Here is my interview with my god friend Simon at NEAF. ZWO had just one exciting new product but there was a lot of hits dropped at what is in the future too.
I would sort of think of the Air camera as being an intermediate smart telescope (in combination with a mount and your choice of optics). Good for a serious beginner with deep pockets, or for a low-hassle travel rig. A serious AP-er is already beyond it for their main setup and I don't think its intended for those folks, but the tradeoffs work for the right use cases - vendor lock-in and non-upgradability are less of an issue for those intermediate smart scope scenarios.
Great stuff Ben! I have been talking about a wireless system for years- or a system with the least amount of wires possible. This is getting close to that and I'm sure it's gonna happen one day. There are a lot of critics of the camera and asiair and brand-walling in , but I guess what "a serious imager" really means, is to have their mount look like someone threw a barrel of pasta on it, with all the wires dangling around! 😂 That's what everyone is telling me so far!
Yeah I agree, I have one, I think it's a better focuser than the EAF ( I have some of these as well ) but it is more expensive, and of course it won't work with an ASIair and can't be used with helical focusers such as on the earlier Red Cats or camera lenses such as the Samyang/Rokinon 135 f2
Ben good interview, nice subject! Guiding AAmini to AM3 over WiFi is (I'm sorry to say) no good. There are latency issues. It looked like a promising idea on paper and indoors, so I tried it. I had to reject it under the stars, and I now wire up in the traditional way. The wired configuration is very obviously objectively better. You just have to compare how frequently the guide graph goes AWOL. Its easy to flip back and forth between the two connection methods and discount the influence of seeing, wind and other factors. The mount control signals likely get pipelined in a single channel shared with the image transfer blocks and are not always delivered with immediacy. I estimated I'd be discarding about 30% more subs over WiFi.
@@TheNarrowbandChannel Please do. I wouldn't want to be misleading people. I spent about half an hour looking at the guide figures both ways. I didn't run the results through subframe selector measurements or anything like that because I was convinced enough from what I saw.
Love their cameras; too bad they are trying to be like Apple and lock everything else inside their ecosystem. It's a neat idea with the AsiAir in the camera, but it sucks for upgradability and if the AsiAir dies so does your camera. I can appreciate what they are trying to do, but seems a bit niche and especially silly from a long term usability point of view (in a year or two that AirAir will be old and slow hardware - the camera not so much). Making a $3000 camera married to a $200 computer - a computer which will be junk almost as soon as you get it is odd. Now if they made the AsiAir part modular so you could easily swap it out/upgrade, that would be awesome. Or at least add a USB3 port so if the AsiAir dies the camera is still usable. Eager to see what their rotator looks like however I suspect going with Pegasus or PrimaLuceLabs gets you better bang for the buck long term, not to mention better support and I can say that from first hand experience. That being said I am a huge fan on their cameras; it's hard to beat what you get at the price point even if they occasional leak oil; which is actually pretty easy if not nerve racking to fix/clean up.
Hehehe!! Yes stuck in Apple ecosystem over here too! But transitioned from Asiair to Nina with a minipc recently and really enjoying the freedom to pick and choose astro equipment 😂💪
Ya, Apple makes great products, I myself own many. However you can make great products while effectively holding consumers hostage. Look at the right to repair track records for example. Good products don't equate to treating consumers fairly or giving them flexibility/options. Not sure it's a good model to follow as a company and as a lifelong engineer myself working with Apple is akin to pulling teeth; it's a lot of headache and at any moment they can throw your business into a bad place just because they feel like it. Long term it ends up seeding a lot of ill will among consumers and partners more importantly. For example, what is the purpose of locking down the AsiAir, which is based on INDI? Taking open source and using it for the opposite purpose and intent is just one example. Extending that to your hardware philosophy doesn't make much sense other than than limiting choice and holding consumers hostage to buying your hardware.
Not too crazy about all this integration. One part goes bad then you need to toss it all out. Want to upgrade one part, you need to replace the entire thing. Want to get another size camera, you got to buy another camera with all the extra cost of all the integration parts all over again.
Have you ever asked ZWO if they would ever support Olympus/OMD cameras on the ASIAir? I mean even if OMDS supplied them all the required info, SDK's, whatever - ,would they do it.
