Glad you got your hands on one. I had thought it was just rumour. Hopefully it will drive ZWO to open up the Air to other equipment. Competition is always good!
Let hope the software gets as mature as the ASIAir’s ….. Right now it seems very rough around the edges. With a little bit of polish this could be just what the community needs!!
Great News for us all !! And great reporting. I'm pretty pleased with my ASIAir however, I have several NON-ZWO cams I would love to use without the use of my laptop. I'm praying that Touptek get this together soon.
Thank you Scott! I will try to make a long form video taking you through the process hopefully in a week or two. If there is an update to the app I will do so sooner. Thank you for watching!
It's UI and app needs more fine tuning. Looking forward to picking one of these up when it ages a bit more. Let them have time to work out the bugs and have a more mature interface.
thanks, this might just be what I need. I'm currently looking at getting a big brother for my CEM25p+130pds+183mc pro setup which runs on the asiair, and I'm eyeing the 2600mm with a quattro 10 or a 200pds on a cem70. however the price of the 2600mm drives tears into my eyes, the competitors (playerone, touptek, omegon, altair etc) are 1000-1300€ cheaper, that will yield me a full filterwheel plus filters instead. I also considered going NINA on a NUC but I kinda like controlling everything from my ipad. it goes smoothly, nothing much needed in the field, it doesn't weight much, it's overall a very userfriendly way to do it. if the software is even only as good as the early asiair in 2021, when it releases, I'm in.
@@IcequeenNarzissa I’m working on a double tube setup too and I’m facing the same dilemma it seems. I use a laptop for my 9.25EHD but I want to use an ASIair for the two refractors (When the day comes). Right now I would advise against going with the Astrostation at this early stage until all the bugs have been ironed out. It’s been a while since I have tested mine so maybe a lot of these issues are in the past. Maybe an update video would be a good idea ?
Wow. This is good for the industry. I love ZWO stuff but they need competition although this comes pretty close to a direct copy just looking at the box. Enjoyed your video. New subscriber looking forward to more videos.
It's more than a "very similar layout" (cables/ports being the same), it is a direct "in your face" competition to ZWO. Plus you can directly swap it in with virtually no (hardware) changes. I like it. And I like anything but "everything" red even more. LOL!
AstraPharmaq8, have you tried this yet with the Juwei-17? I'm not worried about the Bets Bugs in the software (and firmware) as that will (or should) be taken care of before release. Equipment control is the most important, mount (especially meridian flip), focuser, guiding, imagers, dew heaters, etc. The rest can be dealt with using external software if needed for now. Nice first light and review!
Hey Ali! How are you? 👋 Did you make any progress with the Astro AstroStation? I have three videos on my channel about it. I hope all the viewers and Touptek are already getting ready for the official release.
My Astrostation arrive today without any pre-notice. I can control everything in a dry run. I now need to test it when it is dark. Let's see if version 1.0 20240621 can do better. Btw: the dongle is used to connect to home WiFi?
I'm very interested to this. Do you know if, in addition to astronomical cameras of all brands, it is also possible to connect Olympus mirrorless cameras? I have AsiAir plus and it works very well with its cameras, but in addition to these it only supports Canon and Nikon cameras.
Connectivity is very similar to the ASIair, which is stable once connected. As far as distance, I haven’t done much testing. Great idea for the next video I do on the thing! Thanks for watching!
Please, compare this Touptek AstroStation with Stellarmate in addition to ASiAir. What is there inside? PC, Raspberry…? I am not sure using a SD card is a good idea from Touptek. My experience with the Stellarmate OS in Pi4 and Pi5 is that SD cards are very very slow in comparison with a PCIe NVMe or USB SSD. I saw your channel time ago but today I subscribed! Thanks!
Maybe I misled you with the SD card comment, the Astrostation has internal storage just like the ASIair. The SD card slot can be used for extra storage. Touptek are releasing a new version of the app every week and iterating very quickly. When a more stable version of the app is released, I will definitely make a full comparison video. Thank you for watching!
What's your take on the dedicated mini hardware vs PC/laptop option? There's so much community developed open source software out there.. what are you giving up to go down the packaged system route? Good video by the way, awesome that you were able to get your hands on a beta. Hopefully you can give them some feedback based on your experience with it. CS!
