1454 replies to this topic

[Psychlist1972]

We received lots of complaints that the NYX-101 now does not work with ASIAIR. As lots of customers has invested in the ASIAIR and in the equipment that ASIAIR supports I would like to make the following statement:

 

The NYX-101 mount works out of the box with any LX200 driver. As ASIAir 3rd party drivers are based on GPLv3 INDILib framework and adopted from there, they work flawlessly with any LX200 mount. With these drivers, ASI Air supports a wide range of 3rd party equatorial mounts from different brands.

NYX-101 is discoverable and working great with ASIAIR stock firmware, but the mount is not discoverable after the latest firmware update of ASI AIR.

 

After lots of complaints and some immediate investigation, we found that the “Pegasus Astro” manufacturing tag that the mount advertises “triggers” ASIAIR latest firmware to ignore the mount so USB connectivity is not possible. If you change the manufacturing USB discovery tag to anything else than “Pegasus Astro”, all LX200 drivers work fine, as previously.

 

I understand that this is a serious accusation of a mean way to protect your product with a competitive one but this bleeds the astronomy community and I do not find there is a sense of fair play and a healthy market on that.

 

I can understand a policy that you do not allow, from the beginning. other products and focus only on your products (for better support and development) but locking explicitly a brand, because it is an immediate competitor and it might affect your cash flow is something that I find it very bad.

 

There are ways to bypass this policy but we do not want to end up in a brand war. With all due respect, I will not comment further on this but I had to make a post and let our valuable users who bought the NYX-101 know why the mount does not work with ASIAIR now.

When you tested, did you need to change the tag to another brand that was accepted, or could you change it to any old garbage to make it work?

 

Wondering if ZWO has a pass-list or a block-list here.

 

Pete

[SM881]

I'd argue that a cheap mini-pc and a Pegasus power box is already a better combination. You gain all the freedom with more power and customizability.

I agree but the phone or tablet functionality is an attractive feature for a travel gear.

[Destrehan Dave]

When you tested, did you need to change the tag to another brand that was accepted, or could you change it to any old garbage to make it work?

 

Wondering if ZWO has a pass-list or a block-list here.

 

 

Gee, hate to break it to you, but that’s what you get when you choose to endorse an illegitimate product like ASIAIR, who blatantly used open source code to base a raspberry pi product, pretending it is theirs.

 

I warned about this stolen code and how shameful a product it is better than a year ago.

 

Buy an 8GB Raapberry Pi, and use the legal, real things… Stellarmate and Astroberry.

 

Make ZWO obey international open source agreements and stop limiting our choices.

 

DD 

[dciobota]

So I read the indi licensing, and it's LGPL. That license agreement allows third party users to use the code even for commercial and/or proprietary use. I don't see anything illegal in zwo using the indi library in the asiair?
Sorry for going off topics here but I've heard this "illegal" complaint before and don't understand where it comes from. Fyi, stellarmate uses indi also as far as I can tell and they're also a commercial application.

[Psychlist1972]

Gee, hate to break it to you, but that’s what you get when you choose to endorse an illegitimate product like ASIAIR, who blatantly used open source code to base a raspberry pi product, pretending it is theirs.

 

I warned about this stolen code and how shameful a product it is better than a year ago.

 

Buy an 8GB Raapberry Pi, and use the legal, real things… Stellarmate and Astroberry.

 

Make ZWO obey international open source agreements and stop limiting our choices.

 

DD 

I haven't used an ASI Air in over a year, so not sure why you'd address this to me.

 

I use a mini PC with NINA, PHD2, and more.

 

Pete

[magsterone]

So I’ve been split between the am5 and this mount but find myself leaning towards this mount for a couple of reasons; I am already using the Falcon rotator and upb v2 and I love the build quality and how well it works. Also the potential weight the mounts carry the NYX-101 provides more flexibility.  I like the am5 due the simplicity of the ASIAIR plus software.  I never considered the StellarMate plus and someone mentioned the StellarMate pro.  I am guessing this is a future product?  Anyone know anything about this?  Anyway I hope the ASIAIR issues get resolved and does anyone have any experience within mount and the StellarMate plus? Thanks and be safe.

