I started out with QHY. Their software was trouble for me, and when I tried doing sensor analysis in SharpCap the camera failed to correctly change the exposure. So Bye By QHY for me! The ASIair app is like a dream compared to others.
Hi, Great video with real solutions. I just subscribed. Love your AI background, only missing Alfred Einstein on the couch with his pipe. I have 4 comments: 1.) I have the RST135 harmonic mount, and users also recommended: .75 Guide Speed and faster (1Sec) exposures. Usually I adjust the RA agression up/down depending on the night sky conditions. 2.) For non harmonic mounts, the rated weight is with the mount (reasonably) balanced. With them you could never operate without a counterweight. So your work-around for extremely high pointing directions is good to know, and reasonable. I have some recent images from my trip in western Montana that I thought were due to wind. Now I am going to examine them further considering the pointing. I have ZS103 scope. 3.) The RST135 also likes more than 12V, and I had the same power problems as you. So I bought a 9-12Vdc input to 15Vdc converter converter (I think 10Amp). Now from one 12Vdc 8A power brick I split one cable to the DC-DC converter and ASIair and 2600MC to 12V (They didn't seem to like 15Vdc as I recall). 4.) For my first travelling to a new time zone, I found that ASIair would not grab the correct time, or the coordinates from my Android Galaxy S9. I could manually set the coordinates, but the time cannot be changed! Every object I could see was below the horizon! After several nights total frustration, I asked on the ZWO forum and was advised to use an android phone to get the coordinates set into ASIair. Finally I got 2 nites imaging, but interrupted by the recent Aurora Borealis so bright, none of the big dipper stars were visislbe. (that was a great interruption as I have never seen them before!). My Samsung A52S worked beautifully with ASIair. I put the S9 back to my suitcase to figure out on another night.
Thanks for the helpful advice. I'm running an AM3 but noticed the RA spikes as well and I will see if changing to .5 or .75 rectifies that. Unfortunately I'm doing narrow band here in Las Vegas and I must maintain a three second exposure because my 2600 duo needs the extra light to see guide stars at all. I also bumped into another bug that might help folks. When I'm shooting towards the north celestial pole and I am ready to start calibrating the guiding engine a warning pops up and suggests that the position I am pointing will not give me good calibration and to calibrate in the direction of meridian and celestial equator which is due south from area I imaging. I found if I just ignored that and calibrate on the object I am imaging in the northern region I get very good guiding. Other than that I haven't had any issues. In fact Ive been getting wonderful guiding from .2 - .7 with 100% useable subs. I almost forgot. Here's a gotcha for 2600 duo owners. If after exploring and imaging narrow band nebula with your refractor and you want to explore the world of galaxies with a large reflector be forewarned that the image circle of for instance the Celestron 8 is not wide enough to shed light on the guiding chip in the 2600 duo. The only alternatives are to go with off axis guiding or a guide scope or get a bigger refractor. My research online revealed this unexpected roadblock and I'm glad I didn't make any purchases before figuring it out.
As always very good tips mr.Zelinka 👍 That auto-update (CI:CD mantra in IT) is NOT nice! I had the same experience like you when I was in Naxos, Greece and was about to start a session. The AsiAir Mini turned to a brick, and thankfully I knew exactly what to do (reset) and everything worked fine. But I lost 15 minutes and that is no good (at least at this site it is dark skies with no clouds all night all year around.. almost 😊).
Thanks for this video Peter. I have a new AM3 which has been guiding quite well, so no complaints there. But the other day after firing up the ASIair mini, it went into auto update and couldn't quite finish. Stuck at 99% complete, I backed out of the app on my iPad to reattempt but then couldn't get a ASIair wifi signal. Had to hit the reset button 3 times before the wifi came back to life. The update was successful after that. Next time I'll remember to try your technique of powering back up while holding down the reset button. Another issue I been having, and did reach out to ZWO about but with little help back, is that when I first starting up the ASIair mini it never recognizes the guide camera (ASI120mm). Every time I have to restart the ASIair in order for it to see the guide camera. Kind of a PIA.....
Last year was my data dump. I am still processing it all. This year I only got 2 or 3 imagining runs done. Trying to get my C11 and CEM70EC tuned up but it was still frustrating seeing bad corners. Thank god for BlurX.
