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Post by howie1 on Apr 7, 2020 1:45:23 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2020 3:53:54 GMT
That was good timing Howie. I will have another go inside tonight when I get a chance.
cheers Paul
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2020 11:44:19 GMT
Had another look at the pro tonight and it does have live stacking.I find it extraordinary that zwo has released live stacking with absolutely no instructions... zip,zero . I have no doubt that the pro will be a popular item. Its polar align and plate solving combination will be a big drawcard. I cant comment on the live stacking as I only know that it exists but dont know how well it works. There is some meaningful dialogue now happening on CN which was started by David Parkes who used the pro for the first time yesterday. He has received an enthusiastic response, so hopefully there will be some good ideas bandied around over the next few days. When I loaded up Astroberry on the Pi4, the instructions were very clear and I was up and running fairly quickly. It puzzles me that zwo hasnt done the same with one of the big selling points of the pro. cheers Paul
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Post by howie1 on Apr 7, 2020 12:05:36 GMT
Youtube from astrodad ... Full run through ASIAIR PRO 35 minute video - times for 'interesting' live outside use are listed below ...
* Starts with external attachment, cables, and what it will operate * At 8':30" in, full demo outside, covering initial setup menu, equipment connection menu, then he does live demo's of polar alignment, focusing, plate solving and accurate GoTo, autoguiding and lastly stretching single image * At 21':00" in, how to live stack
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2020 10:49:49 GMT
Thanks Howie. Both your references have been good info. I have seen astrodad's video a couple of times and didnt pick up on live view being live stacking. It is all obvious once I have been alerted to the fact. The CN reference has been very informative as well. Do you agree there has been a real paucity of instruction from zwo? Or is just that I am a bit slow. It is a clear night tonight but it has been a very looonngg day at work today. Will get time tomorrow so I hope tomorrow night is clear and I can get the pro up and running. cheers Paul
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Post by Dragon Man on Apr 8, 2020 13:52:14 GMT
Thanks for the linked video Howie. NOW I sort of get what an ASIair is and what it does. I had no idea and I just let you blokes ramble on about it as it was all over my head But I think I see what it does now. Still have no idea what a Rasberry Pi is or what an Astroberry is/does, but I'll get there Technology passes me by like a Ferrari and I'm in a horse and buggy
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2020 15:16:37 GMT
Ken,I am punching above my weight with all this stuff . I seem to take on too many projects and only half complete them . My daughter has had a Raspberry Pi since they first rolled out and I couldnt really work out what you could possibly use these things for. They have since become quite powerful little units and quite cheap. When I ordered the Pro back in December I have been banging on about the need for live stacking. I saw astrodad's video the first couple of days after he released it and the bit about live stacking went straight over my head. Have watched it a couple of times. It was not until Howie said " 21':00 live stacking" that the penny finally dropped ..duh. Anyway thanks Howie. But I still maintain that the instructions from zwo have been very poor. However..it is time for me to stop whinging and get on with using the Pro. It has a lot of good features. cheers Paul
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Post by howie1 on Apr 9, 2020 3:58:21 GMT
Yes Paul ... instructions or lack of instructions!
I've mastered (?) ZWO's ASI Studio for pc, mac, & unix and like it ... but like the AIR it's ZWO equipment only. To master it was at least a couple of days and nights just playing with stuff. Trying to see what it does, and how it may be supposed to work, and then finally understanding properly how it works. It is in my opinion a great piece of software for VA ... provided you are ok with using only ZWO equipment. Very easy to use once you "get it" ... but absolutely no manual, no instructions, and hardly anyone has posted up workflows or how it works. You just have to knuckle down and figure it all out for yourself. Not great.
The ASIAIR ... ditto Paul. Many youtube and post searches for me to see tips. Then many times I could not find the features and icon/buttons those posted about! I've found it hard to understand why they use the same icons/buttons on the top menu area and also the right hand side menu area ... yet some do the same but others do different things. Some things are just plain silly ... like having to stumble across the fact there is no button to start guiding ... you have to double tap the graph. What the! Some good instructions would be handy!
Ken, glad you have figured out (?) what the AIR does. It was fan-blinkin-tastic to have watched that bloke out at the lake from which I posted that rave review on the AVF. But, living with one for the past month or so, as Paul says the instructions are so simplistic for something that does so much. Better instructions would be great ... but there isn't any. I will no doubt master it like Dave who I saw out at the Lake last Nov or whenever. I've used cables and manual PA, etc to cull down the equipment so much in order to make it easy to setup my rig ... and so reliable too ... that adding an AIR is actually making me concerned about doing stuff with the AIR. I won't know until the lockdown finishes and I can get out and use it. But I've seen club members with Pi based setups and wifi this and that and I've seen every one of them go a whole evening at least once where nothing worked! Meantime with my cables and simple setup I was happily doing my stuff no problems. We'll see how it goes all wifi. I WILL DEFINITELY (excuse the caps) appreciate the AIR will let me sit in my car at the Lake with mossie netting over the open windows and enable me to sit happily bug free controlling my mount, and camera and stacking wirelessly. And to do likewise at home in Brissie!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2020 7:02:21 GMT
Gidday Howie. I'm glad you agree about the (lack of) instructions. I was beginning to think I was just losing it. At home ,I only use wifi for the synscan control of the mount and the cameras are all hardwired to the net . I control the cameras from a distance with televiewer. What will change that approach will be how convenient the plate solving turns out to be on the A Pro I do like sharpcap and its polar alignment but not the plate solving. So I will start playing and see what happens.