It depends on the unit in question, the telescope and your target. The ASIair is as reliable as anything and I would prefer it over a laptop anyday. I still use a laptop for my bigger rig as it has multiple non-ZWO equipment and I use metaguide to collimate the SCT. For a smaller refractor the ASIair really is the most headache free option but you are limited to ZWO cameras and focusers which nags at me quite a bit tbh. I still use it though. For planetary, nothing beats a laptop with sharpcap and a fast USB3 connection. Perhaps one day a small unit can do everything a windows PC can do but it's not today. maybe something like the eagle could be the best of both worlds but I'm yet to try it!
About time a company took on the ASi air, plus I love the fact it looks almost identical to one, the app looks good & seems to work well obviously the official app will function as it should & hopefully be a lot less buggy than the Stellarmate's. I can see these being big sellers when they are officially released as when they are I'll be on the shopping list for one.
There is a new beta that fixes the issues with this version, I’m just waiting for a free day to dive into it and make a complete walkthrough! Thanks for the comment and the support!!
Looks good, but QHY is working on an OPEN SOURCE alternative too (QUARCS), which I see as more promising. I just don't get why they did not partner up to develop it together. The hardware bit is nice, the software looks good, and more importantly, it is not tight Would have literally killed the ZWO asiair closed (in a semi-illegal way) environment.
Thank you for commenting on my video Ben! I hold you in very high regard when it comes to content creators in this field and I’ve been inspired by you a few others to start my little channel!! You’ve made my day, clear skies!!
Hey Ali, Can you let me know if the AstroStation has something similar to the ZWO All sky polar alignment? I'd assume that it does, as pretty mcuh everything does these days, but it would be good to know for sure!
What are the video options on this? My main problems with the Asiair Plus are the 1080p video resolution limit and the lack of video autorun. The former issue makes my Asi533mc useless for lunar, and the latter makes solar imaging incredibly annoying as I need to manually start each exposure for a timelapse. Sitting around refreshing a one minute phone timer for three hours is not efficient or enjoyable.
Were you able to update the astrostation? Mine came with firmware v1.0.20240419. When trying to update it says" Astrostation version is too low, Please upgrade to v.1.0.20240910", but when i trie to upgrade it finds an older version v1.0.20240509. that it atempt to install and fail every time. "upload failed". I have the android phone app version v1.0.18.20241213
Great scoop. Very very interesting to see tis is about to be released. I'm sure it will please a lot of the "fear of becoming trapped in the ZWO Universe" people 😅. With the imminent release of this and the release of the Stellarmate pro, I wonder if it will force ZWO open their ASIAIR to be used with other camera manufacturers.
I really hope so, the ZWO AA+ is the most headache free control unit. It is better than many acquisition softwares on the PC and trust me when I say I’ve tried them all! If they include the entire INDI library of drivers rather than only allow their own equipment, it would take over the market. We’ll see how they respond to this when it comes out 😂
What pi does this use as its base? I know the pi 5 came out recently and it'd be nice if companies would start using it. I'm going to make an educated guess and say this is a pi 4 based on the lack of cooling vents for active cooling. In that case, I'd be interested to see live stacking and file transfer performance without using a dedicated storage medium like a nvme ssd or flashdrive. I currently use a pi 4 4gb running stellarmate and it has its issues and live stacking isn't the best. All this being said the fact that this has support for non zwo equipment is definitely a selling point for me.
@@PhotonReceiverAstrophotography Hey, I was told by ToupTek support that it runs on a Raspberry Pi CM4 motherboard 👍🏻 Thanks for the great comment, I’ll definitely work on more content on the Astrostation in the future!
@@AstraPharmaq8 I'd honestly be willing to pay for the software they use. I'm pretty sure the compute module 4 and pi4b share the same SoC and could theoretically run the same operating system so long as there isn't any proprietary hardware that's hard coded into the software.
The beta so far seems very basic and not as sophisticated or mature like the AA+. I would be surprised if they didn’t add at least some of these features if they want to compete with a unit as sophisticated as the AA+.