Seestar and AAP are both built on open source libraries that obligate ZWO to open source both platforms. Maybe next time ask them why they refuse to? Lot of innovation being attempted with the Seestar, being stifled by ZWO.
Awesome!! good news for the rotator and the new bigger mount! thx!!
good interview.....glad to hear about the progress of the rotator and future AM7
A very nice interview! Thank you!
Fun interview Ben and loved to see your little guy. Hi to Simon and thanks for the updates
I would sort of think of the Air camera as being an intermediate smart telescope (in combination with a mount and your choice of optics). Good for a serious beginner with deep pockets, or for a low-hassle travel rig. A serious AP-er is already beyond it for their main setup and I don't think its intended for those folks, but the tradeoffs work for the right use cases - vendor lock-in and non-upgradability are less of an issue for those intermediate smart scope scenarios.
Awesome interview. It was very nice to meet you in person at NEAF. Love your work.
Thanks! You too!
Saluti dall'italia! Grazie per il tuo reportage. Bravissimo!
Great Interview!
Can’t wait to see a larger AM mount! 😊
Great series of interviews on Neaf, Ben
Thank you.
Nice work Ben 👏👏
Ur health is looking good. Keep up the fight!!
Thank you!
Sign me up for the rotator!!!! My Seestar wants a big brother.
Cool!!
Looks like they are trying to fit the usability of the Seestar into a regular system. Cool
Great stuff Ben! I have been talking about a wireless system for years- or a system with the least amount of wires possible. This is getting close to that and I'm sure it's gonna happen one day. There are a lot of critics of the camera and asiair and brand-walling in , but I guess what "a serious imager" really means, is to have their mount look like someone threw a barrel of pasta on it, with all the wires dangling around! 😂 That's what everyone is telling me so far!
I love the Pasta comparison.
We need a mount that can easily cope with a C14. It needs to be balanced and on a pier or something like that SW Tri-pier.
Nice.
They need to go to USB3 full integration.
Rotator! Rotator!!
Great interview. I'd love to see a mount capable of supporting a 14" SCT
Me too. I want a big rig setup in the next year.
Build the ASAIR into the dovetail clamp...job done!!
Dont give them to many ideas.
Cooperation Proposal from Move Shoot Move
You look well. Love your son photo bombing.
He likes to do that.
Look at the Primalucelab focuser, it has wi-fi
Yeah I agree, I have one, I think it's a better focuser than the EAF ( I have some of these as well ) but it is more expensive, and of course it won't work with an ASIair and can't be used with helical focusers such as on the earlier Red Cats or camera lenses such as the Samyang/Rokinon 135 f2
I, for one, would pre-order an AM7 mount.
Me too.
Great interview! :-) All points addressed! Thank you. Any hinting on the price of the asiair-camera?
I think they said 2000$
@@TheNarrowbandChannel Thanks. Very reasonable.
Nice interview. Is the show typically that quiet?
My mic is a good one Just the transmitter needs updating though.
Ben good interview, nice subject! Guiding AAmini to AM3 over WiFi is (I'm sorry to say) no good. There are latency issues. It looked like a promising idea on paper and indoors, so I tried it. I had to reject it under the stars, and I now wire up in the traditional way. The wired configuration is very obviously objectively better. You just have to compare how frequently the guide graph goes AWOL. Its easy to flip back and forth between the two connection methods and discount the influence of seeing, wind and other factors. The mount control signals likely get pipelined in a single channel shared with the image transfer blocks and are not always delivered with immediacy. I estimated I'd be discarding about 30% more subs over WiFi.
I might have to test this to see if it is true.
@@TheNarrowbandChannel Please do. I wouldn't want to be misleading people. I spent about half an hour looking at the guide figures both ways. I didn't run the results through subframe selector measurements or anything like that because I was convinced enough from what I saw.
Love their cameras; too bad they are trying to be like Apple and lock everything else inside their ecosystem. It's a neat idea with the AsiAir in the camera, but it sucks for upgradability and if the AsiAir dies so does your camera. I can appreciate what they are trying to do, but seems a bit niche and especially silly from a long term usability point of view (in a year or two that AirAir will be old and slow hardware - the camera not so much). Making a $3000 camera married to a $200 computer - a computer which will be junk almost as soon as you get it is odd. Now if they made the AsiAir part modular so you could easily swap it out/upgrade, that would be awesome. Or at least add a USB3 port so if the AsiAir dies the camera is still usable.
