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Celestron Evolution battery problem


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This is my first attempt at a post so any help appreciated. I have an Evolution 8 and twice now the battery has gone flat and shut down the scope wifi and motors after less than an hour of use. I took it indoors battery was flat and would not switch back on. Then when I plugged in to charge an to enable me to switch on it showed low voltage at 9.4v when I queried it through the app. It was fully charged and checked as high voltage a couple of days ago. Having googled and looked on the forum I could not find anyone else that had mentioned this problem. Any ideas out there? Thanks in anticipation.

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Hi.

I have an Evolution 6, and my battery is pretty well at keeping charges, but i still recharge it every week even if not in use.

Did you leave your Evolution for a long while uncharged lying around? (Evolution is only on the market for little over a year, so can't be that long, even if you only used it sporadically i guess)

I'd fully charge it, (24 hours). turn it on, let the handcontroller show you the voltage, and let it run for a long time, periodically checking the voltage.

If it really goes down after an hour, battery is bad i'd suspect. Mine already ran for 6 hours once - but it depends if you're slewing a lot or just tracking.

Kind regards, Graem

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Thanks for the input. I have charged to top up on a monthly basis. First time it happened I thought that I may have accidentally left it switched on so I have been checking carefully. It was fully charged , I checked, prior to this last use (only an hour ago) and discharged from reading full and 10.8 volts at the start to flat in less than an hour. Conclusion .. Battery fault or something causing very fast discharge. Celestron quote 10 hours of use and 10 year storage life! .... Not mine apparently.

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Just to update, I asked Celestron about the problem and they replied asking me to return the scope to my seller. Fortunately it was Amazon and they have without question arranged a free return delivery and a full refund. Totally excellent service. They would have offered a replacement but they do not have any in stock. So I am now scopeless and very reluctant to re buy the Evolution and have to worry about this problem again. Back to my binoculars then!

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Hey, good to hear you had great customer service.

I would take this as an opportunity and think if the SCT really was the scope for your desires?

What are you wanting to accomplish with a telescope, just visual or also photography?

But binoculars are a lot of fun too, mine get more usage than most of my eqipment :)

Kind regards, Graem

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Cudos to the seller for the quality service there.  Shame that you are now without scope.  Apart from the battery issue, how did you feel about the scope in general?  Did it live up to all your expections, or even surpass them?

As graemlourens said, what is it that you are hoping to achieve from the scope?  visual or photography?

As you've been refunded, this would be a good time to ring fence the cash, and put it into a fund for the scope that you really wanted.

Personally, I found that my 8" sct is the scope that it perfect for me, but it's not the scope that I first purchased.  Since buying the scope, I've added a wedge, electric focusser, Guide scope, with autoguider, flip mirror, camera, dew heaters and a 70Ah external battery.

Yep, it's alos of stuff, and I'm sure that I've missed some things too.  Frankly, the original optics were surperb, the ota was a peach (I collimate once every 5 years) and the mount is stable.  I can't really ask for more from a scope.

if I had to replace it, I'd really miss my scope - Although, looking at the scope market of today, I wouldn't recommend a Meade scope.  It seams that there's a question over Meade as a company, they're not offering 1/2 the products that they used to do.

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Celestron evolution question, will the rechargeable lithium battery be capable of managing a heated dew strap alongside slewing & tracking, or will a external power source still be required.

I would not have thought so.

I run my heated dew shield,

off of a car battery.

Steve.

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What?  The battery is dead so you have to return the entire scope?   I'd take this as a bit of a warning sign.

Perhaps the Evolution is very power efficient, but for me the battery supplied being a mere 4.5ampH at 9.6V is only OK for short sessions but I wouldn't want to depend on it for a longer session and you'd have to purchase an extra battery for adding dew strips (pretty much a given requirement here in the humid UK especially for an SCT....).  I seem to remember a discussion before and it's not possible to run dew heaters or anything else off the battery.

For the same money as the 8" Evolution you could have either the AVX 8" SCT with money left over (you'll need to purchase a battery - I recommend the Tracer LIPO - lightweight - my 14AH runs the power hungry NEQ6 for about 12 hours on its own or 6 hours with 3 dew strips attached and a dew heater controller & strips.    Or, for exactly the same money you could have the AVX 8" HD... or even for a bit more money you could have the 9.25" SCT.... :)

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What?  The battery is dead so you have to return the entire scope?   I'd take this as a bit of a warning sign.

Perhaps the Evolution is very power efficient, but for me the battery supplied being a mere 4.5ampH at 9.6V is only OK for short sessions but I wouldn't want to depend on it for a longer session and you'd have to purchase an extra battery for adding dew strips (pretty much a given requirement here in the humid UK especially for an SCT....).  I seem to remember a discussion before and it's not possible to run dew heaters or anything else off the battery.

For the same money as the 8" Evolution you could have either the AVX 8" SCT with money left over (you'll need to purchase a battery - I recommend the Tracer LIPO - lightweight - my 14AH runs the power hungry NEQ6 for about 12 hours on its own or 6 hours with 3 dew strips attached and a dew heater controller & strips.    Or, for exactly the same money you could have the AVX 8" HD... or even for a bit more money you could have the 9.25" SCT.... :)

Did not realise that  the battery

was only , 4.5ampH at 9.6V.

That was the thing, that sold

this scope, to a lot of people.

Steve.

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  • 2 months later...