Some good advice there. Regarding the counterweight, although it has from your viewpoint solved the problem I would still have that mount checked out when you get time. There might be something not quite right with the gearing etc and adding the counterweight although from your viewpoint has solved the issue, may infact just be masking a more serious problem that could result in a complete failure further down the line. I know this may be a difficult with ZWO as they have a bad reputation for customer service although to be fair when I had an issue connecting an ASIair to my new Skywatcher Wave 100i mount I went through the suppliers help desk an ZWO were pretty quick to reply to them. ( It wasn't an ASIair problem by the way)
I’ve been running 1 second (tried 0.5s) and it works quite well. Agena Astro recommended for me to run the power cord to my ASI2600MC Air and then run power to my AM3 mount and I haven’t had an issue. My only issue is once a while my mount will just start slewing off (both RA & DEC). I have to stop guiding and recenter, then restart guiding. This also happened with my old AM5 & ASIAIR PRO. Not sure what is going on there….
Good video Peter, I don't know why I hate this update, there is a problem you didn't address!? When pointing to a place in the sky, the mountain points to it, but! Why doesn't the solution to the board ever appear!!! I was surprised by that, I hope to find an answer from you
I had problem with guiding and the problem was the guider was slightly moving. Tighten up no problems anymore. Regarding the meridian flip i had problem only when i tried to shoot with less than 5 min after the meridian.
The latest software update of the ASIAIR has some bugs that causes guiding and MC Air camera issues similar to what you encountered. Ideally you shouldn’t have to use a counterweight for the AM5 since your scope is way below the maximum payload
My ASIAIR Mini seems to have decreased performance after the most recent firmware update. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like it takes longer to center a target in goto, tracking doesn't work as well, and it takes longer to load images to the internal memory.
My ASIAIR , all of sudden will not recognize primary camera, only guide camera. I swapped usb ports in back of Air and still only recognizes guide camera. So I’m waiting on new USB 3 cable to primary camera. If it’s not cable must be 533 camera. Frustrating.
![Camera Rotation Assist in ASIAir Version 2.0 [New Feature!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UU17Kai_lK0/mqdefault.jpg)
Lack of customer support. ZWO's motto might as well be: "You're on your own." This video is the quintessential example of why I do not use ZWO.
I started out with QHY. Their software was trouble for me, and when I tried doing sensor analysis in SharpCap the camera failed to correctly change the exposure. So Bye By QHY for me! The ASIair app is like a dream compared to others.
Great products "WHEN THEY WORK"
0 support 😮
Hi, Great video with real solutions. I just subscribed. Love your AI background, only missing Alfred Einstein on the couch with his pipe. I have 4 comments:
1.) I have the RST135 harmonic mount, and users also recommended: .75 Guide Speed and faster (1Sec) exposures. Usually I adjust the RA agression up/down depending on the night sky conditions.
2.) For non harmonic mounts, the rated weight is with the mount (reasonably) balanced. With them you could never operate without a counterweight. So your work-around for extremely high pointing directions is good to know, and reasonable. I have some recent images from my trip in western Montana that I thought were due to wind. Now I am going to examine them further considering the pointing. I have ZS103 scope.
3.) The RST135 also likes more than 12V, and I had the same power problems as you. So I bought a 9-12Vdc input to 15Vdc converter converter (I think 10Amp). Now from one 12Vdc 8A power brick I split one cable to the DC-DC converter and ASIair and 2600MC to 12V (They didn't seem to like 15Vdc as I recall).
4.) For my first travelling to a new time zone, I found that ASIair would not grab the correct time, or the coordinates from my Android Galaxy S9. I could manually set the coordinates, but the time cannot be changed! Every object I could see was below the horizon! After several nights total frustration, I asked on the ZWO forum and was advised to use an android phone to get the coordinates set into ASIair. Finally I got 2 nites imaging, but interrupted by the recent Aurora Borealis so bright, none of the big dipper stars were visislbe. (that was a great interruption as I have never seen them before!). My Samsung A52S worked beautifully with ASIair. I put the S9 back to my suitcase to figure out on another night.
