Cabling woes.

[Nugs]

Having just purchased a Pegasus powerbox advance and guide scope combo (WO 32mm uniguide and ASI120mm mini) Im looking for a bit of guidance on my setup.....

Equipment list - WO ZS73, AA269c, Sesto Senso focuser, PPB Advance, ASI120mm mini, NINA for capture (not precious about this, but seems well regarded)

When at home, i'll be using my laptop, but when remote, will use a Beelink GK mini.

1. Would i be best linking guide cam to imaging cam, and then to PC, or two separate cables from cameras to USB hub on PPB?

2. I was looking to power the AA269c (Protec) from the PPB, but would i better going direct to source?

3. Finally, is it recommended to power my mount (CEM25p) directly as well?

TIA, Dave

[Anthonyexmouth]

I'd say keep the cameras separate. I find the hub in the camera is ok for a focuser or filter wheel. 

[Budgie1]

I also use the PPB Advance on my mount and my setup is as follows:

USB

 I keep the guide camera USB cable short and plug it into the ASI294MC USB hub. I also plug the ZWO EAF into the other USB port on the camera. That means only one USB3 cable from the camera to the PPB. I also have the EQDIR cable from the mount plugged into the PPB.

Power

The PPB powers the mount & the ASI294MC. I also have a couple of dew heaters running off the dew heater connections on the PPB.

This setup means I can keep the cable runs short, easier to avoid snags, and I only have one power cable and one USB3 cable running to the mount.

[Nugs]

Thanks for the replies so far, am i correct in assuming that the USB hub on both the camera and PPB are 'passive'? (ie, they will just all pass data until the bandwidth or data amount is exceeded) My assumption is based on the cameras having a small amount of onboard memory to allow for a 'bottleneck' of sorts.

I definitely brought the PPB to keep cable runs short, and to avoid having my mount resembling rapunzels hair.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Nugs

[Budgie1]

I can't find anything to confirm that the USB hubs are "passive" but I also assume they are.

As long as you use the USB3 cable from the imaging camera to the PPB and a USB3 cable from the PPB to your laptop, then you shouldn't have any data transfer issues. The cameras onboard memory is there in case you want to us a USB2 cable, which has a much slower data transfer rate. The memory acts like a buffer to maintain a stable data transfer.

Having used both USB2 & USB3 with my camera, the USB3 is near instant transfer whereas USB2 takes a while to download the image.

[Nugs]

Thats really helpful, thanks @Budgie1. 👍