Timbo1001

On 27/05/2023 at 00:55, RobertI said:

I just bought myself a Celestron Starsense Explorer 70LT - basically a cheap achro refractor with an attachment for your mobile phone, allowing you to use Celestron’s Starsense technology via an app on your phone to find objects. I’ve just been out for a couple of hours, and I’ll cut to the chase - it’s just brilliant. It made finding objects so easy, that I almost felt I was cheating. Suffice it to say that with my cheap 70mm achro made mostly of plastic, within the space of a few minutes I had found and observed globulars M13 and M3, galaxies M81, M82, planetaries NGC6543 (the Cats Eye nebula) and NGC6826 (the Blinking Planetary), the Eastern Veil (kind of), and open cluster M39. Each time I searched, Starsense did its thing, guiding me to the object with helpful arrows, taking an image to platesolve when it senses the telescope has stopped moving, and guiding me the final few minutes of arc the object - every single time the object was clearly in the field of view of a 66 degree 20mm eyepiece at 35x magnification, giving a FOV of 1.9 degrees. I should add that there was a bright moon in the sky, but I kept well away and everything worked fine. If I wanted to move around the garden to get a better view, no problem, Starsense was unaffected - this was weird for someone who has been used to not touching a tripod once a mount is aligned. 

As for the scope itself, the mount is very wobbly and the eyepieces leave a lot to be desired, but when I added a decent-ish WO 20mm eyepiece (a lightweight eyepiece was needed and this fitted the bill) the views improved dramatically and the scope produced some really nice views. I think the correct image diagonal also helped to make the experience seem easy. There are a number of other scopes, including newts and SCTs, but they all seem to live on wobbly mounts and tripods which is a shame. The exceptions are the 8” and 10” dobs which look like perfect companions for starsense. 

Definitely a success and I will be looking at how to convert this for use on my other scopes. 👍

What phone are you using because I'm having issues with my supposedly compatible Samsung A40? Cheers.

On 08/09/2023 at 20:07, Timbo1001 said:

I'm still waiting for Celestron to get back to me. I have found all the reviews on Playstore and they ain't pretty! It's clear Celestron is trying to keep the reviews hidden by designating the app as in development. However googling Starsense Explorer Playstore and then by opening in a new tab (press and hold) up comes access to all the reviews.

The scope was considerably more expensive than the same spec sans SSE and the cost of a clean used galaxy a40 has probably set me back £250 and I still need to get another phone which I hope will work. I have little faith in the compatibility list now. (Or the YouTube shills).

I have gone from hoping celestron will help me iron out the glitches to believing that Celestron cannot be trusted and border on the dishonest.

The dob 8 is very good and when the SSE app works on another phone it is a game changer. Shame about the other stuff.

Celestron did get back to me and wanted me to save images and logs from the advanced menu. Then download to my pc before sending to them. For all sorts of reasons this doesn't work so I just sent a fuzzy out of focus screenshot of the cross hairs SSE alignment process. I'll see what they make of that. Not holding my breath. If another phone didn't work I'd pack it all up and post it back.

I'm still waiting for Celestron to get back to me. I have found all the reviews on Playstore and they ain't pretty! It's clear Celestron is trying to keep the reviews hidden by designating the app as in development. However googling Starsense Explorer Playstore and then by opening in a new tab (press and hold) up comes access to all the reviews.

The scope was considerably more expensive than the same spec sans SSE and the cost of a clean used galaxy a40 has probably set me back £250 and I still need to get another phone which I hope will work. I have little faith in the compatibility list now. (Or the YouTube shills).

I have gone from hoping celestron will help me iron out the glitches to believing that Celestron cannot be trusted and border on the dishonest.

The dob 8 is very good and when the SSE app works on another phone it is a game changer. Shame about the other stuff.

On 06/09/2023 at 03:57, sojourneyer said:

do a reset. Delete and reinstall

 

Have you tried this and did it work?

On 29/08/2023 at 23:07, Clarkey said:

I tried the Starsense app with the A32 tonight and it worked flawlessly. However, during the alignment it would not focus on infinity. I had to go into the normal camera app and focus to infinity there, then when reopening Starsense it would focus for alignment. Seems a bit odd it does not automatically focus to infinity - but at least I know. I try the original Moto 50 and try the same trick to see if it works.

