PMTeam@ZWO
There is a large desire from many in the community for a few features that would take the ASIAIR from awesome to stellar (pun intended). We (myself a group of about 20 local hobbyists) put together a list and I was lucky enough to be selected to submit it.
- Autoguider automation. Auto guiding is one of the hardest and most important features of this hobby. Learning all the settings and , much harder, learning how to successfully adjust them is a very steep learning curve. This is a process that many experienced individuals forget how hard it was to learn. A guided setup process would be great. Starting with auto deciding what values to start with (asiair already knows the mount camera focal length etc......), why not have it recommend settings based on known equipmemt. Also, simple things like where to point the scope to calibrate. There's a warning when its too close to poor areas, but why not auto select the best place in the night sky to calibrate based on your target you want to shoot. Also, similar to the EAF Autofocus process, a full blown autoguide calibration, agression, steps, and every other setting would be amazing. Even one that as its autoguiding, it makes small subtle changes to step max and aggression and other settings to optimize total error. The polar align feature of ASIAIR is great. Lets do the same for guiding.
2 west and east side of mount calibration for auto guide. In addition to the items mentioned above there is a glaring issue with m flip. As we all know you can't normally use the same calibration for auto guides on both sides of the mount. ASIAIR allows you to save and reload your cal data from previous calibrations but what if you use it on both sides of the mount. Why not create an east and west calibration and have ASIAIR automatically switch based on what side you are shooting.
3 collimation feature. There are a lot of programs out there that help you collimate but not the ASIAIR. Obviously it can't be auto as it requires screw adjusting, but why not create a feature that directs you to un focus a star and then guide you through the process based on measuring defocused stars. It could calculate actual collimation. Throw in an ZWOEAF and you could automate some of it too.
4 EAF backlash auto detect. Finding exact backlash for a lot of scopes is easy, as you can just watch for when the knob moves. But creating a process that uses an EAF to measure exact backlash based on when images focus changes when you reverse focus knob direction for SCT scopes would be great. Similar to the auto focus routine.....you simply need to tweak it a bit. Backlash determination on an SCT is painful.
5 many of use have more than one scope but use the same camera and ASIAIR to run them. Its a major pain to swap all the equipment and then make all the required changes in asiair for the swapped equipment. Create equipment profiles you can setup and save.this way you simply have to select what profile you want to use based on your equipment layout when the app starts.
Thank you for your consideration
