Last night was the 1st imaging run with the Stellarmate X. It was a good night for a new computer and new software. Had two issues, one I fixed and one I haven't figured out yet. At 1st I couldn't figure out how to force a refocus after a specified temperature change. Looked high and low for the checkbox and eventually found it in a place you wouldn't really expect it to be. 2nd issue, after the Meridian flip, it refused to turn the mount tracking back on so when the guider was trying to recalibrate, it kept failing because the guide star was moving considerably. I had to restart the imaging sequence to get it going again. I haven't figured this one out and may have to email Stellarmate for some help. Probably some obscure checkbox I missed. As far as guiding is concerned, I used the built in guider. I cant make heads or tails of the guide graph, and honestly, it looked horrible, but my pictures look great.
It was very windy out here on the coast last night, I know it had nothing to do with Kstars/Ekos, but this Am5 mount does not seem to care if the wind is blowing or not. This mount is fairly new to me, but it is becoming an invisible mount very quickly. Nice to not have to mess with it all the time like my CEM25P.
I got to try out the polar alignment routine and was impressed. I have been struggling with NINA to polar align this mount, I had it polar aligned under Ekos in a couple minutes. The USB WiFi antenna increased the range around another 40ft and was easy to set up. All I had to do was plug it in, connect to my home network under wlan1, then tell it to always use that connection for that network.
One other thing I need to figure out is how to set the auto-dew on my Pegasus UPBv2. I don't think my dew strips were doing anything. And sometime this morning, after it warms up a little, I will be using the built in tools to generate some calibration frames.
So far I'm happy. I can only assume the Pro unit is even better. Its like taking the X and the UPBv2 and smashing them together. Should work pretty seamlessly. And if you mounted the Pro unit on the OTA like I have my UPBv2 mounted, all you would have dropping down off the OTA for cables is one 12v power line. Right now I have the Stellarmate X attached to a tripod leg with a velcro cinch strap, so I have the 12v line and 1 USB 3 coming down.
I was going to try the App out on my kindle tablet, but I got tired and went to bed. I'll try it today while I'm taking calibration frames. Hope these little reports help someone out.