celestron sky portal

[Wharfrat72]

Does anyone have experience with a celestron sky portal? The app says i need to purchase starsense auto align which costs a lot while the sky portal wifi module connects to wifi for one third of the price. Do they both accomplish the same thing? can I just get the lesser expensive one to accomplish connecting my telescope to my phone via wifi? Any experience or help would be much appreciated.

[Redbird48oo]

i would love to have a sky portal, but nobody in the states has any in stock, and am pretty sure you dont need star sense to use it, i brought sky sarfira already to use with it. Just wish i could buy one.

[Geoff Lister]

I use SkyPortal for telescope control, but am not a fan.

I have a Celestron Cosmos 90 WiFi setup. The mount comes with the WiFi base station built in to the mount. Celestron produced this setup as a companion to a "Cosmos" TV series broadcast in the USA. The mount is designed to be controlled by a smartphone or tablet. The instruction manual refers to a "Navigator" app, but this does not seem to exist on the Celestron site or Google Play Store. Fortunately, the Celestron "SkyPortal" free app seems to have replaced "Navigator". To get the app to work with the mount, you have to persuade your tablet to ignore your home WiFi hub, and instead, lock on to the "SkyQLink-xx" network. The SkyPortal app will then connect when you press the telescope button at the bottom of the screen. Once connected, the display adds a circle + cross-hair target, showing where it thinks the telescope is pointed. It also adds a slider bar to select slewing rate and Left/right/up/down buttons to the sides of the screen. Then comes the tricky bit!

I have found that the biggest problem comes when attempting final alignment on a star. With your eye fixed looking through the eyepiece, it is almost impossible to find, and use, the virtual buttons. Unlike, with a conventional handset, with a tablet there is no tactile feedback; so you do not know if your finger is over the "button", until the mount moves.

I have 3, almost identical mounts, (1) Skywatcher Skymax with a Synscan handset, (2) Celestron Skyprodigy with starsense camera and associated handset, and (3) the Cosmos WiFi + 8" Samsung tablet. (1) is quick to align at dusk with "Brightest Star" 2-star alignment, (2) slightly faster, when darker, with more stars visible, as a fully-automatic self-alignment, and (3) has had very little use as I find it takes an age to achieve alignment, particularly when I know that I am centred on a particular star and the app refuses to accept it for alignment; {there have been many times that I have given up, and used (1) or (2)}.

I have added a "Kill power" switch to the mount, because there have been a couple of occasions when the mount has taken off at full speed at the same time as the WiFi link has dropped out.

The mount is designed to take an "optional hand control" but neither the instruction manual, nor the Celestron web site, have been helpful with further details.

Geoff

[Wharfrat72]

Thank you Geoff, the reviews were quite mixed as well but you never know about those.

[noah4x4]

I have an early Celestron Evolution that suffers from flaky internal WiFi. I now turn off the internal WiFi  (via Menu in a Nexstar + HC) and instead adopt a SkyPortal external WiFi accessory with SkySafari Plus. Works superbly if a desire to control via a tablet does float your boat.

However, you ideally need one of the later SkyPortal external devices that emit the 'Celestron XX'  signal and have a Zentri chip. Early versions have the defective 'SkyQLink' signal and a Roving Networks  chip. Avoid the latter. You will need to use an APP like Net-Analyser to tell the difference.  Hence, avoid buying second hand (or risk getting the older weaker signal version). 

I suspect Celestron might have withdrawn old stock of the external SkyPortal accessory due to the problems with early models, which would also explain the current shortage whilst new modules are shipped to retailers.  

BTW, any Evolution's built since 2016 don't have the internal  WiFi issues. You also don't need Starsense to benefit from the SkyPortal APP, but it does provide a complete solution for those that want to adopt cutting edge technologies. 

 

[MBJ]

I have great success with skyportal wifi module and starsense.

Had a few teething troubles at first but now it works flawlessly every time and always very accurate.

[Max N]

Sorry to resurrect a thread from a few months ago, but I've been meaning to update my impressions of the Skyportal device.

I bought one of the original devices when they first came out (back then it was called SkyQLink). Using it with an AVX mount and an iPad 2, I experienced the same sort of issues that others have reported, basically the wifi signal was not robust and performance was generally a bit flakey. It wasn't as bad as Noah's early Evolution, some nights it was usable, I really enjoyed using it, but the problems in the end pushed me back towards using the hand set. Somewhere along the way I bought a Starsense (which I am a big fan of) and used the hand set for a few years with that.