Hi Ali! You got another new subscriber.👍🏻 Thank you very much for the brief review! I am also thinking about affording the Astrostation. I have a dealer by hand who could ship it to me right away. Even though the App is not released yet I was able to dl the APK from the Touptek website with some trial an error. What is the software version that you have? I have Version 1.0. Looks like it is not any beta version anymore.
Hey 👋🏻 Thank you for subscribing!! I am currently on 1.0.20240607. Honestly, I would advise you to wait until more bugs gets fixed. Guiding still isn’t working and for some reason the auto-stretch is broken now 🤔. Thanks again for the comment and the sub!!
@@AstraPharmaq8 Thanks for your input. The 20240607 is the version that I have too. It looks like Touptek is coming out with updates to the App almost every week. So there should be hope that they may fix the guiding very soon. Somewhere I found the information that the the guiding also utilizes PHD(2). As this program is state of the art for guiding and can communicate with any other software I guess it is just a small adjustment of parameters in the API until communication works properly. In a Chinese video that I unfortunately do not find anymore as it was not uploaded to RUclips, the guiding was working from what was visible on the screen. Maybe the bug was introduced by fixing something else. Shipping from China will take a few days that there should be at least one update to the app until I have the box in my hands. I think I will give it a try that once the software is working properly that I am ready to go. I am waiting desperately for the Astrostation since it got announced. Btw does the Astrostation support the Gemini focuser and gear from Wanderer Astro? That things are not working properly I am used to when using my AsiAir Plus. 😄 Screen refresh not working after tablet was locked, counter not working from time to time, AF routine hanging, connecting - disconnecting the TF card now an then during an imaging session, saving exposures not working in Autorun, etc. I also already had the case that PHD2 in the AsiAir switched the direction of guiding pulses after a few minutes on DEC axis. So the AsiAir is also not any close to perfect and issues may occur.
What's it going to cost, compared to the ASIAir Plus? If it does nothing better than the Air or has useful features the Air doesn't have and is the same price, its only appeal is the color, if people don't like red. Looks too much like a copycat . I already have the Air Plus anyway, can't find anything about it I don't like.
Glad you got your hands on one. I had thought it was just rumour. Hopefully it will drive ZWO to open up the Air to other equipment. Competition is always good!
Let hope the software gets as mature as the ASIAir’s ….. Right now it seems very rough around the edges. With a little bit of polish this could be just what the community needs!!
Great News for us all !! And great reporting.
I'm pretty pleased with my ASIAir however, I have several NON-ZWO cams I would love to use without the use of my laptop.
I'm praying that Touptek get this together soon.
Great report AstraPharma, thanks for bringing this to the attention of the community - definitely one to watch :)
Thanks for dropping this comment. There’s a new beta to try out for this and I’ll be showcasing it too very soon!!
السلام عليكم اخي الاستاذ علي اذا ممكن شرح طريقة تحديث الجهاز تراه بط جبدي😅
Got yourself a new subscriber 😊 Great work and I can't wait to follow your journey with Touptek Astrostation.... I am awaiting my order 😉👍
Thank you Scott! I will try to make a long form video taking you through the process hopefully in a week or two. If there is an update to the app I will do so sooner.
Thank you for watching!
Looks like a great competitor to the ASIair. The beta version appears to integrate all the accessories well.
I've had mine on order since February and I'm a reseller and haven't gotten hold of it yet. Surprised you managed ir
Great video Ali! Looking forward to more of videos from you.
Thanks! I really appreciate the support!!
Great video. Want to hear more about this!
It's UI and app needs more fine tuning. Looking forward to picking one of these up when it ages a bit more. Let them have time to work out the bugs and have a more mature interface.
@@cryhavoc38 Agreed, It has a long was to go before it can truly be a viable replacement for the ASIair
thanks, this might just be what I need. I'm currently looking at getting a big brother for my CEM25p+130pds+183mc pro setup which runs on the asiair, and I'm eyeing the 2600mm with a quattro 10 or a 200pds on a cem70. however the price of the 2600mm drives tears into my eyes, the competitors (playerone, touptek, omegon, altair etc) are 1000-1300€ cheaper, that will yield me a full filterwheel plus filters instead. I also considered going NINA on a NUC but I kinda like controlling everything from my ipad. it goes smoothly, nothing much needed in the field, it doesn't weight much, it's overall a very userfriendly way to do it. if the software is even only as good as the early asiair in 2021, when it releases, I'm in.
