Pocket PowerBox - Dumb Mistakes!

[Grifflin]

Hi All

Thought I would share some of my dumb mistakes with the Pocket PowerBox Advanced in one night.....and a lucky escape!

Set up the rig in the twilight, connected everything up and completed polar alignment.  Went through the focus routine with a Bahtinov Mask, set up imaging sequence in NINA and away I went. (Oh yes...forgot to take the BM mask off so first sub was lost).  Imaged for about 90mins and then switched to my main target for the night.  Everything was working fine although the PPBA lost its connection a couple of times but reconnected without any problem.

Once I had slewed to the new target, everything started to go wrong, imaging camera kept dropping in and out and lost connection to the guide camera.  Checked all the settings restarted software etc.  Then went out to the rig to make sure that all the cables were still connected and nothing had been pulled out.  Everything was ok.  However, whilst checking cables I trod on the USB cable from the PPB to the laptop and stripped the cable out of the connector.  Decided to give up for the night and pack up.  At this point I discovered that I had plugged the 12v power supply into the Adjustable Power Outlet rather than the 12v DC In port.

When I reread the PPB Manual, it says in big red letters that if you do this AND you draw more than 3 Amps you will fry the box.  The following day I set everything up again (correctly) and, to my immense relief, everything worked correctly.  I also discovered that I had the main ZWO imaging camera plugged into Port 1 on the box which is USB3 only whereas the other three ports are USB 2/3 (apparently ZWO cameras need to initialise on a USB 2 port first). 

Once I had corrected these issues everything worked correctly and it looks like there is no damage to any of the equipment.  I suspect if I had other equipment connected (EAF, EFW etc) I might not have been so lucky.

I have now put some tape over the sockets.

Moral of the story for me is to read the manual and double check what I am plugging cables into.  Hope my near-miss will help others in the future.

Neil

[Padraic M]

Hmmmm I've done that one too, and luckily did no damage. I like your idea of taping up the adjustable power output.