ASIAIR v2.5 has been released!: Page 8

ASIAIR v2.5 has been released!

79jq4y3F

Total sheer incompetence, screw ups started early last year and nothing has been done to address them.
Buy an Intel/Asus NUC 11 or above, Light years ahead, work with everything, Pick one up from £100 on ebay

Luxo

Had an interesting night with my rig imaging running ffor 3 hours. I made just 1 change - powered the ASI2600MC DUO directly from the main battery, not the ASIAir. It worked from beginning to end with no crash or freeze. Last outing - when it crashed repeatedly - the camera was powered from the ASIAir.

I’m beginning to wonder if the crashing / freezing is related to the power drawn on the 12V ports. Next attempt will be a February.

flappah

Luxo interesting. I’ve mounted an SVBony SV241 on both my Asiair’s for power distribution and have the camera connected to that. I used to have power issues before but this little device solved that issue.

R0k9pZfT

Luxo To date, I've not had any problems with my 2600MC-Duo running off my ASIAir power. For what it's worth, I have an Ecopower battery and I made the power cable myself. I did have chronic low voltage with another cable I made once--so the cable can make a word of difference. I think on the faulty cable I used a different brand of connector. Lesson being--it can be a power cable.

rrosenberg8

I'm having trouble with WiFi connection going out during a session and needing a restart of the ASIAirPlus I bought during the summer. It seems more common lately winter, when the temperature was around 40F - could it be temp related? The device is supposed to to be OK down to 30F. Has anyone other thoughts or suggestions?
I did report to ZWO service but no response. Thank you

Luxo

I think one issue is that the 2600MC DUO can indeed draw more than 3A with both cameras running, the cooler near 100% (it’s summer here) and while the 2600 tries to upload an image to ASIAir. With ASIAir supplying the camera, the current drawn by ASIAir reached 3.5A which is more than the spec for one output.

And for a while I had a heater strap on it as well. Not anymore though - I’ve switched to using fans and no heaters at all. The fans draw about 0.1A.

Lesson learnt.

Moontanner

Luxo
What sort of voltage are you getting at the ASIAIR? Could it be an issue with your supply cable?
It's been awhile since I looked at my power supply to check mine, but I did have a load of issues months ago that I traced to my power supply cable. A new cable fixed things.

I'm running the 2600MM DUO through the ASIAIR with no issues and prior to that it was a 2600MC with 290mini. All with heaters running, although the Bra Boy's CN posts on fans definitely have me rethinking the heaters.

Corsair

The more demanding the camera (or any equipment really) the less inclined I would be to use the power outputs of the ASIAIR.

I use it to run my ASI294MC Pro cooled to 0°C (I've only ever seen the cooler run at 60% at most when initally cooling which then drops down to below 40% to maintain if not lower on cooler nights). It works fine for that camera and I don't power anything else from it.

However, when it comes to cameras like the 2600 (Duo), it would probably be best to power it with its own power supply.

Luxo

Battery voltmeter typically shows 13.4V, which agrees with my multimeter.
ASIAir reports 12.8. The ASIAir draws 0.3A.

The cable for the ASIAir is 2m long, 18AWG copper (heavy duty speaker wire).

Luxo

Ya... 'Bra Boy is an old buddy of mine, I ultimately sold him the Santel MK91 when I bought my 10". He started doing experiments on dew prevention long ago and likewise I have finally switched to fans in the dewcap and don't use heaters anymore. The improvement is quite significant on a big scope, but probably not noticeable on scopes under 150mm.

Battery voltmeter typically shows 13.4V, which agrees with my multimeter. The battery is a DryPower Deep-Cycle 50Amp-hour LiFePo so enough to run the rig from 5 nights or more without a noticeable drop in output. ASIAir reports 12.8. The ASIAir draws 0.3A. The cables I made are 2m long, 18AWG copper (heavy duty speaker wire) and can carry more than 15A. The battery box has a circuit breaker (10A), voltmeter and 100A switch, no other electronics.

Part of the issue is how much power is being drawn by the camera cooler - the night I had lots of crashes was hot (30C) and the cooler was at 90% or more and struggling to hold 0C. The two previously nights when ASIAir worked perfectly were not hot and it was running at something like 20%. In addition the ASIAIr was powering the EAF from a USB port.

So it doesn't surprise me when the load on the ASIAir is safely below the spec limit (3A) it works OK, but exceeding that limit on a 12V output implies it may crash.

Moontanner

Luxo The improvement is quite significant on a big scope, but probably not noticeable on scopes under 150mm.

I blame you entirely for making me want to tune up my old SCT and strap the 2600MC Pro on for an ASIAIR challenge at 2500FL. A sideways glance causes dew on that sucker. 😉
A great starter scope for a totally clueless newbie.

Thanks for posting up detailed specs for your power supply. My supply setup is (and was) similar, although I'm not having crashes during hot weather like you've experienced.
I'm pretty sure the issue with my old power supply cord was occurring at the socket and plug connection. It was replaced rather than digging into the cause too deeply.
My gut feeling at the time was that there was an issue during slewing that would cause brief dips in the supply and cause crashes on the ASIAIR. On very rare occasions I would even get a brief low voltage warning on the ASIAIR App.
I believe this was related to the connector, and not the cord/supply itself.