Eager to see what their rotator looks like however I suspect going with Pegasus or PrimaLuceLabs gets you better bang for the buck long term, not to mention better support and I can say that from first hand experience. That being said I am a huge fan on their cameras; it's hard to beat what you get at the price point even if they occasional leak oil; which is actually pretty easy if not nerve racking to fix/clean up.
That's spot on! I hope ZWO get to note your points. Maybe they could marry the Asiair with a more budget level camera for a beginner package?
Yeah I think that's another great option. Certainly pairing it with an expensive high-end camera seems kind of odd.
I do like Apple though.
Hehehe!! Yes stuck in Apple ecosystem over here too! But transitioned from Asiair to Nina with a minipc recently and really enjoying the freedom to pick and choose astro equipment 😂💪
Ya, Apple makes great products, I myself own many. However you can make great products while effectively holding consumers hostage. Look at the right to repair track records for example. Good products don't equate to treating consumers fairly or giving them flexibility/options.
Not sure it's a good model to follow as a company and as a lifelong engineer myself working with Apple is akin to pulling teeth; it's a lot of headache and at any moment they can throw your business into a bad place just because they feel like it.
Long term it ends up seeding a lot of ill will among consumers and partners more importantly.
For example, what is the purpose of locking down the AsiAir, which is based on INDI? Taking open source and using it for the opposite purpose and intent is just one example. Extending that to your hardware philosophy doesn't make much sense other than than limiting choice and holding consumers hostage to buying your hardware.
Did ZWO stop making the ASIAIR 32GB plus?
A year has passed! Already. Whose kid was that? :)
They grow fast.
Not too crazy about all this integration. One part goes bad then you need to toss it all out. Want to upgrade one part, you need to replace the entire thing. Want to get another size camera, you got to buy another camera with all the extra cost of all the integration parts all over again.
I think that's what they are hoping for 😂
@@tuhkathri9126 I can see it working out for people who have the big buck$. and of course for ZWO
I have heard a lot of talk about that in years past but really most of the market is moving this way it seams.
Wasn't the rotator about to be released after NEAF.... last year.......?
Originally it was.
Good interview. Only one small nit pick....what's the name of the product being discussed?
He said, ZWO ASI2600 camera with an ASI AIR inside = ZWO ASI2600MC-AIR.
Hope they're not plagued by fan vibration or the dreaded sensor bleed of the 2600mc
I have 6 cameras now and have never experience fan issues.
Any word on when the ASI2600 Air Duo will be available?
Hmm that was something I should have asked. But I bet soon.
They should have put an eithernet port into it.
Why?
@@MrSummitville Cause I run all mine hard wired. Much faster transfer when I copy off the files.
Have you ever asked ZWO if they would ever support Olympus/OMD cameras on the ASIAir? I mean even if OMDS supplied them all the required info, SDK's, whatever - ,would they do it.
They want to but I do not think OM has been willing to supply the SDK needed.
I'm still waiting for olympus cameras to be compatible with the asiair 😂
Me too.
Maybe it’s my connection but the sound keeps cutting out, great video though.
In a few spots it does.
Is that Christopher Go in the background, at about 7:30? I don't really trust my eyes anymore.
Yes
@@TheNarrowbandChannel Thanks, maybe my eyes aren't quite as bad as I thought, nice videos from NEAF, by the way.
"Do you think they'll ever put a camera rotator in the camera?"
Don't give them any ideas. They'll probably prioritize that over a standalone rotator!
It's not in development yet so it cannot canibalize the rotator.
So the rotator will be locked in the ZWO ecosystem?
None of the ZWO items are locked into an ecosystem, beside the AA itself. All have drivers for windows and linux.
They have the ascom drivers ready so that's a no
@@Neanderthal75 Asiair... isn’t that locked ecosystem?
Seestar and AAP are both built on open source libraries that obligate ZWO to open source both platforms. Maybe next time ask them why they refuse to? Lot of innovation being attempted with the Seestar, being stifled by ZWO.
Stifled how? The open-source folks aren't going to mass market an astrophotography rig. ZWO did!
omg! Rotator this year, Futurible AM7? And new line of Seestar..new cameras,..incredible I+D Thanks @thenarrowbandchannel