[Psychlist1972]

So I’ve been split between the am5 and this mount but find myself leaning towards this mount for a couple of reasons; I am already using the Falcon rotator and upb v2 and I love the build quality and how well it works. Also the potential weight the mounts carry the NYX-101 provides more flexibility.  I like the am5 due the simplicity of the ASIAIR plus software.  I never considered the StellarMate plus and someone mentioned the StellarMate pro.  I am guessing this is a future product?  Anyone know anything about this?  Anyway I hope the ASIAIR issues get resolved and does anyone have any experience within mount and the StellarMate plus? Thanks and be safe.

The simplicity comes at a cost of features and other support.

 

For me, deal-breakers with the ASI Air were not being able to use a third-party autofocuser. The ZWO EAF is ... adequate. I wanted something like a Moonlite Nitecrawler and/or PLL Esatto + ARCO (I use both on different scopes), but no go with the closed ASI Air ecosystem. Also, you can't control the ASI Air from a PC (in any supported way), you can't use different guiding software if you're not keen on the gutted version of PHD2 they have, etc. Yes, super simple to set up and get going, but also super simple to outgrow. They're betting on you not outgrowing it before you're already heavily invested in the ecosystem. If you already have experience with ASIAir and are at the point where you're looking to control a rotator, you wouldn't have problems setting this up.

I use a Windows 11 mini PC with NINA for the main app, PHD2 for guiding, and ASTAP for plate solving. I remote into it from my PC inside the house, but I could do the same from an iPad or anything else which has a remote desktop solution for Windows. The advanced sequencer in NINA has been a huge plus for imaging multiple targets during the night. Using a NINA plugin, I have a robocopy job set up which copies each image across the network to my processing PC as it is saved. 

 

And, if I really miss ASIAir-style software, I have ZWO's software suite on the mini PC as well. It doesn't interact with the Air, but has much of the same functionality.

 

Oh, and if NINA isn't your thing, there are other software packages you can run on the same PC: SharpCap is well-known for planetary imaging, and Siril is another do-all type of astrophotography app. Both have great reputations.

 

I've heard StellarMate is quite good as well, but I have no personal experience with that.

Pete

[evansg]

When you tested, did you need to change the tag to another brand that was accepted, or could you change it to any old garbage to make it work?

 

Wondering if ZWO has a pass-list or a block-list here.

 

Pete

To make it as simple as possible.

 

Latest ASIAIR firmware

-------------------------

Pegasus Astro (manufacturer USB id we set in every NYX board - note there is a space between the 2 words) - does not work

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

With older ASIAIR firmware

---------------------

Pegasus Astro works

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

You can easily assume the rest..

Edited by evansg, 14 January 2023 - 07:57 PM.

[Psychlist1972]

To make it as simple as possible.

 

Latest ASIAIR firmware

-------------------------

Pegasus Astro (manufacturer USB id we set in every NYX board - note there is a space between the 2 words) - does not work

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

With older ASIAIR firmware

---------------------

Pegasus Astro works

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

You can easily assume the rest..

Wow. I don't see any reasonable way to interpret that as a bug or mistake.

 

I'm assuming the manufacturer you have in there is your iProduct or iManufacturer name in the string table. They shouldn't even be parsing that when there's a VID/PID.

 

Thanks for following up.

 

Pete

[rgsalinger]

It's early days, isn't it? Once the NYX mounts are out and operating we'll see what ZWO does about the situation. If they made an honest mistake, then they will correct it. If it was intentional to keep everyone inside their eco-system, then we'll know that. I'm not a "fan" of any vendor but in this case, I can't really draw any conclusion since the mounts are so new.

 

Having said that I've always wondered if ZWO gave back anything to the INDI community as a gesture for reusing the software. I've always thought that if you have the means to do so, it's only ethical to contribute some cash if you can't contribute the code. To reiterate - if you have the wherewithall. 

 

Rgrds-Ross

[javanpa]

To make it as simple as possible.

 

Latest ASIAIR firmware

-------------------------

Pegasus Astro (manufacturer USB id we set in every NYX board - note there is a space between the 2 words) - does not work

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

With older ASIAIR firmware

---------------------

Pegasus Astro works

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

You can easily assume the rest..