Out at the dark sky site ,I want camera and mount on the Pro and control on wifi. Didnt even think of sitting in the car. The only trouble with the car next to the scope is that I cant move it and have to stay the night and I only live 1/2 hour away.
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Post by davy on Apr 9, 2020 9:31:03 GMT
Seems we all are looking at the future.. for better and quicker ways to do astronomy, totally with you guys and it's good for the forum that we are doing it from different directions,, zwo asiair Pro and astroberry,, In the beginning I thought about getting the pro,, was a few things that stopped me, The fact that it was for zwo camera's,, it's said that it can do dslr,, but what advantage would that be to zwo who sell camera's,, how good would the dslr side be,,?? Price was my next concern along with,, how long till it matures as a piece of equipment,, you guys have reported how scarce the operating manual is,, and I believe zwo haven't made one because they are still refining it, and that is good news because it will only get better. Distribution has been a nightmare and getting one has been tricky but over the next year I believe we will see the astronomy market flooded with them and being a big hit,, this ensures folk buy more and better zwo cameras,, great bit of business from zwo,, will corner the market. Good on them for seeing this. More companies will Play catch up using the raspberry pi4 or 5 or 6 to get on the wagon,, so we will see an improvement in Linux based software,, yet again good for astronomy. And good for vaf because we won't be playing catch up 😬😁
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Post by howie1 on Apr 9, 2020 21:54:07 GMT
Gidday Howie. I'm glad you agree about the (lack of) instructions. I was beginning to think I was just losing it. At home ,I only use wifi for the synscan control of the mount and the cameras are all hardwired to the net . I control the cameras from a distance with televiewer. What will change that approach will be how convenient the plate solving turns out to be on the A Pro I do like sharpcap and its polar alignment but not the plate solving. So I will start playing and see what happens. Out at the dark sky site ,I want camera and mount on the Pro and control on wifi. Didnt even think of sitting in the car. The only trouble with the car next to the scope is that I cant move it and have to stay the night and I only live 1/2 hour away. Know what you mean re platesolve Paul, many threads on people having problems loading the right sized plates into sharpcap, speed, and other issues. The 4 main reasons I liked what I saw with the AIR were 1. Reliable wifi mount control; 2. Easy peezy quick platesolve of the goto; 3. Was sure there must be a way to use the AIR wifi to transfer the images to sharpcap on a pc (Done! Yippee!); and 4. Simple one package download for the AIR's many features. Kudo's to davy trying to get all that stuff interoperating on his Pi build. Yes it can be done, many in astro club and the web have done it. But I've seen every bloke whose done that in my astro club have issues. They have all spent weeks putting it all together. All are quite techie with IT, but they all have had nights where nothing worked and they have had to tweak and do stuff over the next few days to get it all working again. Not my cup of tea. Give me plug n play like the AIR and if it is reliable then I'll love it. Just waiting for Easter Sunday as forecast to be good conditions (at last). Will have to stay home of course. And setup AIR outside. If my my local neighbourhood dobber calls the virus police onto me for going outside doing non-essential stuff ... I'll be sitting inside controlling it all! "I did carry my telescope outside Officer ... just like I carry out garbage ... but not staying outside ... no sir I'm inside controlling it all. Not disobeying rules sir!"
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Post by howie1 on Apr 9, 2020 22:30:48 GMT
Seems we all are looking at the future.. for better and quicker ways to do astronomy, totally with you guys and it's good for the forum that we are doing it from different directions,, zwo asiair Pro and astroberry,, In the beginning I thought about getting the pro,, was a few things that stopped me, The fact that it was for zwo camera's,, it's said that it can do dslr,, but what advantage would that be to zwo who sell camera's,, how good would the dslr side be,,?? Price was my next concern along with,, how long till it matures as a piece of equipment,, you guys have reported how scarce the operating manual is,, and I believe zwo haven't made one because they are still refining it, and that is good news because it will only get better. Distribution has been a nightmare and getting one has been tricky but over the next year I believe we will see the astronomy market flooded with them and being a big hit,, this ensures folk buy more and better zwo cameras,, great bit of business from zwo,, will corner the market. Good on them for seeing this. More companies will Play catch up using the raspberry pi4 or 5 or 6 to get on the wagon,, so we will see an improvement in Linux based software,, yet again good for astronomy. And good for vaf because we won't be playing catch up 😬😁 Hi davy, again kudo's to you and oldstash for helping you get the Pi build along. Club members who've done the same as you, come up with their own unique problems just as you have found. Hope the How To document works. IE hopefully you've come up against all the main issues for others to overcome if they build one. Re your comment "how good would the (AIR's) dslr side be?" ... It works a treat davy. Plug and play. Just plug in Canon or Nikon usb cable into the AIR box, and you're done. It controls the DSLR, uses it's images for PA, uses them for platesolving, acts as the intervalometer, saves the frames to SD card. Only thing is the NON PRO version won't stack (unless you create a simple batch file to auto copy the images from AIR's SD card to laptop running sharpcap to do the stacking). The PRO version will livestack but I've no experience with the PRO and cannot comment on how good a job it does Live Stacking. The PRO would allow simplification of rig, having only to take an Android or Apple tablet out with you. No laptop requirement. But as far as astro cams ... yes the AIR is very limited to just ZWO's. But for us DSLR folk it handles heaps of Canon and Nikon DSLRS very nicely!!!.
