ZWO ASIAIR PRO, 120 MINI, & GUIDE SCOPE KIT ... more info please!

Schmaks:   I have no experience with the mini guide system but I have the asiAIR Pro as the 2nd/backup system to my Eagle3 Pro.  The asiAIR Pro works perfectly every time and, to me, is worth its price just for the plate solving.  The wifi range is only about 20 feet max but the entire system is very user friendly and just works .  I set the asiAIR Pro to a target, focus with the Pro focus app or a Bahtinov mask, in about 2 minutes sitting by my rig.  Then I put my iPad in a heavy ziplock bag and go to bed.  You are a bit locked into ZWO gear with it but it is compatible with a good number of mounts.

Scott

Don't lock yourself into vendor specific SW. Try Stellarmate OS!

To overcome the lack of range  with the Pro I tested a Netgear Powerline adapter with a gigabit port as well as a Netgear extender with gigabit port and they both fly with plenty of bandwidth to run my entire setup without fail.

Rapcon, please keep us updated on the wifi antenna work.  I would be very interested in learning how to set it up.

Thanks
Scott

I think the actual rule of thumb is guider *resolution* should be 1/3rd of the main imager.

So you are not comparing just focal lengths but focal lengths divided by pixel pitches which is important because the OP is considering the kit, not just the guider scope. And effective focal length is further altered by reducers, flatteners and correctors (although not too much with the last two).

The ASI 120mm mini has 2.9μm pixel pitch so if your main imager is e.g. 4μm you can actually go for an imaging focal length about 35% higher than the theoretical 360mm i.e. 500mm. At 623mm I use a ZWO ASI178 bin2 which has 4.8μm pixel pitch, so I am very close to the theoretical 594mm limit.

That said, I actually can only get guiding to work reliably (extremely reliably for that matter, twenty minutes in a row) if I bin the 120mm. Halving resolution is in fact the recommendation at the Elks website! So I think high resolution is actually bad for guiding because it will tend to overcompensate for seeing and noise. And the rule of thumb probably needs to be revised, at least in an amateur situation in the visible spectrum where seeing is the dominant factor, big focal lengths *will* be limited by a reducer and you rarely go above five minutes or so because of the sky background?

The WO Uniguide is 520g and longer than the little ZWO, I think this is quite a factor because total weight balancing (especially on DEC) and torque can have much greater impact on guiding quality than resolution. Perhaps not so much with a heavy duty mount. I wouldn't know.

I have this to say about the ZWO 30/120 though (and this is why I revisited the topic incidentallt): its optics leave something to be desired. Stars move a lot when focusing and curvature is bad enough to make polar drift aligning very challenging unless your guide star is at the dead center. Spent an hour yesterday dealing with that issue. Maybe not much of an issue if you are not into polar drift aligning and maybe it applies to all f/4 single element uncorrected refractors but it is the one thing that bugs me with that scope and I had to say it

Cheers,

Dimitris

Hi,  I own the ZWO combo; ASIair Pro, 30F4 guidescope and 120MM Mini.

I use it  to guide… wait for it… my Canon 6D MkII with 200mm lens.  OK, so I have been waiting 6months for an SW Esprit 100 which it will be a better match for.

By and large, I am very happy with this kit.

30F4 guidescope and 1200MM Mini work well and reliability together and with the ASIAir Pro - as long as I remenber to plug the auto guider into the usb b socket in the ASIAir and not the usb c (where is corrupts the data from the 120MM Mini).  My only gripe is that the auto guider is held in with only two screws 120deg apart - making the 120MM lie squint with respect to the finder - so I don't have perfect focus over the field.  I am probably doing something wrong here.

The ASIAir control of the autoguider is really good, alth ought I am not convinced I am seeing the full chip on the ASIAir display.  I suspect I will have to buy a tablet, as I am doing all this from my iPhone 

More generally the ASIAir Pro is excellent, and I would never part with it.  It has  both improved and sped up my sessions tremendously.    With my old eyes I was struggling to use a polar scope, but the ASIAir PA routine allows me to align to within 1arcmin in less than 5 mins with my EQ6R- Pro mount.  The only thing is that I have to switch the connection to my mount off on the ASIAir Pro app and rotate the mount manually by the 60deg required.  I wasn't able to get the  ASIAir Pro to rotate the mount reliably by 60deg; sometimes it didn't rotate at all, sometime it wouldn't stop rotating.  When it did rotate properly, it tend to lose contact with the camera - invalidating the PA.  No biggie.

The plate solve routine with the ASIAir is amazing - although it doesn't work for me if there is heavy vignetting/cloud/obstructions in the field.  But, then again, why should it?

My one issue with the ASIAIr Pro is that about 50% the goto action drives the Dec axis in wrong direction - as if it was on the other side of the meridian.   I haven't ruled out operator error on my part yet - but I think I have ruled out most of the stupid things I could be doing.   Again this is not a huge issue - I only have to move the telescope manually in one axis to get close to the right position which I can check with plate solve.

I don't find the Focus terribly useful on the ASIAir - I prefer instead to use Live View on my Canon.  The ASIAir Focus routine seems to be quite noisy, but then again I could just be picking the wrong stars.

This all appears a bit critical of the ASIAir Pro.  Its not meant to be, I couldn't now observe without it.  It is just a little idiosyncratic at times.  I haven't had too many network issues, the box is about 10m from a Google wifi point.

Wow…. as I finish this the house has had a decent shake from an earthquake - probably from the fault just off Milford Sound.

Brian