The only thing is maybe the space in the name is now causing an issue? What happens when you try a test name with a space in it? Does that work as well? It all definitely feels suspicious and I can understand the response here, but it would certainly look pretty bad if it really really is a bug and you are feeding suspicion about malicious action on a public forum.

[Psychlist1972]

It's early days, isn't it? Once the NYX mounts are out and operating we'll see what ZWO does about the situation. If they made an honest mistake, then they will correct it. If it was intentional to keep everyone inside their eco-system, then we'll know that. I'm not a "fan" of any vendor but in this case, I can't really draw any conclusion since the mounts are so new.

 

Having said that I've always wondered if ZWO gave back anything to the INDI community as a gesture for reusing the software. I've always thought that if you have the means to do so, it's only ethical to contribute some cash if you can't contribute the code. To reiterate - if you have the wherewithall. 

 

Rgrds-Ross

Or to PHD for guiding...

Or to the NINA team for TPPA...

[dciobota]

To make it as simple as possible.

Latest ASIAIR firmware
-------------------------
Pegasus Astro (manufacturer USB id we set in every NYX board - note there is a space between the 2 words) - does not work
PegasusAstro works
Test123 works
You_name_it works

With older ASIAIR firmware
---------------------
Pegasus Astro works
PegasusAstro works
Test123 works
You_name_it works

You can easily assume the rest..

Honestly, that actually sounds like a bug or a deliberate change in acceptable naming. Looks like the new parsing code doesn't take spaces in the name. I wonder if there are other ids out there with spaces in the name? Is there some sort of standard convention for manufacturer ids?

[wykbbb]

To make it as simple as possible.

 

Latest ASIAIR firmware

-------------------------

Pegasus Astro (manufacturer USB id we set in every NYX board - note there is a space between the 2 words) - does not work

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

With older ASIAIR firmware

---------------------

Pegasus Astro works

PegasusAstro works

Test123 works

You_name_it works

 

You can easily assume the rest..

Pegasus Astro NYX-101 isn't on the list of mounts that are supported by ASIAir. iOptron HEM27 and RainBow RST are on the list of supported mounts.   https://www.yuque.co...mpatible-mounts

 

Did you contact ZWO to add Pegasus Astro NYX-101 to the list of supported mounts? It's unfair to expect that ASIAir would work with unsupported mounts.  

 

ZWO customer service will be closed until January 29th for Chinese New Year.  So it will be at least a couple of weeks before ZWO can address this. 

Edited by wykbbb, 14 January 2023 - 10:30 PM.

[astroboyabdi]

Actually INDI had 3 point polar alignment  > 5 years ago and EKOS/Indi have 3 PPA without having view of the celestial pole according to the original post 2 years 4 days ago ( ie Jan 2021), this of course is open source and likely the origin of the Asiairs polar alignment routine framework. 

 

I am not sure the difference in implementation between NINAs and EKOS/Indi but at least from a chronological perspective EKOS/indi was before it. 

 

https://www.indilib....ures.html#65724

 

Having used both it seems very similar equally good.

 

Asirairs polar alignment seems different graphically at least not sure what happens underneath to generate that info. But if the system is based on indilib then perhaps its the same underpinnings.

 

And unfortunately how will one know that they made an honest mistake, if enough people generate enough bad rep then most people would come out and say oh sorry it was a mistake, now not saying it wasn't a mistake where the person mistakenly placed the ID on the black list and mistakenly submitted to be compiled. 

 

Paid software is all good but when the folks at N.I.N.A and ekos/indi do it purely for the pleasure of the art and the community it would be extremely rude to make a buck of it.

 

But as people say its open source.

 

People will always get rich of other people, money can be a very powerful motivator to not do the right thing.

 

But yet again a space can cause havoc in software as I discovered whilst trying to generate my custom file names in N.I.N.A, for want of spaces and double backslashes \\ I thought I was going mad, so there is merit in that argument.

Edited by astroboyabdi, 14 January 2023 - 10:43 PM.