I just bought an Evolution 8, received it 4 days ago and have had 1 day of clear weather.  Took it out and also got a little over 2 hours out of the battery and the scope went dead.  Figured it was just new and I hadn't charged it, so plugged it in over night.  Indicator light was doing the slow flash, showing charging.  In the morning, it was slow flash followed by a series of fast flashes (indicating a fault).   App shows 10+v charge and fault.   Turned it on,  didn't do any movement, just let it sit in a nice warm house.  Died in less than 6 hours.  I'm assuming it's a bad battery,  been trying to get in touch with Celestron support.  If the response to a bad battery in the mount is to return the entire scope to the seller,  I will NOT be happy.   The 10 hour battery life is one of the things promoted on this scope.  I've now seen 2-3 issues with the battery on new scopes,  hope it's not a sign of a bad trend.

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Update after talking to Celestron support on my battery issue.  They did want me to return the entire scope, either to them or the dealer that I purchased it from.  After some discussion,  they agreed to just have me ship the mount back to them to be serviced,  approximately 20 days not counting shipping time.  They paid the shipping.  I got the feeling that the reason they wanted the entire package returned was so they could just turn it around quickly by shipping out an entire new scope rather than taking the time for the repair work.  I do still think it's just a battery issue but they would not just ship me a new battery to try.  I really get the feeling they're going the Apple device philosophy with the Evolution line.  The user isn't suppose to service it.

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Sounds like they're trying to do the right thing.  Trying to model themselves on Apple, I think is a good thing.  Whilst the scope isn't supposed to be serviced by the end user, at least they paid for the shipping and are wanting to get it repaired.  I'm sure that when you get the replacement mount, everything will work properly.  fingers crossed.

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Personally it's the wrong way to go,admittedly I do have an iPad but if it went wrong I,m knocked.If a simple thing like a faulty battery lets you down then your scope less and then guess what three weeks of clear skies.

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triton1, what I ment was the attitude of the company that "if there's a problem get it sorted out and to hell with the cost, a very happy customer is worth more and 100 slightly grumpy ones".

I was not talking about the "let's lock the battery down so that people can't change it" and stuff like that - I agree that in some devices doing so is problematic.  Telescopes being a good example, as I'm sure that about 95% (made up stat) of the people on here with electric scopes will use external power supplies whether they're batteries or something else.    I'd personally avoid a scope that relies on an internal battery due to the known limitation of battery life, I'd not want to limit my scope life to that.  So, for a telescope is should be a user replaceable part.  Hell my scope has been heavily modded - I've modified the focusser and the clutch, built dew heaters, added a guide scope, added a bracket for a lazer pointer for if I was demoing (tried it as a guide pointer, but it didn't work too well)  Added counter balance weights.  And that's just the stuff attached directly to the scope.  Last year I added wifi to my scope (using the SkyFi) and can now control it from my iPad.  The autoguider is a stand alone unit.    In a nutshell, it's a beast of a scope made up of a lot of after market parts, some of which as discontinued.   My scope is unique, and I know that if I wanted to alter a part, I could do it easily enough.  This isn't something that any astronomy company should try to lock down as apart from anything they are very likely to miss the mark. What works for me, isn't something that will necessarily work for others.  At least not until they get to the place of "here plonk this in your front garden, turn it on and tell it where to look and the image will appear on your tablet. So go sit in the warm, don't worry about theft, it will protect itself."   Then again, if it does reach that stage I think we will all give up as it would take the fun away from the massive learning curve that is so much fun.

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My experience with the Celestron importer in the UK was not a good one, on two occasions.

Thankfully the retailer (First Light Optics) was absolutely superb, even when the second problem ( a dead motor on a Nexstar Mount) was well outside of the guarantee period, they were there for me.

This same importer distributes a "universal' red dot finder, when I asked if it would fit a Takahashi, their reply was 'we don't know'.

There's much to be gained by purchasing from an excllent retailer, but I won't touch anything that this importer distributes again.

Chris

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  • 4 months later...

Waiting on Celestron support for 6 weeks and counting over a stupid dead battery.  3K spent on a brand new evo 9.25 in February and got the chance to use the scope all of 5 times when the fast flashing battery light reared it's ugly head in mid April.  The scope was used in nothing but mild weather and then recharged regularly in between sessions.  Just when we finally got familiar with everything the battery went completely dead and wouldn't charge at all.  I had been reading the forums so I knew to insist from support that only the mount was going back for repairs and not the entire telescope.  I won that battle but will they ever send me mount back?...sometime before the one year warranty is up would be nice  (sorry...a little sarcasm).  Living in the windy high Plains of Colorado it figures that we've had endless calm clear nights with great opportunities to use it.  But sadly no star gazing going on by this really irritated Celestron customer.

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I've read a couple of those horror battery stories already in various reviews, seems like there have been some teething problems in the line. I am really salivating over Evo8, and given that i would import it from either Germany or the UK it is good to know that I will have to go through a big and reputable retailer in order to get the most out of the situation if the battery goes dead. Or, preferably, they iron the kinks until then or I just do not get the bad apple out of the cart.

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I had an identical experience with an EVO 8 I purchased in October 2015--The battery failed after a few uses. Additionally the front corrector lens had a LARGE piece of debris on the inside. It was easily seen. Unfortunately I bought from a Celestron dealer who would not even reply to my email questions.  After a most frustrating time with Celestron support: I first contacted them in December 2016 and did not receive any real help until February 2015 when I was instructed to return the entire telescope package (they paid shipping).  It took more than 2 months to receive a replacement. I used the replacement twice and the hand controller had a bootload failure which required purchase of a computer interface cable. I think potential Celestron customers should be aware of the dismal customer support provided by the USA importer and at least one of its affiliated dealers (which, by the way receives great reviews).  I don't understand how they expect to remain in business. 

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I had a problem with my battery when I purchased my Evo 9.25 last year. FLO were great and arranged to replace the mount and battery after a few fault finding tests on the phone. 

Everything has been absolutely fine since then and I am very pleased with my scope and even more since the addition of the starsense - amazing bit of kit has me ready to view in under 5 mins. 

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