I tried your trick by focussing the camera via the android app and another camera app too. Both focus just fine and the second app has the option to manually fix the focus. Unfortunately neither worked to affect the starsense app. I didn't hear anything back from my reply to Rod at Celestron so I have tried again today. I suspect that some update to android or starsense has chucked a spanner in the cogs maybe. Oh well, back to borrowing the pixel 4 off my commanding officers.......😂

11 hours ago, Clarkey said:

I tried the Starsense app with the A32 tonight and it worked flawlessly. However, during the alignment it would not focus on infinity. I had to go into the normal camera app and focus to infinity there, then when reopening Starsense it would focus for alignment. Seems a bit odd it does not automatically focus to infinity - but at least I know. I try the original Moto 50 and try the same trick to see if it works.

I'll try that. Thanks

1 minute ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Just to add my experience ... my Sony 1 iv worked fine but now i cant even use the camera with the app.. however my iphone has no problems and works . I think there may have been an android glitch caused by a security update . 

 

Yes I suspect something along those lines. Hopefully there's someone at Celestron typing code into the app. 

5 hours ago, Clarkey said:

Yes, but I normally align in daylight. I have tried aligning at night but quite often I cannot even see any stars. I have a Galaxy A32 for work - I'm going to try that.

Looking at all of the comments about the Starsense explorer app, it does seem hit and miss as to whether it actually works. I think Celestron are being a bit dishonest in their claims regarding compatibility. Yes, the software might work - but whether it can actually plate solve is another matter.

I sort of have the opposite problem. I can't really align in daylight on the galaxy S40 because of the focus problem. I haven't tried night because of the pesky clouds. The Pixel 4 works just fine. I did discover something - aligning in daylight, using advanced camera settings, seems to crash the camera. If I cover the mirror with my hand it reduces the light intensity and this tends not to happen. I'm not sure if that tells me anything useful but it's kinda interesting.🤣 I agree that Celestron are less than open about phone compatibility and on most retailers the compatibility link is well hidden in the text. All the YouTubers seem to have no problems. Make of that what you will.

Good luck with the A32.

On 27/08/2023 at 08:35, Clarkey said:

My phone refuses to work at all with the Starsense app, despite being on the 'approved' list. Not sure if it focus or anything else. It has never plate solved, just keeps saying it is unable to locate it's position. Looking at the screen I cannot see any stars. Shame as it is the only reason I bought it. I certainly did not need an 80mm achro. Unfortunately, I modded the mount to work on a standard finder bracket so I can't even return it....

Does it focus when doing the alignment? On my galaxy S40 it's fuzzy as hell. See my other comments for more.

On 25/08/2023 at 13:30, Stu said:

I had that problem last night…. Is there a fix?

Not so far. I'll just have to borrow wife's pixel 4 because that does. I'm still onto Rod at Celestron support. I'll post if anything useful transpires but don't hold your breath!🤣😂😂 Makes you wonder if an update has messed stuff up. I'm using SS explorer 1.1.11.0

On 27/08/2023 at 08:35, Clarkey said:

My phone refuses to work at all with the Starsense app, despite being on the 'approved' list. Not sure if it focus or anything else. It has never plate solved, just keeps saying it is unable to locate it's position. Looking at the screen I cannot see any stars. Shame as it is the only reason I bought it. I certainly did not need an 80mm achro. Unfortunately, I modded the mount to work on a standard finder bracket so I can't even return it....

Does it focus when doing the alignment? Celestion support suggested swapping to night mode on the cross hairs screen. It didn't work for me. Just crashed the camera to a blank white screen. May be if they spent more time on the app than logoing everything it would work better! Incidentally app works great on the wife's pixel 4. Mines a galaxy S40 which is supposedly tested and approved?

4 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

I seem to recall someone saying that they had a similar problem which turned out to be a finger/thumb print on the phone camera. When cleaned the problem was resolved.

I did think of that so I cleaned the already clean brand new mirror. Starsense seems to be locked in a close focus and not (presumably desired) infinity. The android camera app focusses just fine. Starsense refuses to budge. The advanced camera setting seems to just crash the camera and I get a blank white screen with the cross hairs. Frustrating.

Anyone else had problems getting the phone to focus in the alignment? Just fuzzy! The advanced camera setting just seem to disable the camera altogether.

Forgive me if this has been addressed elsewhere. New on the forum here so hi!

I have just got a starsense dob 8. I am trying to do the align but the image on the mobile's camera is out of focus. I have messed in the settings with the advanced mode which then brings up focus in the align process but nothing seems to work. My phone is a Galaxy A40 which is stated as compatible.

If I just use the phone's camera app the image is nice and sharp although inverted. Anyone got any thoughts? I did use my wife's Pixel 4 with no issues.

Cheers Timbo.