why plate solving would change between versions, the Air calls out to the astrometry.net programs to find stars and then run the solver using the pre installed index files. It's one of the reasons that the OS image is so big, the Air has to cater for all FOVs unlike something like Ekos which lets you pick and choose which ones to load. I'm in sunny Perth by the way.

Luxo

It did change - substantially. Corsair discovered ZWO had updated the platesolving content from astrometry.net in version 2.4 onwards. While it appears it is significantly quicker to solve, something else was broken in the process.

Corsair

Luxo
FYI That wasn't me. That was this post:

https://bbs.zwoastro.com/d/24898-asiair-v242-has-been-released/213

franco

Luxo yes it does indeed look like they have new binaries for solve-field and plot-constellations. Purely jumping to conclusions I would guess that the multi-threading added to solve-field has made it faster but perhaps also broken it in some instances. What's intriguing is they have been renamed perhaps signalling a divergence from the code on astrometry.net.

tom.saari

I have two astrophotography rigs currently, both use ASIAIR plus (two different versions, the one with SD card and another one with bigger 256 gb internal memory).

Rig 1:
102 mm APO with 564 mm in focal length
AM5N mount
ASI2600MC pro camera
ASI174mm mini with 50mm WO Guide scope
ZWO EAF, EFW, CAA

Rig 2:
Askar SQA55 APO
AM5N mount
ASI2600MM mono camera
ASI120mm mini guide camera with Askar 32mm guide scope
ZWO EAF, EFW

I'm currently not using but will be testing later ASIAIR with my Celestron C11 rig, we shall see how that works with a lot more focal length.

I have version 2.4.3 installed and use my Samsung galaxy android tablet to control both rigs. I have imaged 4 nights total this season (it has been so cloudy), I have had absolutely no issues with ASIAIR with either rig on any of the nights.

Polar aligment works like usual
GOTO works like usual
Guiding works, no issues
Meridian flips, no issues (with Plan or Autorun modes) and guiding resumes normaly after meridian flips
Also Live stacking works, they even added the autofocus feature to run in live stacking (finally!)
Also ZWO CAA works way better than in previous versions, no dangerous rotations in 180 degree mode (although I do usually shut off CAA when going to sleep just in case).
I'm indifferent on the new catalogue UI design, the list itself seems quite clear but the included images are horrible.

So I'm currently quite happy with my ASIAIR products, of course I would prefer way better communication from ZWO and better details for any patch notes (almost all companies are notoriously bad at this!). But please everyone if you have issues, detailed and constructive criticism is always better than just rageposting. Clearly not all setups have issues so the developers are going to need details fixing things. I hope now that ZWO staff holiday has ended that we get some more interaction here with the developers. I'd like to think more constructive feedback would promote more interaction from the devs.

Just my 2 cents on this matter.

magore

More updates from my Oct 8th testing from three days ago.
Last night I did another imagining session for about 8 hours of imagining in. Everything worked including meridian flip. I was not able to test all sky polar alignment as I was focused on imagining for this test.

gm6wS8xS

Just for your information: 2.4.9 (2.3.3) is back on iOS via Testflight. What now?

Luxo

Well... with Touptek StellaVita emerging as a viable rival, it's quite possible ZWO may decide to concentrate on camera products, abandon ASAir and leave that to Touptek. And to that end, leave 2.3.3 as the last stable version.

IMHO the ASIAir was a loss-leader - the bait to get us to buy into their ecosystem, at a stupidly low price, with no thought to the long-term cost of developing and maintaining the software properly. And that assumed they can deliver reliable software. Which they have demonstrated they cannot, many times.

I would also add - as an Apple user since 1984 and a MacOS developer - ASIAir is outstanding in a really BAD way. It is the one and only app I have ever had to revert to a previous version. That said, StellaVita isn't much better - it too is chock full of bugs - but at least it works, to the extent I can go home with usable images. The same cannot be said of ASIAir 2.4x.

Corsair

Luxo
Really hoping to get out tomorrow night with my setup (as mentioned here https://bbs.zwoastro.com/d/24898-asiair-v242-has-been-released/247) to see if the steps I take in my workflow remain working (although not for long as it is a work night).

It is clear from the posts that 2.4.2/2.4.3 is actually working fine for others so many would disagree with your comment on this.

And whilst you may not feel like doing so - testing out your setup as I mentioned here (https://bbs.zwoastro.com/d/24898-asiair-v242-has-been-released/262) wtith just a minimal setup and then - if assuming there are no issues with a minimal setup - add bits in one by one would actually help to narrow down what is causing the issues by elminating as many vairables as possible.

For me - nothing has really competed with what the ASIAIR could offer in terms of a simple, convenient EAA experience (using Live Mode of Live Stacking).