Thanks for the helpful advice. I'm running an AM3 but noticed the RA spikes as well and I will see if changing to .5 or .75 rectifies that. Unfortunately I'm doing narrow band here in Las Vegas and I must maintain a three second exposure because my 2600 duo needs the extra light to see guide stars at all. I also bumped into another bug that might help folks. When I'm shooting towards the north celestial pole and I am ready to start calibrating the guiding engine a warning pops up and suggests that the position I am pointing will not give me good calibration and to calibrate in the direction of meridian and celestial equator which is due south from area I imaging. I found if I just ignored that and calibrate on the object I am imaging in the northern region I get very good guiding. Other than that I haven't had any issues. In fact Ive been getting wonderful guiding from .2 - .7 with 100% useable subs. I almost forgot. Here's a gotcha for 2600 duo owners. If after exploring and imaging narrow band nebula with your refractor and you want to explore the world of galaxies with a large reflector be forewarned that the image circle of for instance the Celestron 8 is not wide enough to shed light on the guiding chip in the 2600 duo. The only alternatives are to go with off axis guiding or a guide scope or get a bigger refractor. My research online revealed this unexpected roadblock and I'm glad I didn't make any purchases before figuring it out.
Awesome video! I was wondering what changes to make to my guide issues. This helps a ton!
Thanks, my AM5N has been a pain on guiding. I'll give these tips a try!
As always very good tips mr.Zelinka 👍 That auto-update (CI:CD mantra in IT) is NOT nice! I had the same experience like you when I was in Naxos, Greece and was about to start a session.
The AsiAir Mini turned to a brick, and thankfully I knew exactly what to do (reset) and everything worked fine. But I lost 15 minutes and that is no good (at least at this site it is dark skies with no clouds all night all year around.. almost 😊).
Thanks for this video Peter. I have a new AM3 which has been guiding quite well, so no complaints there. But the other day after firing up the ASIair mini, it went into auto update and couldn't quite finish. Stuck at 99% complete, I backed out of the app on my iPad to reattempt but then couldn't get a ASIair wifi signal. Had to hit the reset button 3 times before the wifi came back to life. The update was successful after that. Next time I'll remember to try your technique of powering back up while holding down the reset button. Another issue I been having, and did reach out to ZWO about but with little help back, is that when I first starting up the ASIair mini it never recognizes the guide camera (ASI120mm). Every time I have to restart the ASIair in order for it to see the guide camera. Kind of a PIA.....
Last year was my data dump. I am still processing it all. This year I only got 2 or 3 imagining runs done. Trying to get my C11 and CEM70EC tuned up but it was still frustrating seeing bad corners. Thank god for BlurX.
Some good advice there. Regarding the counterweight, although it has from your viewpoint solved the problem I would still have that mount checked out when you get time. There might be something not quite right with the gearing etc and adding the counterweight although from your viewpoint has solved the issue, may infact just be masking a more serious problem that could result in a complete failure further down the line. I know this may be a difficult with ZWO as they have a bad reputation for customer service although to be fair when I had an issue connecting an ASIair to my new Skywatcher Wave 100i mount I went through the suppliers help desk an ZWO were pretty quick to reply to them. ( It wasn't an ASIair problem by the way)
I’ve been running 1 second (tried 0.5s) and it works quite well. Agena Astro recommended for me to run the power cord to my ASI2600MC Air and then run power to my AM3 mount and I haven’t had an issue. My only issue is once a while my mount will just start slewing off (both RA & DEC). I have to stop guiding and recenter, then restart guiding. This also happened with my old AM5 & ASIAIR PRO. Not sure what is going on there….
Good video Peter, I don't know why I hate this update, there is a problem you didn't address!? When pointing to a place in the sky, the mountain points to it, but! Why doesn't the solution to the board ever appear!!! I was surprised by that, I hope to find an answer from you
I had problem with guiding and the problem was the guider was slightly moving. Tighten up no problems anymore. Regarding the meridian flip i had problem only when i tried to shoot with less than 5 min after the meridian.
The latest software update of the ASIAIR has some bugs that causes guiding and MC Air camera issues similar to what you encountered.
Ideally you shouldn’t have to use a counterweight for the AM5 since your scope is way below the maximum payload
Very cool library
Virtual library background. Freepik.😮
My ASIAIR Mini seems to have decreased performance after the most recent firmware update. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like it takes longer to center a target in goto, tracking doesn't work as well, and it takes longer to load images to the internal memory.
My ASIAIR , all of sudden will not recognize primary camera, only guide camera. I swapped usb ports in back of Air and still only recognizes guide camera. So I’m waiting on new USB 3 cable to primary camera. If it’s not cable must be 533 camera. Frustrating.
You can thank your clear sky’s on our over active sun right now, at least mostly. Enjoy.
Also, wifi issues are also more prevalent right now, also because of the sun.
Your AM5 should not need any counterweight for that scope. I'd contact ZWO and ask for replacement.
Ahhhh, first world problems.....