Last year I decided to try one of the new Skyportal devices, and I'm glad I did. The new device has so far proven 100% reliable, I have not had a single issue. Using alongside the Starsense eliminates pretty much all the ergonomics issues for me. I haven't used the hand controller since getting the SkyPortal. This is my set up procedure for imaging now:

• My mount is on a pier and stays outside under a cover, so I don't need to polar align.
• Power cycle the iPad so I know that only the SkyPortal app is running. This step might not be necessary on newer, more powerful iPads. Remember that scope control is a hard realtime task and the CPU on older iPads was not great at multi-tasking. My old iPad is sluggish/laggy even when browsing the internet, but as long as I power cycle it first, and don't run any other apps, it is nice and responsive controlling the scope.
• Connect all cables and power up. Camera is attached to the scope and I use the camera rear LCD screen live view rather than an eyepiece.
• in SkyPortal app, select 'Connect and Align'. Alignment takes a few seconds, less than a minute I would say. It involves four slews I think, and StarSense is plate solving the previous image while slewing to take the next one - pretty slick.
• Select a bright star near my intended target, press goto, scope slews, star is always in the camera screen first time. I'm using an Edge HD 8 with a focal length of 2125mm so this is quite impressive I think. Focus using a Bahtinov mask.
• Select my first target, press goto, scope slews, check target is in camera screen.
• In Skysafari, I have my scope/camera details entered in as display parameters, so SkySafari superimposes my camera field of view over the view of the target. By comparing the stars shown in SkySafari with the stars shown in the camera screen, it is quick and easy to frame the object by slewing the scope a little or rotating the camera.
• Once I'm happy with the framing, start PHD2 guiding. Wait a minute for guiding to stabilise, check framing again to be sure.
• Start the intervalometer taking the planned sequence of images

In short, I'm very happy with the new version of SkyPortal alongside StarSense. Without the StarSense, as long as I was using the camera screen rather than an eyepiece, I think I would get along OK. If using an eyepiece, I think that some of the ergonomics issues would still be there.

 

 

[twatson]

My telescope is in an observatory and is aligned (home position) true north. When I turn ski portal the blue bullseye target is often set way off the direction in which the telescope is pointing why? I have used both an ipad (latest pro) and an iphone (7s).

 

A different issue, I have also noted screen flickering lately on both devices on the last two occasions?   

[noah4x4]

Your telescope might be physically aligned "due North", but until the APP has completed its software alignment  it has no recognition of your OTA position. It works that out from the alignment stars, and not the starting position/direction of your pedestal/tripod/pillar (which is irrelevant except for an ASPA polar align).  After the first software alignment star has been employed, the screen pointer in the APP will be closer,  but still not accurate until the software alignment has been fully completed.

[Ryohei56]

I recently acquired a SkyPortal through Amazon UK, after doing a fair bit of research.

Initial impressions are fairly good - the device is simplicity itself to install, and wifi connection was instant. Mine is fitted to a NexStar 6SE, with SkyPortal installed on my Android phone. Setting up was slightly bumpy, as I found by trial and error that not all of the possible setup methods worked with my kit. However, one did work, so that's all I needed. There was also the occasional wifi dropoff, but I understand from Prof. Google that this may be due to the phone kicking me off if the screensaver closes the display. Suggested solutions here involve disabling certain memory/battery saver apps which could be causing this issue. next time I'm out I'll try disabling one app at a time to try & identify the culprit. I don't see this as a big issue, just something I need to look at.

Anyway, with the wifi running let's proceed to the alignment process. This is a three-star alignment (you can use planets if available), requiring you to centre an object in your spotterscope, then centre it in your observing eyepiece to align the scope (repeat for each of three objects). I used Vega, Capella and Mars, and the app reported a successful alignment. I then tried selecting various objects and getting the scope to track into position. The results were fairly accurate, though I think I need to tweak my Telrad spotter slightly to improve performance.

My only "con" is that it doesn't track objects (for example to take long exposures of DSO's) but I tend to restrict my astrophotography to the Moon and planets, so I'm not that bothered.  As I use video capture anyway, I suspect that a quick tap of the centring button will keep objects in view for sufficient time to grab loads of frames for processing.

One last thing - I find it easier to use the handset to move the scope in the alignment process. Just saying...

Alan S.