TRob

Hi Steve, yes it is great to meet somebody who has also made some experience using StarAid Sorry for my late reply as well. Looks like I deactivated the "follow topic" slider thus not following this topic. As it is often the case, the problem sat in front of the computer ... Glad you managed to got Sky Recognition working now. Your post and the webcast replay helped me get it going. I received my StarAid in the beginning of January but the weather and my initial problems prevented me from testing it any further. Apart from a single night when there was a very short opening it has either been raining or it was completely overcast. At least I was able to get Sky Recognition working. Even in a rather sub-optimal condition. I was amazed how fast it was. I still do not understand why the default USB cable is not able to power StarAid through the splitter. Apart from a powered USB hub I have used several different power banks, power tanks and laptops. Powering StarAid by attaching the same cable directly works fine. Since I have to carry my telescope outside I would not want to attach another cable to StarAid directly. I am sure at some point in time I will trip over it or get entangled one way or the other. Murphy always wins This was actually the reason why I got myself a magnetic USB cable (ZIIXII) that will detach itself easily without possibly causing any damage. It was only then that I noticed that it works either directly attached or through the splitter. A short while ago Hendrik answered a support call of mine regarding the settings menu. You might have noticed that some of the settings (camera, telescope and some others if I remember correctly) are empty after entering the settings menu again. This will be fixed in the next firmware version. The link to download the user reset file has been corrected and does work now . Although I can control my camera and have found a setting that works I am still struggling with the settings. So far, I could not find any documentation explaining the options although I think I know what they are supposed to do. Only problem is they have a different opinion. In order to let the system settle I could either take pictures while the camera is in Live View mode or make the camera get the mirror out of the way (Mup) first, wait for x seconds, take a picture, close the shutter and then lower the mirror again. Not sure which version will be better and/or saves more power. Currently only the Live View mode works without problems. I would also love to be able to attach StarAid to my network or to a portable wifi router. This would save me from having to use two different wireless networks depending on whether I want to control/check/... StarAid or my telescope's wifi dongle. You probably noticed in the webcast that Hendrik is a bit reluctant making this feature available although he uses this exact configuration. He seems to be concerned that people forget their credentials. On the other hand StarAid has a reset button that might be used to also reset the wifi configuration to its default. According to the weather forecast it is supposed to get better sometime next week. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to conduct some tests tracking, taking pictures and/or video shots, polar aligning, ... Clear skies Rob

Gave Sky Recognition another try tonight while being rather overcast. To make a long story short. Sky Recognition / Plate Solving works. The trick is leaving the focal length field of the guide scope empty. This was also mentioned in the first webinar with Hendrik. Would have been nice, though if that info had a place in the manual. StarAid then determines the focal length automatically. StarAidsdetermined fl was 6 mm or 4.6% smaller than what the specs say. Sky recognition was actually really fast even under the conditions I had today. The solution corresponds pretty well with what astrometry.net thinks. Off to guiding at some other day with clear skies and no rain ...

Info about the next webinar taken from https://www.itelescope.net/webinar: StarAid - The Next Generation Autoguider - Part 2 Description This is part 2 of StarAid- you can use the autoguider in your house through a window! Hendrik, the developer of StarAid, will discuss polar alignment and focal lengths which have some common myths. Come and join the discussion Time Jan 29, 2022 06:00 PM in Universal Time UTC https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Vw1uFttKQCu6lCX_3jjnJw A recording of the first webinar can be seen on https://t.co/qrOwzIrJex

Thank you stevebb for starting this topic. Interesting to read that there have been webinars. I did not see any announcements on their webpage. How can we join and is there a schedule when the next one will be? I have recently bought StarAid Revision B attached to a QHY miniGuideScope. Since I did not want to carry a laptop with me I found StarAid Revision B quite interesting because it is capable to guide my telescope and also control my camera. After and while setting it up I ran into a number of problems. Some are probably due to user errors, others to the rather rudimentary documentation and others due to the StarAid. There is a German documentation which is a lot better than the original one on https://www.baader-planetarium.com/de/downloads/dl/file/id/1716/product/4672/staraid_revolution_rev_b_quick_start_guide.pdf . During the setup and a dryrun outside when I had a few hours of clear sky I ran into the following problems: - the USB cable that comes with it does not deliver power when attached to the splitter. I had to use a different cable. Thinking it must be a problem with the splitter rather than the cable it took a long time until i tried another cable out of desperation . - Settings -- some settings (Location, Focal Length of guiding optic) are always displayed -- some settings (Optics, Camera, ...) are only displayed while some value is entered. -- some settings in Image Capture (Camera Port Pre-Activation, Camera Port Activation) are only marked if both Tip and Ring have been selected for both entries -- Pre-activation time does not seem to have any effect on the camera - Plate Solving aka Sky Recognition does not seem to work. I took quite a few live captures and uploaded the fits files to astrometry.net in order to check whether this is a general problem. http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/5510272#annotated shows one example. To speed things up a little bit all the uploaded fits files have negative parity. Checking positive parity on astrometry.net will fail. - it is unclear, to me at least, which settings are actually stored but not displayed. As stevebb wrote guiding scope focal length should be left empty. As probably any user would do I would select my scope from the drop down list which then automatically fills in the guiding scope focal length. Good thing I had only one so it worked from the start. I do still struggle with the camera settings. Rather than having Live View on when taking series I would prefer to use MirrorUp on my Nikon. On the first press of the shutter the mirror moves up and at the second press exposure starts. Since StarAid settings in Image Capture let me state Pre-Activation, Pre-Activation time and Activation I thought that this would solve my problem but it does not. Shooting pics in Live View is no problem. The question is now what is the reasoning behind Camera Port Pre-Activation and Camera Port Activation? In which cases do I need to activate what? Right now I have both Tip and Ring activated for both. Any other combination and time did not work properly. I am currently using the latest firmware version 1.9.2 . At one time I thought that maybe I a user reset (documented in https://bsentient.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2/article/862846977 ) might solve my issues. Unfortunately the update procedure then tells me that the image is invalid or corrupt. Downloading it several more times using different operating systems did not change it so either the supplied image is corrupt from the start or it does not work with 1.9.2 So far, none of my open cases have been answered. Once the weather gets better again I will give guiding a try which was not possible yet. As it looks now I can work around some of the issues so it is not a big problem. Plate Solving would be nice but I can live with not having that possibility at the moment. On the other hand it would be nice if the current quirks could be fixed.