The curiosity that is the EQ-AL55i Pro

[Ardsley Astro]

I bought this mount not long back from FLO, There was 10% off and had a credit card so kind of an impulse purchase. It was a choice between this and the more established EQ5 Pro. I went for the EQ-AL55i Pro in the end because of the extra things I would need to purchase with the EQ5, IE Polar scope illuminator and Wi-Fi dongle. I liked the lack of cables dangling around the mount and lack of cables that need plugging in. Its one power cable and off you go.

All that being said its no good if the mount doesn't perform very well and no one really has any reviews apart from a store or two in Italy. I've seen people say it wont be as good as the EQ5 or they don't like it doesn't come with a hand controller, This last one I actually find quite funny as the SynScan Pro app actually takes some of the pain away form using a hand controller, Date, Time and Location are all taken from the phone/laptop and you can go directly to alignment. I had one issue when mount arrived, the DEC backlash seemed excessive, I contacted FLO who send me some pics about making adjustments. I was nervous taking apart the brand new mount but its not difficult. The plastic clam shell that covers the motors comes apart with 5 screws. You do have to remove he Dec motor to get to the adjustment point but its not too much hassle. 

What I find curious is the lack of marketing of the mount from Sky-Watcher. In fact I did even question if it was even a Sky-Watcher mount or some knock off. There is no mention on the global Sky-watcher website about the mount and only recently has the manual been published there. Now I would love to do a review / video for the mount to give some more information and my thoughts about the mount but I have no frame of reference. This is my first goto mount, My first proper tracking mount, and will be my first guided mount once I get a guiding setup completed.

What I can say is I have managed to mount a Canon EOS 500D to my Sky-Watcher 130P (Have to use a Barlow making it F10) and even close to the summer solstice managed to take a couple of nice pictures of M13 and M106 using 30 and 60 Second exposures with no / very few star trails unguided. I tried 120 Second exposure but that appears to be pushing the unguided mount a little two much. Now how good this is for a new mount I really don't know but I look forward to other peoples opinions (I think its pretty good considering it's not bee tuned in anyway).

I will report back the results with Guiding when the opportunity arises and of course I'm always interested in other thoughts and especially other owners opinions.

P.S I do have a video of me setting the mount up, Apologies for the length.

Clear skies

[Martyn87]

Keeping an eye on this, I'd also seen these on FLO and wondering how they'd compare to the EQ5/HEQ5/EQM35...

[Ardsley Astro]

Notes from the video, You can see I initially level the Tripod with spirit level. I only did this to compare with the bubble level on the mount itself to make sure it matched and the bubble level wasn't fitted miss aligned, I can confirm all is well and the both match. I usually leave the mount on the tripod and just take the scope and counter weight off. I did the complete assembly just for the video. 

I was looking around the Sky-Watcher site again at other mounts and when you take a close look at the Star Adventurer GTI, it is very similar to the EQ-AL55i Pro. You could even say that the EQ-AL55i is the bigger brother of the GTI with more payload capacity, Both have DC servo Motors with Encoders. Both have the Adjustable angle Counterweight Bars. Both with inbuilt Wi-Fi and no hand controller.

Other things I like about the EQ-AL55i Pro, Setting the Latitude with its worm gear is especially easy, It doesn't lock in position but so far I've never had it move on me. The Internal illumination of the polar scope is a great help. How people manage without a polar scope illuminator, I just don't know. Motors aren't mega quiet when both are running together but I use this in the back garden and never had complaints. Even had the neighbours across the back from us camping out in there garden and they never heard it.

I weighed the scope with the Guide scope on it the other day as well to see what kind of load I will be putting on it. With out the camera's it was 4.36KG. So I would say with the camera's it should still be under 5KG, This give me confidence that I can drop a 150P-DS in without getting too close to the max payload limit.

[GTom]

Following! I have been after a proper travel mount to support a maxed carry-on astrophotography gear which can definitely be more substantial than the poor mans 72ED+ASI cmos. SA GTI per specs would be overloaded by a 4" refractor or 5-6" f4 Newtonian while harmonic drives cost an arm, leg and a pair of kidneys.

[Ardsley Astro]

Ok Guiding, What fun that was. the SVBONY SV165 Guide scope and SVBONY sv205c Seemed to work ok. I need more time with them though as I had only around an Hour before the clouds rolled in.

