Finally, the AZGTi as it should be!

[Stu]

I was due an upgrade for my phone, and my iPhone 6 Plus is still working fine so I thought I would allow myself to go for a Samsung Galaxy S9 for a couple of reasons. Firstly, having seen the low light performance of Gavin’s phone, I wanted to try one out for the sort of smartphone shots I do ie quick snaps handheld at the eyepiece which should hopefully now have less noise and show more detail in the less bright objects.

Second point was for the AZGTi with SkySafari. As I think we all know, the solution with iOS is not that great, and currently I use a Synscan handset with a GPS mouse and Skywire, which misses much of the freedom and flexibility which the mount should offer. You also can’t charge the phone when using Skywire which is sometimes a pain.

Anyhow, I’ve just managed to connect the Synscan app and then SkySafari very easily, and to demonstrate to myself that I could control and do test gotos with the mount. I’m very much looking forward to giving it a proper go at night. Should be much easier , and will really allow the mount to perform as it should do.

[AdeKing]

I'll be interested to hear your findings Stu. I've had good results with the Synscan app on its own but when I connect the Sky Safari app to the scope after aligning with synscan app there is a big difference between where the scope is pointed and where Sky Safari thinks it is.

I've also found that sky safari causes Synscan app to crash and then reports that it' lost connection.

[cotterless45]

Never had a problem since loaded them both on a £60 Lenovo tablet from Argos. If anything , it gets more accurate as the session goes on ,Nick.

[Stu]

7 hours ago, AdeKing said:

I'll be interested to hear your findings Stu. I've had good results with the Synscan app on its own but when I connect the Sky Safari app to the scope after aligning with synscan app there is a big difference between where the scope is pointed and where Sky Safari thinks it is.

I've also found that sky safari causes Synscan app to crash and then reports that it' lost connection.

Hmm, that’s interesting Ade. After I posted it did drop connection a couple of times...... Hope my experience is more like Nick’s!

[AdeKing]

19 minutes ago, Stu said:

Hmm, that’s interesting Ade. After I posted it did drop connection a couple of times...... Hope my experience is more like Nick’s!

Me too Stu.

I've put my experience down to probable user error. Taking it to Dartmoor this week so hopefully will get a chance for more extended testing.

[robhatherton]

Did you ever solve the dropping connection issue? I’ve got the same problem. 

[AdeKing]

3 hours ago, robhatherton said:

Did you ever solve the dropping connection issue? I’ve got the same problem. 

I still find the SkySafari to SynScan connection slightly problematic if I'm honest.

Sometimes it will work perfectly for weeks of observing then for some reason it will just sulk and won't play ball. 

The SynScan app connects and works fine on its own, but the connection between SynScan and SkySafari quite often just won't play ball.

I found that the power save settings on my Huawei P20, which I really had to hunt to find, caused the wifi to power down even though I'd ticked another option to keep the connection alive in sleep mode.  This caused it to drop the connection every time the screen went blank.  

Like Stu, I have been playing around with a SkyFi unit and an old iPhone 6, which has been working beautifully until the other night when SS on the iPhone stopped communicating with the SkyFi.  However, switching to an Android phone made everything work ok so clearly not an issue with the SkyFi to mount connection.

I haven't used the AZGTi with a mobile very much recently, I've kind of gone back to plugging in the handset as I know its just going to work without me pulling my hair out and as a lot of what I observe consists of double stars tis easy enough to look up the SAO number on SkySafari and manually enter it into the handset.  

Its a great concept, but the annoyance and lost observing time that it has caused me has kind of put me off the app and wifi solution and I've gone back to the handset option which just works.

Hope that helps,

Ade

 

[robhatherton]

Well I don’t have a handset but I did find when tinkering about earlier that if I connect to the mount with the iPhone, set the synscan app to stay on top and the phone screen not to sleep that seemed to do the trick. I then connected with sky Safari and it stayed connected. If the iPad went to sleep it would disconnect sky safari but reconnect easily as long as the phone stayed awake..

Now I’ll just have to see how reliable that is!

[dd999]

I've lost a few hours to this too. Trying to combine Synscan SkySafari and an AZ GTi is sketchy at best.

I'm also using the Hauwei (so an Android device) and although it's 'possible' to run both Synscan and SkySafari from an an Android device - I found it much more stable running from two devices (Synscan from a tablet and SkySafari from the Android phone). The connection drops a lot less than before.

My biggest issue now is my AT GZi in goto mode working just fine after alignment and slewing to items just fine, and then out of nowhere it seems to change the location of the scope - even though the scope hasn't moved. Both Synscan and SkySafari showing my scope is in a location that my telescope simply isn't, and was quite far away from - and out of nowhere.

What made it worse is I used the manual controllers to point the telescope towards the horizon, and both Synscan and SkySafari showed, in real time, I was moving the telescope straight up towards Polaris! It means the aligning I did at the start of the night is useless, and I have to start again. It's done this on two consecutive evenings now 😡.....but that's a story for another night

Edited June 26, 2020 by dd999

[robhatherton]

I’ve found - unless it’s just chance that goto with the synscan app is sometimes more accurate than goto with sky safari. But it seems to help when I centre the star with sky safari and then click align. But either the synscan app Direction controls on the iPhone or sky safari Controls on the iPad will work just as well. I don’t have to use one or the other which is very convenient as the phone is a better size for a hand controller. 

[PeterW]

Note that e latest version of iOS SkySafari now has. Skywatcher synscanlink mount option, no announcement. Not had a chance to give it a try yet though. 
 

Peter

[johninderby]

Luminos has had the Synscan option for IOS for quite a while now. Still my favourite planetarium app on the iPad. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Edited July 10, 2020 by johninderby