Zwo harmonic mount pretty much confirmed

[Rusted]

13 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Think that German dealer needs to look at how FLO handles any defective ZWO products. FLO deals with it themselves so no need to return it to China. 👍🏻

Thanks. Unfortunately Brexit has made it all but impossible to deal with the UK from the EU.
Even with forward VAT payment we recently ended up paying £40 extra on top of our £60 purchase + £25 for delivery.

[Rusted]

2 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I suppose it would depend on the fault. A consumer should never have to repair a product that's covered under warranty. That said, a lot of us would, for example, be able to replace a fan that had stopped working on a ZWO camera. Only to save sending it away and being without. Most dealers should be able to do the same and offer warranty on the work. If its something more complex like a failed sensor or blown circuit board, it may need to be sent back to the manufacturer. For something like the leaky sensors, ZWO at the very least should have offered to reimburse their dealers to accept returns and cleaned professionally. I know FLO will do this and Altair also for their own brand. ZWO's stance though is, or was, that consumers should do it themselves and risk damaging/scratching the sensor. With customer service like this, I for one will be staying away from their more expensive products. 

My ASI120 grew a permanent image mask like fine rain or condensation.
It wasn't the  protective "window" and there was no visible problem with the sensor.
 

[900SL]

I'm sure that there will be no issues with a harmonic drive mount from a company with no prior experience in mounts or strain wave gears, and with a less than stellar customer service record, sourcing the components from Chinese suppliers. 

I think I'll wait until we get beyond the youtube equipment influencers and have some genuine owners reviews out there. 

 

[ONIKKINEN]

5 hours ago, Rusted said:

Thanks. Unfortunately Brexit has made it all but impossible to deal with the UK from the EU.
Even with forward VAT payment we recently ended up paying £40 extra on top of our £60 purchase + £25 for delivery.

I find this to be not true for many products. Small purchases probably not worth it but FLOs pricing is very aggressive for many other products.

Recent example: Astroshop sold Pentax XW series eyepieces at 369e and then had a "sale" for 369e from 399e. Thing is they were 399e for no time at all or just a while for legal purposes. Meanwhile the same sale over on FLO was an actual 20% off sale and cost me 280e including 24% VAT and 4,2% customs for telescopes and their parts and delivery on top. Many other products are also competitively priced, like mounts where the extra delivery cost sinks easily to the price of the product.

Yes dealing with customs is annoying and takes time but everything is out of stock everywhere anyway so rarely matters.

[900SL]

On 31/12/2021 at 14:17, Rusted said:

Thanks. Unfortunately Brexit has made it all but impossible to deal with the UK from the EU.
Even with forward VAT payment we recently ended up paying £40 extra on top of our £60 purchase + £25 for delivery.

I have ordered a number of items from FLO for delivery to Saudi Arabia, up to a WO GT71 scope. All have had VAT removed at payment and promptly shipped via DHL. Excellent service. Local import duties and VAT are slightly less than the UK VAT

[Deadlake]

On 28/12/2021 at 16:41, 900SL said:

So the main benefit of these harmonic mounts is a reduction in gross weight, to be offset against the requirement for short exposure perma-guiding to deal with the inherent PE?

Yes, but:

• The Crux mounts have self learning PE electronics.
• The Rainbow RST-135E has an encoder, i.e. it calculates where it thinks it is versus where it has moved and corrects based on the error.

The above have the same accuracy as each other which is better then a RST-135 on its own, unless you are using self guiding, which I suspect a lot of setups are doing harmonic or not.

[Highburymark]

On 31/12/2021 at 10:43, david_taurus83 said:

That was Cuiv and his Hobym Crux 140 mount. I watched those myself last night. As I understand it, Hobym use the Harmonic branded strain wave system yet they still had issues. After Cuiv sent his back they must have had more complaints as Hobym done a recall on up to 30% of that model as they had issues! Apparently it was only the Crux 140 that was affected and none of their other mounts. Reading up in the Crux 140 they claim if PEC is used the PE can be brought down to +-5 seconds which is impressive. Remains to be seen how good the ZWO attempt will perform given it is nearly half the cost of others in the same class. If somethings too good to be true and all that..

This was what put me off the Crux. But it was a while ago, and well documented on CN, so I’d hope they’ve sorted the problem now. No such complaints with the 135 that I’ve seen.

[powerlord]

I'm really interested to see how it turns out. A few 'reviews' on zwo saying they were beta testers and it had issues, but then.. that's what beta testing is about.

2000 quid is still a lot of money. I'm not sure looking at the price of existing mounts is a great idea, as there is no way there is anything like 1000 quid of tech in, what is at the end of the day a fancy motor.. never mind enough to justify a 6k price tag.

stu

[gilesco]

7 minutes ago, powerlord said:

there is no way there is anything like 1000 quid of tech in, what is at the end of the day a fancy motor.. never mind enough to justify a 6k price tag.

The high price tags of astronomy kit in general are mainly due to the low volume of production. If everyone needed an equatorial tracking goto mount at the same volume that they need a smartphone, television or a kettle then I would imagine you could manufacture and sell them at around £150 a pop.

[Rusted]

1 hour ago, gilesco said:

The high price tags of astronomy kit in general are mainly due to the low volume of production. If everyone needed an equatorial tracking goto mount at the same volume that they need a smartphone, television or a kettle then I would imagine you could manufacture and sell them at around £150 a pop.