Yes, it isn't as feature rich as SharpCap i n terms of its EAA offerring, but I have been (and hopefully will continue to be once I can test 2.4.3) fine that and accept the limitations of the ASIAIR that goes with the simplicity and covenience.

Sure - I still like to request features that I believe should be implemented just like anyone else - but I go it based on what it could at the time when I bought it.

I'm glad the Stellavita is out there and being worked on (and after conversion to AUD would cost a little more than the ASIAIR at this stage). Competition is needed in this space. However the Stellavita, at time of writing this, doesn't have a Live Mode so doesn't do Live Stacking and one should not purchase any product on the promise of future support.

So the only other option (not including the very expensive options) for me would be something like the AstroPC Pro II or a Mini-PC (e.g. Mele Quieter4C) which runs Windows to run ASCOM, GSS, SharpCap (another cost), etc, in order to get somewhat the same experience (but with a vastly different mobile device experience).

watcheroftheskies

Luxo Take it from me - Stellavita has a very long way to go to get anywhere near the ASI Air, lot and lots of bugs, after wasting 3 hours trying to get my Stellavita to calibrate the autoguide due to continually locking up so I gave up,I disconnected it and attached my AA+, within 20min's I was imaging and the SV has remained in it's box ever since, many users on the SV forum are stating the SV is not fit form purpose with many wishing they had never bought it, I keep popping on the SV forum to see if Touptek have got their act together in fixing the many issues but after 4 months of monitoring the group there are still bugs which were evident when I tried to use it many months ago! I now have an ASI Air +, ASI Air mini and the Stellavita will stay boxed until they get it sorted & hopefully use it in on my non ZWO gear but in my opinion I don't think they ever will - I think they will give up on it and bring out a Stellavita v2 ( you heard from me first!), my 2x ASI air's run flawlessly on my 2 imaging set up's albeit - any issue I had was with the terrible firmware update some months ago which almost everyone had issues with.
I must state:
Imaging set up 1 is permanently on a pier and I've NEVER have any issues with plate solves, guide calibrations so maybe being in a fixed location may contribute to not having any issues.
I'm on V2.4.4. using the following kit:
Imaging set up 1:
ASI Air Plus (32 gig)
127mm Meade triplet.
HEQ5 Pro.
9x50 finder/guider with 290mm /IR cut filter.
EAF.
CAA
Main imaging camera: Alternate between : ZWO ASI 294mm Pro & ZWO ASI 585mc Pro.
Imaging set up 2: (portable set up)
ASI Air mini ( 2.4.4.)
William Optics ZS66 with dedicated W.O. Type II flattener/reducer.
HEQ5 pro.
ZSO ASI 533mc Pro.
9x50 finder/ 120mm-s /IR cut filter.

rikiau123

Version:2.4.4 beta public
2025-10-14 is out

azskyguy

I have 2.4.4. Meridian flips fail every time. Logs sent and I was in dialog with ZWO until the Chinese Holiday slowed everything down.

Bill H

My meridian flips have been failing in autorun with iOS, 2.42(12.55). AM5N firmware 1.6.3. My autorun logs show the failed flip. No filter changes, no autofocus changes, just tracking disabled and a failed flip. I have reported the bug, let's see if I get any feedback. I really want a way to go back to 2.3.3. I was using it happily on TestFlight until it expired. PLEASE ZWO, make it available again.

gm6wS8xS

Bill H

Hi Bill,
Since yesterday, it's been available again in Testflight as version 2.4.9. It's now running for 89 days.

Luxo

Bill H
Bill, you can revert to the real version 2.3.3, without TestFlight and no time limit. On iOS, all versions back to 1.0 are available.

See section 24 of the Missing Manual available at https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/010wWOevZeXCOc79pGNNBWV9Q#ASIAir_Missing_Manual_0.8

azskyguy

gm6wS8xS I'm not seeing this in TestFlight on my Mac... it shows nothing newer than the dreaded 2.4.4.

Bill H

gm6wS8xS

I see a 2.5.9, but not a 2.4.9. Any advice?

bobpowell@northstate

Luxo Thanks very much for all your work on this! I am wondering if one reverts on Android to older version, are all previous plans/targets lost? Can they be backed up prior to the uninstall/reinstall and restored?

Luxo

It's in TestFlight on my iPhone, it indicates it is 2.3.3. No other builds available either.

gm6wS8xS

Bill H

Hello Bill,
To be honest, I have no idea. I found the link for Testflight here in the forum. After 90 days, the then version 2.3.3 expired, so I ended up using 2.3.3 on Android.

At some point, after 2.4.4 was available on Testflight, I installed it on all my Asiairs; I didn't have much time to test it.
That could be the case, but I can't remember for sure. I asked for 2.3.3 in Testflight using the "send feedback" option. I have no idea if you can then unlock the version individually.

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