Initial issue, I'm trying to use an old laptop that only has two cores, starting PHD and able to get to the point of calibration, the calibration worked fine but as soon as calibration finished and it goes to guiding, error after error. It kept popping up with ASCOM driver failure. Now the laptop is running both Synscan app and PHD2, what is supposed to happen is PHD2 sends its commands to a TCP/UDP port on the Synscan app, The Synscan app then send the command to the mount. I'm not 100% sure what was going on but suspect it something on the laptop.

When I have more time I will investigate but to because of the limited time I switched to a different laptop. Initially that has a similar error, but I found the Wi-Fi had turned itself off. Once back on and re-aligned calibration completed and all seemed ok, The errors stopped and guiding commenced.

 

Initial results looked semi promising. So I fired up Backyard EOS and set it to take a few subs. Backyard EOS has the option to Dither so that was applied, This is where the guiding was terrible. The DEC backlash on the mount is shocking (I've adjusted it before but obviously not very well). In fact using guiding assistant fails to complete a backlash calibration. When dithering the mount would try to move in DEC then reverse the direction and just be stuck trying to move to the backlash So I need to open the mount back up again and adjust this (Again). I won't be able to test again for a number of weeks but fingers crossed that will improve matters dramatically.

 

Below are an snapshot of a calibration and an example of the problem backlash issue. The other large spikes I also nee to resolve but will be taking this one issue at a time. There are too many variables to make rash conclusions leading to rash changes so will be taking this one step at a time

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 09:54 by Ardsley Astro

[Martyn87]

I'm not an expert, but the RA tracking looks pretty decent for what is a "budget" mount? DEC doesn't look too bad for the most part either if you can resolve the backlash issues? Might be a promising option for those that don't want/need a hand controller and would rather buy new than second hand! 

 

Was this with the 130P? 

Edited Monday at 10:05 by Martyn87

[Ardsley Astro]

27 minutes ago, Martyn87 said:

I'm not an expert, but the RA tracking looks pretty decent for what is a "budget" mount? DEC doesn't look too bad for the most part either if you can resolve the backlash issues? Might be a promising option for those that don't want/need a hand controller and would rather buy new than second hand! 

 

Was this with the 130P? 

Yes, was the 130P and a Canon EOS 500D attached to it via a 2x Barlow. I did take a couple of shots but they aren't great. I might have been slightly out of focus. I'm desperate to get rid of the Barlow but later in the year a new OTA will be on its way to resolve that issue.

One thing with the above guiding to remember is 1, This is my first time guiding. 2, I'm trying to use a planetary Camera as a Guide Camera. 3, Its probably the worst time of the year to be testing anything. LOL.

Once the DEC Backlash is resolved I can look more at the Guide scope and Camera, Check exposure length, resolution and focus, I had so little time on Saturday, it was literally thrown together. Plus the comms problems wasted a good 30-45 Minutes.

I could barley see the stars in PHD2 but it believed it found them, getting this aspect (Guide scope and camera) of the solution better may also improve the guiding dramatically. But I don't want to draw conclusions yet until I can understand exactly what's going on.

[GTom]

Might have missed it, does the mount have proper bearings or still operates with shims, like the EQM-35?

[Martyn87]

25 minutes ago, GTom said:

Might have missed it, does the mount have proper bearings or still operates with shims, like the EQM-35?

I think it's more similar to the EQ5, so shims on DEC and bearings on RA, but maybe @Ardsley Astro can confirm if they've had theirs in bits! 

[GTom]

AFAIK the EQ5 has bearings on both axes. If this one is still on shims I am few hundreds better off with a second hand eqm35...

[Martyn87]

I think the other thing to bear in mind is that the EQM35 has a bigger RA worm gear with more teeth. DEC is bigger on the HL55i, but I guess that's less important 

[Ardsley Astro]

2 hours ago, Martyn87 said:

I think it's more similar to the EQ5, so shims on DEC and bearings on RA, but maybe @Ardsley Astro can confirm if they've had theirs in bits! 

I haven't had it stripped down that far I'm afraid. Just removed the clam shell covers to access the motors and adjustments. One thing I can say is the DEC access doesn't go all the way through the mount like the EQ5 or most mounts. It doesn't interfere with the polar scope in anyway either. The resolution on the scope is slightly less then the other mounts. The EQ5 is 0.287 arc seconds and the EQ-AL55i Pro is 0.32 Arc Seconds