Quote:
Originally Posted by Poli_74
Has anyone tried out this newly released stand alone auto guider. If so, is it worth buying? I previously bought a stand alone auto guider called the Smartguider from a company in Italy, it was a lemon. Could never get it to lock onto a star despite all me efforts. The company doesn't exist anymore. I wonder why? Lol.
I am using an offset autoguide attachment from Celestron for my 8inch Celestron CPC 8inch at f/6.3.
Any reviews or knowledge of this newly released Stand alone guider would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
Emanuel Polichronis.
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ASIAir is not just an autoguider - it provides for control of guide cameras, mounts, imaging cameras and filter wheels. It also allows you to bridge to software like SkySafari for object selection and slewing.
I recently bought one, and most functions appear to work as advertised, though I haven't been able to get the mount control to connect yet, though I can get around that by using a separate wifi connection to the mount.
If testing pans out, it will be a fantastic tool for public outreach events.
The only three drawbacks that I can see are:
1. It only supports ZWO cameras and filter wheels (I suspect the company did this to minimise the product support load). Also it doesn't support all makes of mount.
2. Image data volume is limited to the capacity of the supplied SD card, which might be a problem with long runs on large sensors
3. The base hardware only provides USB2 connection even when you may be using USB3 cameras, so download speeds are slower. This shouldn't be a problem if your camera buffers the captured data before download.