david_taurus83

When you say "jammed" do you mean it just tracked into the observatory? Or slewed or you moved it with force? I would be very surprised if it damaged any gears as it should just slip on its clutch. With the clutch tightened you should still be able to move the mount if you pull on the counterweight bar.

What a fantastic little piece of machinery. Just works straight out of the box. A well deserved tip of the hat to ZWO..

What do you plan to do with it? I know there's a Canon app and if the camera has WiFi you can connect to it and view images, maybe live view. Not sure what else it can do, I tried it once on my 6D.

I would have expected the Pegasus box should be shielding this sort of thing from happening givin the price of them. What happens if you separate the power source? Is the PC and mount all powered from the same socket?

Do the single subs have gradients? That's a stack you've posted? The 3 peaks will be the RGB channels. Depending on your light source, the 3 channels will vary. I see this also with my DSLR so nothing new there. Is that a debayered and stretched flat? It does look very bright.

My mini came the other day with impressive speed. It was picked up by FedEx in China on Saturday afternoon and delivered to me on Tuesday morning! 🤯 (You listening RM??) I had never used an ASIAir before until I had a play last night. Wow! I take all the criticism back! What a fantastic little gadget! I had absolutely 0 issues with it. Everything connected straight away, AZGTI, EAF, 2600MC and WiFi was absolutely fine with me sat indoors, no drop outs or glitches. Everything just worked, polar alignment, even guiding and calibration, as temperamental as the AZGTi usually is. If you have all ZWO kit it really is a no brainer. If that was the case on my main setup I'd probably ditch the mini PC and get a Plus. Well impressed with it overall.

Indeed the latter! As the old saying goes, "An astrophotographer and his money is very easily parted" 🙂

I can't take the credit as somebody else mentioned it on here before and I've sworn by it since!

Since I took up the hobby around 5 years ago, every October through to February has been the same. Cloudy with rain. You get the odd night here and there in between but certainly not clear, frosty nights with sparkling skies like we all associate with winter. And when we do get frosty weather it tends to come with snow which makes light pollution even worse as its reflected upwards! I would say I have 6 completed images under my belt from the past year with multiple nights used for capturing data on each. That's with a fixed pier so no setup time and I have the luxury of leaving running all night until morning. I certainly couldn't do it if I had to setup and strip down every session.

I found in the past that if gain is set high on the camera it tends to pick faint stars that are more affected by seeing wobbles. If I lowered the gain it tended to select brighter stars that wouldn't saturate and were not as wobbly if seeing was poor.

You would be better to use one frame for aligning them all. Any edge artifacts can be more easily cropped out afterwards. If you align by individual channel you can end up cropping more out after you manually align. I can't say ive seen any strange artifacts by doing option b though. I would have thought your issues would be more down to the pixel rejection algorithm chosen when stacking.

I used a 25mm water pipe as conduit. Wishing I had grabbed that 32mm gas pipe instead now. One of the data cables and power cable need to be fed/pulled through at the same time. Bit of a tight squeeze..

I've changed the RJ45 coupler but it's no good. Looks like a couple of pins on the plug have completely corroded so it will mean stripping down completely and try to feed a new cable through the conduit. My dilemma is do I replace with ethernet cable and stay Limited to USB2 or take a chance and try and feed a 15m USB3 repeater down there 🤔

I'm going to seal the new couplers with some hot glue to prevent moisture getting in there again. I always leave a spare dew strap left on under the cover to prevent condensation from forming and its worked a treat so far. I'm hoping the connector issue is due to being exposed to rain for a few hours. The downward facing side is bone dry and fine so hopefully it's not long term exposure.

Yes will be replacing that connector. Thankfully the cable head itself isn't as gunked up so should clean off with a small brush between the contacts. The cable would not be so easy to replace as its buried!

I'd say this would be the cause. Don't know what all that gunk is though. This side faces up so looks like moisture has ran down the ethenet cable and mucked up the connector. The other side which faces down is dry and clean.

Thankfully all seems to be OK though I can't connect to the Pegasus powerbox on the scope now. Its definitely working as I've connected my laptop to it via the USB3 cable and it's fine. Can switch devices and dew straps on and off. But as I route the PB through a Startech USB2 ethernet extender to the shed, it's not detecting it on my mini PC in there. So even though its all dry I may just dismount it and bring indoors for a thorough drying out.

We had quite a heavy shower and strong wind here this evening about 6pm for an hour or so. Paid no mind to it and around 9pm I looked out the back to see this: Telegizmo on the ground, wet inside. It must have been a good gust to get underneath and lift it off as its usually pretty good at staying in place with moderate wind. Scope, kit, mount, all drenched. Have no idea how long it was exposed for either. Ive gave everything a good wipe down including the inside of the cover and turned the dew straps inside out and put on full power. Hopefully give it a good dry out. Thankfully I always keep the lens cap on so no moisture on the lens.

Just a standard USB type C cable. Same as most smartphones now.

Is it from a retailer or bought off auction? If auction them I think your stuck with it but if buy it now there maybe a return option? If so can possibly halt the sale?

Have you tried any of the iOptron Facebook groups to see if this is an issue or a characteristic of the mount?

They are dimmable whereas the old ones aren't. Did you see them change out the control panel on the pole?

Are those current draws something you have measured or just taking the figures from manufacturer specs? I'd be very surprised if you were drawing 12 amps.

I've had a few cameras and mounts since I started this hobby and I've never seen my power usage exceed 3amps. My current setup usually sits at just over 2 amps when camera cooler is on, mount running, dew straps etc. I do use a linear Nevada PSU with 13.8v to the pier at idle and with everything running is usually around 13.0v. My suspicion is that a lot of people use 12v AC to DC power bricks and when they encounter issues they are suffering voltage drop due to thin cables between devices, not exceeding the rated current for the power brick. If you can get 13.8v at your mount then I think your 6A supply will be just fine.

If any of it is steel then you risk the magnet just popping off the wire and attaching to the inside of the tube or attaches itself the part the swarf is resting on!