@@IcequeenNarzissa I’m working on a double tube setup too and I’m facing the same dilemma it seems. I use a laptop for my 9.25EHD but I want to use an ASIair for the two refractors (When the day comes). Right now I would advise against going with the Astrostation at this early stage until all the bugs have been ironed out. It’s been a while since I have tested mine so maybe a lot of these issues are in the past. Maybe an update video would be a good idea ?
Yes please 🤞@@AstraPharmaq8
Looks good. I'm still waiting for the QHY version.
Thanks for sharing.
@@southbronxny5727 Have you heard that they are working on one? 🤔
@@AstraPharmaq8Nah…nothing but If qhy was smart, they should be working on stuff already.
Very very interesting, Ali. Thanks for the preview!
Thank you Nina, I'm glad the hobby is becoming more and more accessible!
Clear Skies!
Wonderful content you are doing!! Keep it coming. Clear skies.
Wow. This is good for the industry. I love ZWO stuff but they need competition although this comes pretty close to a direct copy just looking at the box. Enjoyed your video. New subscriber looking forward to more videos.
@@marvinwhisman3333 Thank you for watching and leaving this comment and I couldn’t agree more!!
It's more than a "very similar layout" (cables/ports being the same), it is a direct "in your face" competition to ZWO. Plus you can directly swap it in with virtually no (hardware) changes. I like it. And I like anything but "everything" red even more. LOL!
AstraPharmaq8, have you tried this yet with the Juwei-17? I'm not worried about the Bets Bugs in the software (and firmware) as that will (or should) be taken care of before release. Equipment control is the most important, mount (especially meridian flip), focuser, guiding, imagers, dew heaters, etc. The rest can be dealt with using external software if needed for now. Nice first light and review!
Hey Ali! How are you? 👋
Did you make any progress with the Astro AstroStation? I have three videos on my channel about it. I hope all the viewers and Touptek are already getting ready for the official release.
Thanks for the great video, can’t wait to get my hands on one when they are released!
I appreciate your support, keep an out on the channel this week or the next. TT has released a new beta that we’ll test in a long form video 👌🏼
My Astrostation arrive today without any pre-notice. I can control everything in a dry run. I now need to test it when it is dark. Let's see if version 1.0 20240621 can do better.
Btw: the dongle is used to connect to home WiFi?
Awesome! Nice to have no limitations on accessories!
Agreed
Exciting. Please keep us posted if you have any info on the official release.
@@shaunozs1ra92 I will! … Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the heads up!!
@@celiaxel3448 you’re very welcome!
I'm very interested to this. Do you know if, in addition to astronomical cameras of all brands, it is also possible to connect Olympus mirrorless cameras? I have AsiAir plus and it works very well with its cameras, but in addition to these it only supports Canon and Nikon cameras.
@@massimo541 I know it supports DSLRs but not sure if an Olympus mirrorless would be supported. I’ll check and get back to you 👍🏻
Is there any "allsky" polar aligment option in the current beta app?
Also have you tryed any newer releases of the app?
This device could be a game changer. What about WiFi signal? How reliable was connectivity and distance?
Connectivity is very similar to the ASIair, which is stable once connected. As far as distance, I haven’t done much testing. Great idea for the next video I do on the thing!
Thanks for watching!
Please, compare this Touptek AstroStation with Stellarmate in addition to ASiAir. What is there inside? PC, Raspberry…? I am not sure using a SD card is a good idea from Touptek. My experience with the Stellarmate OS in Pi4 and Pi5 is that SD cards are very very slow in comparison with a PCIe NVMe or USB SSD. I saw your channel time ago but today I subscribed! Thanks!
Maybe I misled you with the SD card comment, the Astrostation has internal storage just like the ASIair. The SD card slot can be used for extra storage. Touptek are releasing a new version of the app every week and iterating very quickly. When a more stable version of the app is released, I will definitely make a full comparison video.
Thank you for watching!
