ASIAIR--Astrophotograph has never been easy

Sam@ZWO

we are glad to share our new R&D result with your guys

ASIAIR is such a new product to make astrophotograph easier

We will take it to NEAF and estimate the release time will be July

AsiAir_A4（改）.jpg

Support@ZWO

We will show this new product on NEAF!

glutch

I know you can't commit to a price so what will the expected price be on this product.

Sam@ZWO

the price below $200

tcampbell

That sounds great to not have to bring a laptop along.

But one question... I’ve used similar devices in the past and they tend to want to create their own WiFi network and expect the user’s phone to join the device’s wifi (which isn’t connected to the internet). I want something that works the other way ... my phone has a WiFi hotspot... I want the device to join my phone’s network.

This way... I can continue to have access to the internet while using the device with my phone (if my phone joins the device network then I don’t have working internet).

Will the ASIAir work this way? (Join a phone’s wifi sharing hot-spot)

benni

Hi, does this thing, like PHD guiding, or EKOS/indi also support various mounts, cameras or even active optics?

Focusers and filter wheels would also be interesting for many people, I guess...

I also always think whether I would add an usb focuser that is ascom/indi controlled...

For me, support for the starlight xpress ao would be interesting. Especially if your solution can deliver fast latency times. The sx active optics has drivers for indi which are open source, so it should not be a big problem to support it in your software...

The ao itself seems to be fast enough. Using subframes/region of interest in phd guiding has increased the speed of the ao from 2.5 hz to 5-8 hz. But with a thinkpad laptop and windows 7.

A windows laptop is not really suited for fast corrections. There are so many services that run in windows, so, in theory, a box that is specialised for controlling a telescope and guiding could be optimized for fast latency guiding with an ao.

If with your box I could use the 5ms=200hz rate of the ao, and if I would get a decent 10-20 hz framerate perhaps with an ASI mini guider that supports the new usb-c standard, that would be interesting for me, if it worked....

Corrections of seeing, if they worked, may also be interesting for planetary photographers, but for the active optics, the bottleneck really seems to be windows and usb/download latency, not the ao. A thing that could be tackled with a specialised box...

Seeing really sucks and I do not want to travel to the atacama desert soon....

Sam@ZWO

TCampbell wrote:
That sounds great to not have to bring a laptop along.

But one question... I’ve used similar devices in the past and they tend to want to create their own WiFi network and expect the user’s phone to join the device’s wifi (which isn’t connected to the internet). I want something that works the other way ... my phone has a WiFi hotspot... I want the device to join my phone’s network.

This way... I can continue to have access to the internet while using the device with my phone (if my phone joins the device network then I don’t have working internet).

Will the ASIAir work this way? (Join a phone’s wifi sharing hot-spot)

this is a little hard because you cannot create hotspot when use wifi connected to ASIAIR

you can disable wifi temporarily to access the internet

snoopy4ever

Hello... I just bought a Cooled ASI cam for deep sky imaging , which Is on it's way , …, I think the ASIair is a great idea, but I have a question, of course I have a setup already with a guiding cam that is not ZWO, dpes the ASIair requires the guiding cam to be only ZWO ?

Thanks in advance for your kind help on this.

zl4plm

great Sam!

pre ordered and waiting for testing :)

Support@ZWO

snoopy4ever wrote:
Hello... I just bought a Cooled ASI cam for deep sky imaging , which Is on it's way , …, I think the ASIair is a great idea, but I have a question, of course I have a setup already with a guiding cam that is not ZWO, dpes the ASIair requires the guiding cam to be only ZWO ?

Thanks in advance for your kind help on this.

Only ASI USB3.0 cameras and mini cameras. ASI120MM/MC is not supported.

Support@ZWO

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aldures

Sean.Wang wrote:
Only ASI USB3.0 cameras and mini cameras. ASI120MM/MC is not supported.

You don’t support the ASI120MM one of your most popular guide cameras?

Do you intend on supporting it?

Thanks,

Tim

riklaunim

Still it's Raspberry without USB3 speeds and will have to hold some large FITS files. Plus mobile app that is a benefit but also a weakness - as it must be good for the product to be good - and software development as well as UX is expensive at the high level (plus UX in some vendor astro apps is quite... low). Plus it's a vendor app so vendor lock-in is a thing.

More versatile product would be a x86 Windows tablet derivative that runs either Windows or Linux and has good USB hub and separate charge (or those tablet-alike devices with normal set of ports but requiring power). Run software you like, use any vendor you like. And multi 12V/5V portable power source to support it as a mobile imaging setup.

Support@ZWO

Aldures wrote:
Sean.Wang wrote:Only ASI USB3.0 cameras and mini cameras. ASI120MM/MC is not supported.

You don’t support the ASI120MM one of your most popular guide cameras?

Do you intend on supporting it?

Thanks,

Tim

Hi Tim

Because 120mm/mc is very old design, it is not compatible with air. It's a pity, but we support all new cameras including mini USB2.0 cameras.

brenchen

I'm very excited about the ASIAir! I just have a few quick questions about it:

1. Can it support other brands of guide cameras that is not ZWO?

2. What is the latency between the ASIAir and the client device?

3. What is the bit depth/quality of the image transmitted from the ASIAir to the client device

4. Does it have capability to support other imaging accessories? Like auto focuser etc.?

Thanks!

tcampbell

This seems like an ideal product for me... as I have an ASI174MM-Cool that I use for Ha Solar imaging, an ASI128MC-Pro for deep-sky imaging, and an ASI174-Mini for guiding. (That, and I'm always griping about why astronomy software still requires people lug around laptops when iPads and phones are so powerful... necessitating me lugging around heavy batteries into the field (I don't have a permanent observatory)). This will save me a lot of back pain.

I noticed the demo video showed the person using a 128GB card instead of a 32GB card (so apparently it does support SDXC Micro cards).

My question is about transfer speeds.

For the ASI128MC-Pro, I'm not so worried because the on-camera memory will deal with the image read-out and can then stream the image data to the ASIAir for storage on the card.

I'm wondering about the ASI174... for Solar, typically the camera captures video at a high frame-rate and I've noticed it really helps to have a computer that uses (a) USB 3.0 and (b) uses an SSD instead of a traditional mechanical HD so it keep up with the frame rate without choking and dropping frames.

Does the ASIAir and the SDXC micro card keep up well with the frame rate of the ASI174-MM camera operating at full resolution?

riklaunim

TCampbell wrote:
Does the ASIAir and the SDXC micro card keep up well with the frame rate of the ASI174-MM camera operating at full resolution?

At max it's USB2 speeds as it's Raspberry Pi. Network traffic may limit it.

Support@ZWO

riklaunim wrote:
TCampbell wrote:Does the ASIAir and the SDXC micro card keep up well with the frame rate of the ASI174-MM camera operating at full resolution?

At max it's USB2 speeds as it's Raspberry Pi. Network traffic may limit it.

Yes, you are right.

fredp

wow, never been easier. big cloud magnet, tho.