[astroboyabdi]

Pegasus Astro NYX-101 isn't on the list of mounts that are supported by ASIAir. iOptron HEM27 and RainBow RST are on the list of supported mounts.   https://www.yuque.co...mpatible-mounts

 

Did you contact ZWO to add Pegasus Astro NYX-101 to the list of supported mounts? It's unfair to expect that ASIAir would work with unsupported mounts.  

 

ZWO customer service will be closed until January 29th for Chinese New Year.  So it will be at least a couple of weeks before ZWO can address this. 

 

A lack of support is not a valid explanation I would think between one version of FW working fine and the next not at all.

A bug perhaps yes but humans are emotional and can only make inferences based on the facts presented as they are with regards to timing of it all and the nature of the issue.

 

In short

'probably it was accidental but by jove are the ******** blocking me out'

[wykbbb]

So I read the indi licensing, and it's LGPL. That license agreement allows third party users to use the code even for commercial and/or proprietary use. I don't see anything illegal in zwo using the indi library in the asiair?
Sorry for going off topics here but I've heard this "illegal" complaint before and don't understand where it comes from. Fyi, stellarmate uses indi also as far as I can tell and they're also a commercial application.

Jasem Mutlaq is the lead developer of Stellarmate, a commercial product.  He  is also the lead developer of open source INDI library & EKOS.  If Jasem wanted to, he could have made Stellarmate open source, but he choose not to. Based on his work on Stellarmate, he's ok with the using INDI library for a commercial product and not contributing all the upgrades for the commercial project back to the open source projects.

Edited by wykbbb, 14 January 2023 - 11:45 PM.

[astroboyabdi]

Have you used Stellarmate? Or are you making an educated guess?

 

Jasem commits all changes made to the drivers etc to the indicore as he makes it.

What you are paying for is the more ease of setup and his support directly. The OS costs 49 . or 229 for what is effectively a RPI 4 8gb with GPS module and a case.

I doubt he makes much margin of that.

The cheapest Asiair is much more than although admittedly you do get a power management system with that.

 

Tell me how Jasem's situation is the same as a corporate company using their code to make money and more importantly locking you into their ecosystem where the real money is made. Jasem contributes directly to maintaining the software and gives back all the developments free of charge straight to indicore repository.

 

If you had used these devices you would know this.

 

I have used Astroberry and it was good but for a beginner in linux software it was quiet difficult to sort stable wifi/etherent connections without messing and understanding the underpinnings. Definitely possible for those in the know and if you posted on the forums the guys including Jasem would help you out no charge, but that was when they were free.

 

When I bought the stellar mate OS suddenly the wifi configurations/ ethernet behaviour just worked with little to no input from my end, the system behaved in a understandable way and if I needed support Jasem was there configuring things and helping out, and if those things were driver related they would be committed to core.

 

Heck I didn't even own stellar mate I was using astroberry OS on my RPI and Jasem literally wrote the driver for indi with help from the SkyX driver for my astrotrac360 allowing full GOTO and pc control. He didn't charge me a cent and he put loads of time into that. I was so impressed I bought the OS as a tribute.

 

tell me again how ZWO product and use of the indi subsystem is the same

 

But again we are perhaps getting off topic slightly

Edited by astroboyabdi, 14 January 2023 - 11:10 PM.

[dciobota]

Yup Jasem and I exchanged some emails years ago when indi was just getting started. Very nice fellow.
I wouldn't begrudge him in the least for using indi in Stellarmate, I was just pointed out that it's ok from a licensing standpoint for commercial applications to use it. Would it be nice for zwo to contribute? Absolutely. Did they contribute? No idea. I don't know if any of the am5 code in the asiair made it into indy.
One guy did reverse engineer it though, the fellow who wrote indigo I believe. Smart guy.

[JST38911]

Has anyone tried a counterweight on the NYX-101 yet?

I am expecting mine within a week and since I will use it with a 10'' reflector I believe a counterweight will be necessary to prevent it from tipping over.

Thx, John

[Psychlist1972]

Actually INDI had 3 point polar alignment  > 5 years ago and EKOS/Indi have 3 PPA without having view of the celestial pole according to the original post 2 years 4 days ago ( ie Jan 2021), this of course is open source and likely the origin of the Asiairs polar alignment routine framework. 

