ASIAIR v3.0 has been released!: Page 14

ASIAIR v3.0 has been released!

Moontanner

sTBcFHM8 I'd like to clarify that I've not tested v3.0 yet not out of disinterest or pessimism, but because we are currently suffering from a severe case of "lots of clouds"

I'll clarify that I wasn't mocking you personally before. This thread has been turned into a dumpster fire by a few users who don't even use V3.0.

If you want something tested in V3.0 it's pretty easy as I have a pier mount close to home. Shooting anything decent at the moment is akin to lucky imaging with all the heat anyway. 80% of the Lights are straight in the bin due to all the heat being shed.
Not a cloud in sight!

Corsair

Moontanner
Well my full plan is to - when both the weather and my free time sync up with a decent night (which hasn't happened for ages! sigh... ) - give 2.5.2 a go and then do the same with 3.0.

That being said - there are, potentially, issues with version 3.0 and Onstep mounts (some have had issues, some haven't) which is what the SAL-33 is so will have to see what happens there.

My aim is to see if I can basically have the same experience in 2.5.2 and 3.0 that I had in 2.4.3 shooting the same target, using the same equipment, with the same use case.

sTBcFHM8

Moontanner

I'll clarify that I wasn't mocking you personally before. This thread has been turned into a dumpster fire by a few users who don't even use V3.0.

I appreciate the clarification, and rest assured that I did not feel personally attacked by your comment, but I just wanted to make sure that people who are really struggling with issues don't have their situation made fun of, or plainly ignored, because a lot of them have pretty genuine issues, including the ones I have personally experienced and that I briefly described. But yeah, some users (not only here, but in other places too) are very unhappy and very vocal. And they tend to turn ZWO announcements into something else.
Can't blame them though. Can't really say that ZWO has been great at listening at user issues, so their frustration is very understandable, even if their way of channeling it might not.

If you want something tested in V3.0 it's pretty easy as I have a pier mount close to home. Shooting anything decent at the moment is akin to lucky imaging with all the heat anyway. 80% of the Lights are straight in the bin due to all the heat being shed.
Not a cloud in sight!

That's very generous of you, and I'm incredibly jealous of your cloud-less sky but not so much of the heat. Hope temperatures drop soon where you are. Technically this weekend we'll have some clear nights and I hope I can at least put the All-Sky PA to the test again. The update notes do not have anything that could led me to believe that this was fixed, but maybe it was solved sneakily. A man can dream.
Clear skies!

Moontanner

Vroomfondel

Luxo From memory - I did that a couple of times - subs a video files were retained but the guider and device settings (mount, focuser, camera selections) were lost.

I didn't lose settings with multiple version changes on the Android app and the newer ASIAIR Plus. The CAA cord twister is a totally different matter.
Screenshots for the win when doing any version changes. Or a notebook.

Moontanner

Corsair
It's 33C here ATM. Welcome to springtime.
Seeing will be very bad tonight. Clouds can only hide so much of how messed up the atmosphere is over the East coast right now.

Corsair My aim is to see if I can basically have the same experience in 2.5.2 and 3.0 that I had in 2.4.3 shooting the same target, using the same equipment, with the same use case.

If you could manage it without getting distracted, that would be awesome. I'm an incessant fixer by nature and struggle to stay the course during testing.
The SAL 33 made my shortlist as the only value for money and easy to strip down harmonic drive.

My gut feeling is telling me that you'll experience very few changes and the update was very minor. Almost as if it's much the same ASIAIR as when purchased.
I couldn't find much of a difference with my old AZEQ6. Not a Onstep mount, of course.

rainmaker001

RomainD yes please!

Luxo

I did the switch tonight from 3.0 to 2.5.2 and then back to 3.0.

The mount and camera selections are retained but the camera settings and guider calibration were dropped as was the EAF and filter wheel, these had to be reset. Also the custom objects.

The standard PA works the same on both.

The sky was too cloudy and very turbulent - seeing was shockingly bad so I never got as far as autofocus let alone AUTORUN or Plan. Clouds and wind moved in so packed up at 9:30 and went home.

magore

Corsair
I live in the northern hemisphere.The last time I checked all sky PA back with version 2.5 or so I spent several days and I tried in all 4 quadrants split by the meridian and zenith. It only worked in 2 of them. I could get ever increasing errors simply by refreshing. Guaranteed to fail if the first and second RA angles passed the meridian. But even if I was within the meridian some failed anyway. I haven't tried again because I get so few good weather days overall. So if you have trees nearby you better hope you have a clear horizon down below 30 degrees. Not everyone can view Polaris because of obstructions. It would be cool if ZWO would populate their star catalogue with all visible stars by name or number. Check out how long their catalog suggestion thread has been open ... PS they already have a text file that gets updated for comets that would be trivial for someone to add entries to if only it was accessable without rooting the device. The entries from the file on the device called Soft03Cmt.txt look like this: #From MPEC 2022-OB6
441P/PANSTARRS,e,2.5746,143.6159,178.7782,4.134623,0.1172331,0.19549114,237.4366,10/29.0/2022,2000,g 13.5,4.0

Luxo

ASPA is broken in the southern hemisphere as well - I don't know if anyone got it to work.

sTBcFHM8

Luxo Did you test it in v3.0? Because I have tested almost every version up to 2.5.2 and All-Sky PA has been broken in the southern hemisphere for quite a while now, and I was having some faint hopes that perhaps it was fixed in v3.0 and was going to test it this weekend if the sky allowed.