What's your take on the dedicated mini hardware vs PC/laptop option? There's so much community developed open source software out there.. what are you giving up to go down the packaged system route? Good video by the way, awesome that you were able to get your hands on a beta. Hopefully you can give them some feedback based on your experience with it. CS!
It depends on the unit in question, the telescope and your target. The ASIair is as reliable as anything and I would prefer it over a laptop anyday. I still use a laptop for my bigger rig as it has multiple non-ZWO equipment and I use metaguide to collimate the SCT. For a smaller refractor the ASIair really is the most headache free option but you are limited to ZWO cameras and focusers which nags at me quite a bit tbh. I still use it though.
For planetary, nothing beats a laptop with sharpcap and a fast USB3 connection. Perhaps one day a small unit can do everything a windows PC can do but it's not today. maybe something like the eagle could be the best of both worlds but I'm yet to try it!
About time a company took on the ASi air, plus I love the fact it looks almost identical to one, the app looks good & seems to work well obviously the official app will function as it should & hopefully be a lot less buggy than the Stellarmate's. I can see these being big sellers when they are officially released as when they are I'll be on the shopping list for one.
There is a new beta that fixes the issues with this version, I’m just waiting for a free day to dive into it and make a complete walkthrough!
Thanks for the comment and the support!!
Thanks for this heads up!
No worries, thanks for watching!!
Do you have any idea what the max frame rate would be for using video?
What about the power supply?
Looks good, but QHY is working on an OPEN SOURCE alternative too (QUARCS), which I see as more promising. I just don't get why they did not partner up to develop it together. The hardware bit is nice, the software looks good, and more importantly, it is not tight Would have literally killed the ZWO asiair closed (in a semi-illegal way) environment.
I can't wait to try one of these. I think they will sell a lot of them.
Thank you for commenting on my video Ben! I hold you in very high regard when it comes to content creators in this field and I’ve been inspired by you a few others to start my little channel!!
You’ve made my day, clear skies!!
@@AstraPharmaq8 That is great. More good content is always welcomed.
Hey Ali, Can you let me know if the AstroStation has something similar to the ZWO All sky polar alignment? I'd assume that it does, as pretty mcuh everything does these days, but it would be good to know for sure!
@@AlexN-Astro It certainly does!
Will it support dual setups, controlling both cameras on the same device, dithering, etc?
Joined and liked. Bring it on !!!
What are the video options on this? My main problems with the Asiair Plus are the 1080p video resolution limit and the lack of video autorun. The former issue makes my Asi533mc useless for lunar, and the latter makes solar imaging incredibly annoying as I need to manually start each exposure for a timelapse. Sitting around refreshing a one minute phone timer for three hours is not efficient or enjoyable.
Great video! I am definitely getting one of these. Do you happen to know the official release date yet for the USA? Keep up the great work!
Were you able to update the astrostation? Mine came with firmware v1.0.20240419. When trying to update it says" Astrostation version is too low, Please upgrade to v.1.0.20240910", but when i trie to upgrade it finds an older version v1.0.20240509. that it atempt to install and fail every time. "upload failed". I have the android phone app version v1.0.18.20241213
Great scoop. Very very interesting to see tis is about to be released. I'm sure it will please a lot of the "fear of becoming trapped in the ZWO Universe" people 😅. With the imminent release of this and the release of the Stellarmate pro, I wonder if it will force ZWO open their ASIAIR to be used with other camera manufacturers.
I really hope so, the ZWO AA+ is the most headache free control unit. It is better than many acquisition softwares on the PC and trust me when I say I’ve tried them all!
If they include the entire INDI library of drivers rather than only allow their own equipment, it would take over the market. We’ll see how they respond to this when it comes out 😂
Do you have the apk apps for android?
what is going to be the price ? And when is it going to be accesible ?
What pi does this use as its base? I know the pi 5 came out recently and it'd be nice if companies would start using it. I'm going to make an educated guess and say this is a pi 4 based on the lack of cooling vents for active cooling. In that case, I'd be interested to see live stacking and file transfer performance without using a dedicated storage medium like a nvme ssd or flashdrive. I currently use a pi 4 4gb running stellarmate and it has its issues and live stacking isn't the best. All this being said the fact that this has support for non zwo equipment is definitely a selling point for me.
