Switching from OSC to Mono: Asiair vs. NINA

Aymen Aissa:
Hey everyone!!

I've been using a ZWO OSC camera along with other ZWO products to run my scope for a while now, but I'm considering making the switch to a mono setup. Specifically, I'm looking at the 2600MM with Antlia filters.

I currently own an Asiair, and I'm wondering whether it’s better to stick with it for a mono setup or completely shift to NINA. I've heard that Asiair's versatility, especially regarding filter offsets, isn’t great for mono, which is a concern for me.
However, I'm also reluctant to make a financial investment in a NUC and a power box to switch over to NINA. So, I'm in a bit of a dilemma here.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. What are the pros and cons of sticking with Asiair vs. making the switch to NINA? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Christian Großmann:
In theory, it doesn't really matter which software/device you use as long it offers you the options you need. But the ASI air is a finished product without much possibility to get beyond the things you usually do with it. Now it depends on you and your interests. I am a DIY guy and I try to automate my stuff as much as possible. Although there are so many options out there, I decided to go with a windows PC (I use more of them now). There are so many ideas I had to be able to automate stuff without going out to the equipment which simply would not be possible with the ASI air, that the PC was one of two options. The second one was a Raspberry with either Stellarmate or Astroberry software on it. But I am not a Linux guy. More importantly, NINA would not be usable with this OS.

Since I tried NINA, I never had the need to go for something else. Every function I wished that would exist was implemented at some point. Some of my hardware stuff is controlled by external scripts. And it never failed so far. I really love it. Many parts of my rig would not work without windows or NINA. So that was a no brainer for ME...

If you like the simple stuff and just want to image with a device you know, the ASI air might be great. But you are restricted to the ZWO stuff and as soon as you'd like to have options in equipment, you are limited. I know there are many people out there that love it. I totally understand that. But it's not my kind of thing.

Another huge thing for me is reliability. A wifi connection is a weak solution for me and at least where my scopes are located, I would have a lot of trouble. I tried it. This is a reason for me not to use the ASI air, too.

As you already might have guessed, I totally love NINA and its flexibility !!!

John Stone:
If you buy nice parafocal filters then you don't need to worry so much about focus shift when changing filters.   In this case the ASIAIR could work just fine for straightforward plans.

I bought the very nice Antlia Dark LRGB in 36mm round and ran an extensive training session in the Nina filter offset wizard and after a couple hours of testing it came up with filter offsets of L:0, R:0, G:0, B:7 on my Esprit 100ED.

Aymen Aissa:

Frank Alvaro:
I started with the ASIAir 3 years ago, with an OSC camera, and it was the perfect introduction to AP. About 12 mths ago I moved to mono and found the ASIAir wasn't really great for using multiple filters, mainly because I would get through a session without completing a even set of images for each filter since you can't set up a repeating  sequence such as r, g, b ...you have to run all the reds, then all the greens, and then all the blues for example. So I moved to NINA and it was great; however long the session lasted, I'd end up with an even set of subs for each filter. However, I've recently had lots of issues with NINA, mainly around focussing and guiding, and despite lots of troubleshooting I can't get them to perform satisfactorily.  So I've switched back to the ASIAir for the past couple of nights (imaging right now as I'm typing this) and it's so refreshing to have everything work so quickly and easily.  So despite the aforementioned limitations with filters, and the fact that NINA is brilliant software, I'm going to stick with the ASIAir because I have better things to do than wrestle with software in the dark.

This is really valuable to hear from someone who started with Asiair, explored NINA and moved back to Asiair. Your experience highlights exactly what I've been wrestling with—the trade-off between simplicity and flexibility. But knowing that it’s still a solid, reliable choice for many people makes me think it’s worth sticking with for now and maybe exploring NINA more down the road if I really need that advanced control with planetary and solar imaging.Thanks again for your insight, Frank.