Moontanner

sTBcFHM8 Can't really say that ZWO has been great at listening to user issues

You're not wrong there. It's been total radio silence from PMTeam@ZWO for weeks now.
That seems to be the ZWO MO every time they release an update.

sTBcFHM8 The initial assessment that I get in All-Sky seems to be somewhat reasonable, so I don't think they have the math all wrong, but every refresh adds error that snowballs very quickly into unusable measurements.

I put the scope out last night to see if I could get the ASPA feature to work with V3.0. It was as you described above.
There's something seriously wrong with anything beyond the initial result.
As per usual, the instructions are terrible and leave me wondering if there's a way to get this to work within a very limited range. I'm left wondering if the "don't point due East or West" instructions are more like "Must point within 15 deg of the actual Pole".
I'll try one more time to see if I can get anything remotely usable out of the ASPA feature. If not, I'm back to playing around with the guiding in various versions while the seeing is bad.

Clear skies.

Luxo

I used 2.5.2 and 3.0.0. ASPA is broken in both. Apart from the initial splash screen, Telescope Network and the initial connection may aspects of the UI of the 3.0.0 app looks the same as 2.5.2 - but its only the UI - the similarity is skin deep. The firmware is quite different and there are differences - starting with the guiding performance which is poorer than in versions 2.1.... 2.5.2.

There's something odd in autofocus as well. During the first run with 3.0.0 it repeatedly claimed it couldn't find a star which was hogwash, as there were plenty visible in PREVIEW mode. That was what made me revert finally to 2.5.2 - on the observing field the field - and it focussed normally. Later tried 3.0.0 again, but that didn't go well and as the clouds were coming and seeing was terrible I packed up and returned home.

Given some make a significant trek to a dark site reliability of the gear really does matter. If Synlink is any better ASIAir is going in the trash - I wouldn't even give it to someone.

sTBcFHM8

Luxo This is definitely making me want to revert to 2.5.2, although I've never tried going back to a previous version it might be the right time to learn.

elakrab

Send it to me, I am a doctor and my middle name is Frankenstein 😂😂😂🫠🫠🫠

elakrab

Moontanner

Are you also in the southern hemisphere?

In the northern hemisphere ASPA works as it should. Takes me literally 3 minutes to PA within 30 arcsec.

sTBcFHM8

Moontanner

I put the scope out last night to see if I could get the ASPA feature to work with V3.0. It was as you described above.
There's something seriously wrong with anything beyond the initial result.
As per usual, the instructions are terrible and leave me wondering if there's a way to get this to work within a very limited range. I'm left wondering if the "don't point due East or West" instructions are more like "Must point within 15 deg of the actual Pole".

Thanks for testing. While it sucks that it remains broken, it's hardly a surprise for me anymore. I reported the issues like a year ago to ZWO. And I wasn't the first to report the issue back then. They asked for logs and video and I provided them. Here we are a year later and it's still broken. Most people from the southern hemisphere that I've talked to have just given up and use either regular PA, or methods outside the ASIAIR. And it truly sucks considering that the feature seems to work fine for folks in the northern hemisphere.
NINA's 3-point PA (which in theory is essentially the same thing and works in the same way) works flawlessly from my location, regardless of where I'm pointing the scope to. If there's a "range" in which ASIAIR's "All Sky" PA works, I would suggest them to remove the "All Sky" from the name. But the fact that it's perfectly capable of giving a decent first measurement tells me that the feature works with any part of the sky, but they have some really silly mistake in their refresh code. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a sign that they need to flip for the southern hemisphere.

At any rate, thanks again for testing.

Moontanner

elakrab Are you also in the southern hemisphere?

Moontanner is a character from an old John Birmingham novel. Very Australian.

ASPA was a total bust for me when I nudged my pier mount slightly out of whack. The first reading looked about right. Nothing after that worked in any logical manner.
How far off of the pole are you in Az when using ASPA?

Moontanner

sTBcFHM8
Your welcome. I'll try again soon to see if I can figure out a way to make it work.
It's very strange how much the crosshair moves around without making any adjustments if you have it set to auto refresh.
I'm currently running another older version to see if I can find a difference with the guiding and AF routine. That's much more of a head scratcher due to the changing conditions. Once that's done I'll have another go with the ASPA.

Clear skies.

elakrab

Moontanner I point roughly north, maybe a few degrees (10? 20?) off. I am in the Northern hemisphere though. I use it mainly because with 3 points the possible bending/shagging of the rig makes less impact to the PA, because otherwise I have access to the pole.

sTBcFHM8

Moontanner From what I've read in this thread, the guiding definitely got impacted in 3.0.
Since I'm not having clear nights at all here I've reverted to 2.5.2. Especially since I wanted to try the guiding on a small mount I got. I figured that I would rather start with a known "good" version as soon as I get a clear night before I compare against 3.0. Would be unwise to start my testing of the rig with a version that has already some reported guiding issues.

As a side note, I truly hope ZWO checks this thread again and realizes that ASPA remains broken in the Southern hemisphere and it's just not isolated cases from new users. It's consistently bad, unfortunately. It's really the one thing that pains me the most, although if guiding, or plate-solving or any other of the basic functions is getting worse that is also something that should be addressed.
Clear skies!

Moontanner

elakrab
Thanks. I'll definitely try pointing it closer to the pole to see if that gets a result.
Something easy like Acrux is roughly 30deg off to the right of the pole at the beginning of the evening. That might be a more realistic target for the "All Sky" routine.

I was just having a quick look at the guide logs and subs from last nights <V3.0 test. I'll be stuffed if I can see any obvious difference in the AF and guiding compared to V3.0. It's a hard one to test objectively due to changing conditions.
I'll give that another evening and then get back to seeing if ASPA works closer to the pole in the Southern Hemisphere.

Clear skies.

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