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Post by davy on Apr 10, 2020 6:28:54 GMT
Seems we all are looking at the future.. for better and quicker ways to do astronomy, totally with you guys and it's good for the forum that we are doing it from different directions,, zwo asiair Pro and astroberry,, In the beginning I thought about getting the pro,, was a few things that stopped me, The fact that it was for zwo camera's,, it's said that it can do dslr,, but what advantage would that be to zwo who sell camera's,, how good would the dslr side be,,?? Price was my next concern along with,, how long till it matures as a piece of equipment,, you guys have reported how scarce the operating manual is,, and I believe zwo haven't made one because they are still refining it, and that is good news because it will only get better. Distribution has been a nightmare and getting one has been tricky but over the next year I believe we will see the astronomy market flooded with them and being a big hit,, this ensures folk buy more and better zwo cameras,, great bit of business from zwo,, will corner the market. Good on them for seeing this. More companies will Play catch up using the raspberry pi4 or 5 or 6 to get on the wagon,, so we will see an improvement in Linux based software,, yet again good for astronomy. And good for vaf because we won't be playing catch up 😬😁 Hi davy, again kudo's to you and oldstash for helping you get the Pi build along. Club members who've done the same as you, come up with their own unique problems just as you have found. Hope the How To document works. IE hopefully you've come up against all the main issues for others to overcome if they build one. Re your comment "how good would the (AIR's) dslr side be?" ... It works a treat davy. Plug and play. Just plug in Canon or Nikon usb cable into the AIR box, and you're done. It controls the DSLR, uses it's images for PA, uses them for platesolving, acts as the intervalometer, saves the frames to SD card. Only thing is the NON PRO version won't stack (unless you create a simple batch file to auto copy the images from AIR's SD card to laptop running sharpcap to do the stacking). The PRO version will livestack but I've no experience with the PRO and cannot comment on how good a job it does Live Stacking. The PRO would allow simplification of rig, having only to take an Android or Apple tablet out with you. No laptop requirement. But as far as astro cams ... yes the AIR is very limited to just ZWO's. But for us DSLR folk it handles heaps of Canon and Nikon DSLRS very nicely!!!. excellent howie Great to know about the dslr side,. One other thing I have noticed with the raspberry pi and using the zwo and oacapture is the frames dropped,, masses of them,, very slow frame rate as well,, definitely a bottle neck, how is the frame rate and frame dropping via asi,, if we're basically using the same raspberry boards, then what have they done software wise to over come it
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Post by howie1 on Apr 10, 2020 12:15:31 GMT
excellent howie Great to know about the dslr side,. One other thing I have noticed with the raspberry pi and using the zwo and oacapture is the frames dropped,, masses of them,, very slow frame rate as well,, definitely a bottle neck, how is the frame rate and frame dropping via asi,, if we're basically using the same raspberry boards, then what have they done software wise to over come it No idea davy. Sorry. In my constant playing with the buttons/icons I've seen fps info displayed, but never seen any screen displaying dropped frames info. When using my ASI224 colour I ran it at fast exposure speeds when testing in the daytime and it handled 1000 fps without any errors or freeze although I mostly used it at around 250 fps. When it got dark, I ran the 224 at 1/4 sec right up to 60 sec exposure time and again no error message, or freeze. But that's not stacking. Remember, my non PRO version does not live stack - it just displays the image in the stretched Preview window. But it all worked fine for several hours without crash, error nor freeze of the Pi even in the daytime test at 250fps. When it came to my EOS700d 18Mp sensor it doesn't run at a continuous sub second rate anyway ... it's not running like a ZWO video feed continuously. It's run just like EOS Utilities or BYEOS where you set an ISO and Exposure time and it takes the single image. So in daytime test I set 1/250 sec and ISO100 and within a second the Preview window displayed the image. If you have to take a series of shots to stack you setup the AIR intervalometer to take those frames just as you would using EOS Utils or BYEOS. cheers Howie
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