Or not. Annual, minor iterations of styling have pushed phone prices beyond £1k.
Yet they are mostly manufactured in PRC, or thereabouts, at suppressed wages relative to the West.

[markse68]

On 07/01/2022 at 09:19, powerlord said:

I'm really interested to see how it turns out. A few 'reviews' on zwo saying they were beta testers and it had issues, but then.. that's what beta testing is about.

2000 quid is still a lot of money. I'm not sure looking at the price of existing mounts is a great idea, as there is no way there is anything like 1000 quid of tech in, what is at the end of the day a fancy motor.. never mind enough to justify a 6k price tag.

stu

If they’re using German/Japanese harmonic drive gearsets, £2k sounds like a bit of a bargain- they’re not cheap and there’s a huge and growing demand for them for robots.

NASA might come to the rescue though- came across this after following a JWST twitter link- bulk metallic glass. NASA developed the technology to enable lubricant free strain wave gears for planetary rovers to save wasting energy having to warm up the lube, but a nice side line could be substantially reduced cost injection moulded gear sets in the future

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/metallic-glass-gears-up-for-cobots-coatings-and-more

Edited January 8, 2022 by markse68

[powerlord]

ZWO.. use german gearsets ? possible I suppose, but I imagine not.

[markse68]

11 minutes ago, powerlord said:

ZWO.. use german gearsets ? possible I suppose, but I imagine not.

Apologies- I thought i had read that but turns out i was confused with Pegasus thread. They’re likely Chinese but even Chinese HDs aren’t cheap. My post was really about the hope for cheaper strain wave gearboxes in the near future.

 

[wimvb]

Ever since I checked Sharpstar’s and ZWO’s mounts I get ads from aliexpress trying to sell me harmonic drive motors. Usually for £ 120 - 200.

[david_taurus83]

1 hour ago, markse68 said:

Apologies- I thought i had read that but turns out i was confused with Pegasus thread. They’re likely Chinese but even Chinese HDs aren’t cheap. My post was really about the hope for cheaper strain wave gearboxes in the near future.

 

 

Am I reading this correctly? The single error, is that seconds in time along the bottom? So from 40.6 to 41.6 there is a near 30 arc second deviation and this repeats every 2 seconds??

[markse68]

Yes, they have large but predictable PE

edit- the x axis is degrees of output shaft rotation  not time

Edited January 8, 2022 by markse68

[vlaiv]

31 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

 

Am I reading this correctly? The single error, is that seconds in time along the bottom? So from 40.6 to 41.6 there is a near 30 arc second deviation and this repeats every 2 seconds??

Yes, that is in degrees, so 1 degree represents about 4 minutes

[david_taurus83]

Ah I see. Makes more sense now. Thanks

[wimvb]

Still, this means that PHD will "have its hands full" with such a mount.

And then one could ask, why do several of these mounts pop up now?

[Shimrod]

On 24/12/2021 at 13:39, nephilim said:

Knowing AP prices in the uk it'll probably translate closer to £3000 😂

It's now on the FLO website at £1909 or £1999 depending on whether you go for the bundled tripod. Looks like it needs a computing device (The ASAIR PRO) to provide go-to functionality which would account for some of the difference between this and the RST135. Even at £2000 (non-discounted price) it is out of my price range, but if this does mark the start of lighter weight heavy capacity mounts, something like this could replace my AVX and AZ-GTI in the future. I'm not brave enough to be an early adopter though!

[Stardust1]

13 hours ago, Shimrod said:

It's now on the FLO website at £1909 or £1999 depending on whether you go for the bundled tripod. Looks like it needs a computing device (The ASAIR PRO) to provide go-to functionality which would account for some of the difference between this and the RST135. Even at £2000 (non-discounted price) it is out of my price range, but if this does mark the start of lighter weight heavy capacity mounts, something like this could replace my AVX and AZ-GTI in the future. I'm not brave enough to be an early adopter though!

According to ZWO the AM5 can connect with Sky Safari over WiFi. So, it might be comparable with AZ-GTI, as of remote control is concerned, that you would need a mobile phone or a computer to use the mount.

Using a phone is doable, but in my experience a dedicated hand controller is always preferable when using the mount for visual. For astrophotography a hand controller is not needed.

If ZWO AM5 performs as advertised, it's going to be a hard sell for RST135.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Stardust1

[powerlord]

If I'm understanding it properly though isn't the computer required to correct the PEC ? And if it is, that also means they must be adding PEC correction to ASIAIR which could be good for the rest of us. Or is the PEC correction internal to the mount since it's known ?

[The Admiral]

From the little I know of these drives, PEC isn't repeatable as it depends on the out of balance condition and where the mount is pointing. So IIUC, PEC recording isn't really helpful. The Rainbow Astro uses an encoder in its E version to reduce the error. So, it's down to guiding.

Ian

[Stardust1]

That was my understanding as well, that PEC can't be used with these mounts.

[powerlord]

but that's not what the graphs say or am i reading it right ?

 

So I read that as SOMETHING (i.e. the electronics in the mount then I assume) is controlling the pec curve ? And it looks like it is consistent ? seems weird you can't compensate with PEC calculation then ? But if not, your guiding has to do a fair bit of work then, guiding out 20" every 10 mins ?