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Sky-Watcher wave 150i


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I see that the new mounts are showing in stock now, can someone hurry up and buy one we need to see an unboxing and review😂. In all seriousness I am currently recovering from a few big Astro purchases and the next thing on the list is a portable mount when funds have been saved. I am genuinely intrigued on if this is going to be close enough to the am5 in performance with its slightly cheaper price to tempt me and probably many others. The thing that will decide for me will be if they can match the am5 performance at the cheaper price point or how big the sacrifice will be for the price difference. The price point of both these mounts is a significant investment for most of us, The £250 package price difference although not insignificant is going to seem small if you would get better performance once you spending that much. Interesting to know what others would and wouldn’t accept for the price difference. 

 

 

 

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If price is an issue there's always the variety of Chinese mounts, Cuivs reviewed a few on YT.

Or get an ioptron hybrid.

The more intriguing one of the waves is the smaller 100, it can slew 10 degrees for satellite tracking, and you can dual mount which you can't do with the 150.

Edited by Elp
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In his review video astropharma said something along the lines of 500 I think, see his thread in the mounts section, video is on YT.

Either way I'd think you have to add 20pc onto that price for VAT at least.

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Also the AM5n by Cuivs count, is on par or even better than the Warpastron WD20 he has. Don't know if the 17 is as good.

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Just now, Elp said:

Also the AM5n by Cuivs count, is on par or even better than the Warpastron WD20 he has. Don't know if the 17 is as good.

I want the new am5 purely for the saddle USBC and 12v output. But for £1750 less I'd make do with the juwei

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Personally considering the prices of GEM mounts I doubt the big boys will ever match such a price. I get the impression the "cheaper" ones are homebrew type rather than mass manufacture type if you know what I mean.

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1 minute ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I want the new am5 purely for the saddle USBC and 12v output. But for £1750 less I'd make do with the juwei

iOptron have been doing this for years, the 12v out bit anyway.

Edited by Elp
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11 minutes ago, Elp said:

iOptron have been doing this for years, the 12v out bit anyway.

I realise zwo werent the first, saw some expensive mounts do it. Didn't realise ioptron did though

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14 minutes ago, Elp said:

Personally considering the prices of GEM mounts I doubt the big boys will ever match such a price. I get the impression the "cheaper" ones are homebrew type rather than mass manufacture type if you know what I mean.

I saw a video where the owner took the side panel off. I think it was the juwei. There was just a not very weather proof looking PCB unsecured inside attached by a couple of wires.

Metal housing looked very nice though ;)

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1 hour ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I think zwo QC might be worth the extra cost. Sw don't seem to have any QC, at least their budget gear :(

That did cross my mind, I’ve been lucky but have seen some negative stuff over the years.

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57 minutes ago, Elp said:

If price is an issue there's always the variety of Chinese mounts, Cuivs reviewed a few on YT.

Or get an ioptron hybrid.

The more intriguing one of the waves is the smaller 100, it can slew 10 degrees for satellite tracking, and you can dual mount which you can't do with the 150.

I did look at the ioptron and it’s got some good positive reviews. The price isn’t the sticking point for me personally just what you are getting for the extra or less depending on which mount.  I wouldn’t personally stray away from the mainstream manufacturers just because I never have to much luck with things like that. In an ideal world I suppose we would all love to hear the first review say it’s matches the am5 in tracking error etc. I say that only because when we see competition we see progress and better prices. 

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I have preordered the 150i from FLO, it will be my first strain wave mount and a big upgrade from my SA gti, I'll post thoughts as soon as I get it but what swung it for me was the increased payload over the AM5, but also the better (in my opinion) power/USB to saddle offering, the 150i is a pass through from the saddle to the static part of the mount meaning I "could" control everything from a laptop and still have no dangly cables simply by putting a USB hub on the scope, or I could control from a mini pc or asiair on the scope and again have no dangly cables.  The AM5n however is simply a usb port on the saddle to control the mount, I wouldn't be able to pass a connection from "off mount" through to the saddle so it is slightly less flexible, also the power port on the AM5n is limited to 3A where as the wave150i has 2 power ports on the saddle which I beleive are least 5A each. Also the inputs on the AM5 are all still on a moving part of the mount, there is nothing on the stationary bit so still possibility of snags even if you only have a single power cable from "off mount" and everything else is hooked up to the saddle.

Only downside (other than the untested nature) is the the carbon tripod that is specific for the wave mounts is only rated to 20kg! on a mount with a payload capacity of 25kg that simply isn't enough, thankfully the ZWO TC40 tripod for the AM5 is listed as a payload capacity of 50kg and skywatcher have confirm the 150i will fit that tripod (but the 100i will not)

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11 hours ago, Elp said:

In his review video astropharma said something along the lines of 500 I think, see his thread in the mounts section, video is on YT.

Either way I'd think you have to add 20pc onto that price for VAT at least.

Can you post the link? Thanks 

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I wonder what do people think of such low mechanical reduction?

Just to put things into perspective - 300:1 mechanical reduction means that 1.8 degree stepper motor will have one step of 0.36 arc minutes (1.8 / 300) or 21.6 arc seconds.

0.9 degrees steppers will have only half of that per step - or 10.8 arc seconds.

In either case - that is huge error in terms of accuracy when 5% of stepper motor positional error (standard in industry - most steppers have 5% error in their step - some even more) is translated into arc seconds.

21.6 * 5% = 1.08 arc seconds.

Each step that stepper makes will be off on average +/- 1.08 arc seconds. Micro stepping won't help there as it just granulates the same error. Even going with 0.9 steppers won't improve situation much as we get 0.54 arc second stepper induced error.

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It's possibly why they state that they're not suited to long FL imaging in general. I've tested at 700mm but I don't think that's much of a test.

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18 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I wonder what do people think of such low mechanical reduction?

Just to put things into perspective - 300:1 mechanical reduction means that 1.8 degree stepper motor will have one step of 0.36 arc minutes (1.8 / 300) or 21.6 arc seconds.

0.9 degrees steppers will have only half of that per step - or 10.8 arc seconds.

In either case - that is huge error in terms of accuracy when 5% of stepper motor positional error (standard in industry - most steppers have 5% error in their step - some even more) is translated into arc seconds.

21.6 * 5% = 1.08 arc seconds.

Each step that stepper makes will be off on average +/- 1.08 arc seconds. Micro stepping won't help there as it just granulates the same error. Even going with 0.9 steppers won't improve situation much as we get 0.54 arc second stepper induced error.

The AM5 claims 300:1 ratio giving 20 arc second error.  The AM5n claims 300:1 with 10 are second error.  So looks spot on with your figures if the AM5 used 1.8 and AM5n 0.9 degree steppers.  They do claim this can be guided down to 0.5 to 0.8 - so maybe they have a positional error of only 2.5%? Sounds optimistic? But is in line with some users experience.

Do we know what the 500i uses?

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12 minutes ago, globular said:

Do we know what the 500i uses?

Not sure which one is that (not that much into strain wave market).

 

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13 minutes ago, globular said:

The AM5n claims 300:1 with 10 are second error

In Cuivs review is was on par with his Warpastron WD20 which is direct servo drive, so are we missing something in terms of the differences in mechanical setup between these mounts?

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