 

I am not sure the difference in implementation between NINAs and EKOS/Indi but at least from a chronological perspective EKOS/indi was before it. 

 

https://www.indilib....ures.html#65724

 

Having used both it seems very similar equally good.

 

Asirairs polar alignment seems different graphically at least not sure what happens underneath to generate that info. But if the system is based on indilib then perhaps its the same underpinnings.

 

And unfortunately how will one know that they made an honest mistake, if enough people generate enough bad rep then most people would come out and say oh sorry it was a mistake, now not saying it wasn't a mistake where the person mistakenly placed the ID on the black list and mistakenly submitted to be compiled. 

 

Paid software is all good but when the folks at N.I.N.A and ekos/indi do it purely for the pleasure of the art and the community it would be extremely rude to make a buck of it.

 

But as people say its open source.

 

People will always get rich of other people, money can be a very powerful motivator to not do the right thing.

 

But yet again a space can cause havoc in software as I discovered whilst trying to generate my custom file names in N.I.N.A, for want of spaces and double backslashes \\ I thought I was going mad, so there is merit in that argument.

Context here. Make of it what you may. Doesn't seem like they were looking at any other TPPA-like functionality in Indi or otherwise.

https://bbs.astronom...d-for-pole-star

Pete

[dghent]

On the topic of use of open source in commercial products; this is normal and all the major open source licenses out there, including the ones used by INDIlib/go, NINA, and other astro-FOSS projects, permit commercial use of the code so long as the stipulations of the license are followed; especially if it's a copyleft license.

 

But.

 

There has been a movement within the open source world, especially over the past 10 years, where commercial entities who use and profit off of open source projects in their offerings are expected to contribute back to those projects in some meaningful (to the project) way. This may mean anything from monetary donations, to providing testing or other resources, to directly contributing code and documentation. It keeps a healthy relationship between open source and commercial interests - the project and its contributors are supported in some manner and the commercial entity whose product relies on the software helps ensure its continued advancement. Take - and give.

 

Has ZWO done this with INDIib? I honestly don't know for sure but nothing jumps out at me as I look at the commit history of the ZWO-related driver stuff in the INDI third party driver repo. The INDIlib maintainers would be the people to answer such a question.

[Psychlist1972]

On the topic of use of open source in commercial products; this is normal and all the major open source licenses out there, including the ones used by INDIlib/go, NINA, and other astro-FOSS projects, permit commercial use of the code so long as the stipulations of the license are followed; especially if it's a copyleft license.

 

But.

 

There has been a movement within the open source world, especially over the past 10 years, where commercial entities who use and profit off of open source projects in their offerings are expected to contribute back to those projects in some meaningful (to the project) way. This may mean anything from monetary donations, to providing testing or other resources, to directly contributing code and documentation. It keeps a healthy relationship between open source and commercial interests - the project and its contributors are supported in some manner and the commercial entity whose product relies on the software helps ensure its continued advancement. Take - and give.

 

Has ZWO done this with INDIib? I honestly don't know for sure but nothing jumps out at me as I look at the commit history of the ZWO-related driver stuff in the INDI third party driver repo. The INDIlib maintainers would be the people to answer such a question.

Arturia (a synth company) really felt the sting of that when they took the Mutable Instruments code (which was open source) and shoved it in a commercial synth, and then tried to tell people it was a collaboration after the fact.

 

It was all legal, just not cool.

 

Most companies are pretty clueless with this. Unless you're in the community, the code can look like a resource to harvest. It's something OSS devs have to wake up a bit to as well, as most corporate types are going to be thinking more about what's legal than what's right, not necessarily out of malevolence (there is that though), but just cluelessness. It's almost like licenses should be accompanied by a letter of intent or something, until everyone eventually catches on.

 

Pete

[rgsalinger]

Has there been any further documentation released on the NYX? I'm trying to work out if it has a flat plate that would allow me to continue to use my Helium tripod if I bought one. I've looked at the manual and I'm just not sure. 

 

Rgrds-Ross

[Angelos Kechagias]

For any questions about any of the Pegasus Astro products please address your inquiries to our email address, support@pegasusastro.com

Edited by Angelos Kechagias, 15 January 2023 - 03:36 AM.