Maybe it's worthwhile trying a different supply cord and seeing if you still get crashes during high cooler draw on the Duo?

Corsair

Luxo
Out of curiosity, would you mind posting a photo of how you've mounted the fan(s) on your dew shield? And also the make/model of the fans?

Moontanner

Corsair
Bra Boy's (Alex's) post on CN. He's also on Ice In Space. https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/753895-dew-free-scts-maks-without-heat-it-is-possible-refractors-too/#comments
I still remember his helpful and polite comments from back when I first started in this hobby. He's a really nice guy from my limited experience.
The Bra Boy dig is a bit of a Sydney centric joke. The "Bra" ( AKA Maroubra) has got a bit of a history, as does where I grew up in Sydney.

@Luxo
I've done a bit of experimentation to see what I can see while running the ASIAIR at higher temps along with the 2600 Duo. 100% cooler and everything running flat out in a closed cupboard on a 29c day.
0 crashing, or strange behaviour, although I was obviously guiding no mount with hot pixels only as guide stars.
39c predicted for Monday. If you want me to stress test something, let me know.

I did pull out my IR cam to have a look at where all the power was going. That was interesting as I found a few unexpected hotspots along with the usual culprits. The fuse holder for the ASIAIR supply and the USB storage I use for data transfer. Not crazy hot, but pretty hot and worth investigating.

I think I remember reading that you're using SD cards. I've found them to have pretty bad longevity in the past due to what I feel is an issue with shedding heat.
Are you able to try a decent USB3 stick with an aluminium case? Mine was clocking over 40c while running.
Could a hot SD card be causing issues with data transfer during your imaging sessions?

Corsair

Moontanner
Cheers. Oh yes I know all about the Bra boys. I grew up around Kogarah in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s (only moved out of Sydney in 2005). Hehe.

Also, the product page of the 2600MC Duo is interesting: https://www.zwoastro.com/product/asi2600mc-duo/

Says it can do 30-35°C below ambient but it does it appear, from the note highlighted in red at the top, that it can draw up to 5A which is beyond the capacity of the ASIAIR which max out at 3A for one port (6A across all 4 max as well).

Moontanner

Corsair
I held out until 2019 before I realised I was too honest and wasn't born with a silver spoon. I do miss the crazy sometimes, along with the amazing characters and landscapes.
Such a big, fun, and beautiful city.

I'm going to call BS on the 5amp draw from my testing. I feel like that's more of a warning to supply enough 12v+ grunt, rather than an actual 5amp at 12v draw while using the Duo in full swing.
Voltage dips are the killer from my very limited testing. And I've only seen them caused by wiggling around the plugs and sockets when using a properly charged LiFePo.

@Luxo
How hot are we talking? I'm in the same boat with terrible conditions for actual imaging. I'm happy to test out some different scenarios to see if I can force the same power supply issues that cause a similar crash.
It could just be your ASIAIR, or something else simple that's giving you grief.

Luxo

Yup. It increasingly looks as if the camera overloading the 12V outputs was the main culprit of the crashes.

Set up last night despite poor conditions (hot, humid, moon) again with the 2600MC DUO on its own cable from the battery - all else the same - and it ran for 4 hours without a glitch. Tried VIDEO (on Jupiter) then 10 subs using PLAN on NGC1365. Was more of a test than anything serious as the seeing was really poor. The seeing was so bad I gave up trying to AUTOFOCUS and did it manually.

Moontanner

R0k9pZfT I think on the faulty cable I used a different brand of connector.

The quality of connectors can be pretty hit and miss these days. It definitely wasn't the cable or my soldering that caused issues with my old setup. It also could've been the cig socket splitter, so I swapped out the lot.
I'm now running a 100AH LiFePo with a 50amp Anderson plug that splits into two cig sockets. Then I run two of the Pegasus branded power supply cables to the mount and ASIAIR separately. No power probs since I switched everything out.

@Luxo
It's generally pretty warm at night in Brisbane this time of year. It usually settles around 27-28c for the early part of the evening. If it's clear things will settle down to the 20-25C range in the very early hours for not nearly long enough IMO.
We don't really get those crazy 40+ days in summer. If we do it'll storm and dump 35mm in 30mins like it did last night and shed a load of heat.
The EAF external temp probe is strapped to the scope tube and was reading 28.9c when I was trying to max things out with the cooler running at 100%.
The most I saw reported by the ASIAR was 4amp input when I cranked up the dew strap to 100%. The ASIAIR reports 11.8v input vs the usual 12.8v when it's going flat out in this state and the CPU reports around 54C.

It's hard to say how accurate the ASIAIR is for checking power draw, but I couldn't seem to get my DUO drawing more than around 3amps with the cooler running at 100%.

Luxo

And what are the night-time temps where you are ? Here at the moment it’s mid summer and can be +30C at midnight.

Luxo

Much depends on how hard the cooler is working.

So what are the night-time temps where you are ? Here at the moment it’s mid summer and can be +30C at midnight.

PMTeam@ZWO

Sonixx Hello Sonixx, we are aware of this issue. Our engineers are currently developing a new test package to identify the root cause. Once it's ready, I will send it to you via email. Could you please share your email address with me? This will allow us to communicate more effectively.

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