@@PhotonReceiverAstrophotography Hey, I was told by ToupTek support that it runs on a Raspberry Pi CM4 motherboard 👍🏻
Thanks for the great comment, I’ll definitely work on more content on the Astrostation in the future!
@@AstraPharmaq8 I'd honestly be willing to pay for the software they use. I'm pretty sure the compute module 4 and pi4b share the same SoC and could theoretically run the same operating system so long as there isn't any proprietary hardware that's hard coded into the software.
will it have a star map so you can do mosaics/rotations etc? If so then this will be a ZWO killer
The beta so far seems very basic and not as sophisticated or mature like the AA+. I would be surprised if they didn’t add at least some of these features if they want to compete with a unit as sophisticated as the AA+.
Impressive 👏
Hi Ali! You got another new subscriber.👍🏻 Thank you very much for the brief review! I am also thinking about affording the Astrostation. I have a dealer by hand who could ship it to me right away. Even though the App is not released yet I was able to dl the APK from the Touptek website with some trial an error.
What is the software version that you have? I have Version 1.0. Looks like it is not any beta version anymore.
Hey 👋🏻
Thank you for subscribing!! I am currently on 1.0.20240607. Honestly, I would advise you to wait until more bugs gets fixed. Guiding still isn’t working and for some reason the auto-stretch is broken now 🤔.
Thanks again for the comment and the sub!!
@@AstraPharmaq8 Thanks for your input. The 20240607 is the version that I have too. It looks like Touptek is coming out with updates to the App almost every week. So there should be hope that they may fix the guiding very soon. Somewhere I found the information that the the guiding also utilizes PHD(2). As this program is state of the art for guiding and can communicate with any other software I guess it is just a small adjustment of parameters in the API until communication works properly. In a Chinese video that I unfortunately do not find anymore as it was not uploaded to RUclips, the guiding was working from what was visible on the screen. Maybe the bug was introduced by fixing something else.
Shipping from China will take a few days that there should be at least one update to the app until I have the box in my hands. I think I will give it a try that once the software is working properly that I am ready to go. I am waiting desperately for the Astrostation since it got announced.
Btw does the Astrostation support the Gemini focuser and gear from Wanderer Astro?
That things are not working properly I am used to when using my AsiAir Plus. 😄 Screen refresh not working after tablet was locked, counter not working from time to time, AF routine hanging, connecting - disconnecting the TF card now an then during an imaging session, saving exposures not working in Autorun, etc. I also already had the case that PHD2 in the AsiAir switched the direction of guiding pulses after a few minutes on DEC axis. So the AsiAir is also not any close to perfect and issues may occur.
Could you send the apk? The website doesn't show me any.
Will DSLRs work?
I’ll check and let you know!
@@AstraPharmaq8 thank you 🙏
accept rotator, that make a big different
It accepts my Esatto Arco but that’s because they work in unison on the same FOCUSER driver. As of yet, it seems like there is no rotator option
As someone who has a few of these devices....it's the software, not the hardware. And ZWO's got the software.
@@XShadowAngel They do excel with their software. From what I have seen, no one is doing as god a job as they are just yet!
ZWO should open its system
Will have to if the Astrostation is a success! Even this will support ZWO gear, they'll have no choice in my opinion
@@ottoertl1866 @scottDavies Agreed!
Looks the same because its a raspberry pi 4 with a power distribution hat on it, neither of which were made by Zwo.
No app please!... Web interface please!! I hate having to use my phone every time to drive the ASIair.
@@TevisC A web interface actually sounds like a brilliant idea tbh!!
What's it going to cost, compared to the ASIAir Plus? If it does nothing better than the Air or has useful features the Air doesn't have and is the same price, its only appeal is the color, if people don't like red. Looks too much like a copycat . I already have the Air Plus anyway, can't find anything about it I don't like.
Ever wanted to use other gear aside from ZWO? Don't use NINA? This is what makes the Astrostation intriguing 😊
I hate short videos.
cope
@@Talalpro_1 LOL. I am saying he should make longer videos - more content ...
The youth today ...