So I got my ZWO EAF installed a week ago, but horrible windy weather means I’ve had no chance to go try it out yet. I’m using a borrowed AC adaptor to power it at the moment, but I’d like to convert to a LiPo with boost/buck converter and mount it onto the telescope.
As you can see in the first photo, the EAF has a slight problem with the plugs projecting close to, and past the opening of the telescope on my Skywatcher Newtonian. If I leave the cables dangling to AC power, to allow some travel as the scope slews, there’s a change of them obstructing the front of the scope. If I can get the power supply onto the scope itself, I can take all of the slack out of the power cable at least (the usb connector is still a problem but not as bad as it is closer to the scope) and keep it out of the way.
So, I was thinking of mounting a 2 or 3 cell LiPo onto the scope somewhere with a boost/buck converter to regulate to 12v. The piggyback mounting points on the top of the scope look like the perfect spot as the weight placed there should affect the balance the least, and moving it away from the body of the scope a little on a bracket will avoid any possible heating issues (not that I expect it to heat up really, as it should use very little power to just re-focus occasionally while taking an image sequence). I can 3d print a mount, and I think the thread sizes are standard camera tripod mount threads.
Regardless of how you eventually power it, I have my cables managed back over the top of my EAF with a stick on releasable cable tie (From Jaycar), something similar would keep the cables away from the aperture of your scope.
I have spent a lot of time working on cable management, ideally you want to be able to point the scope anywhere in the sky without even considering if your cables will be OK. I let mine point and do meridian flips unattended so it had to be right. My next mount might be one of the ioptron CEM jobs specifically due to how they have done cable management on them.
That's a nice tidy looking setup. Under my mount is a dogs breakfast currently, as I've just been focusing on getting everything working up till now. Today is the first day I've started tidying things up.
I'm not sure what ZWO were thinking when they made up the cables for their guide cameras. They give you a 30cm cable, and a 2m cable - would be nice to have something in between.
I am lucky, the guider 30cm and 2M USB3 from my imaging cam are perfect, but I had to buy a cable for the focus motor.
I am an ex electronics tech so I couldn't stand the sight of unmanaged cables. Mine were more or less able to be left alone while it pointed right form the start, just it has taken a couple of iterations before I am reasonably happy with it.
Last edited by The_bluester; 09-09-2019 at 09:52 AM.
Perhaps use angled cable adapters?
Plenty of cheap ones on eBay, or quality ones from a supplier such as https://www.usbfirewire.com
They have left, right, up and down angles that are very useful, especially when ports are close together...
Hi Russel. This might not be possible but what if you rotated the focuser assembly 180deg. That way your EAF would be up the top and pointing backwards down the OTA and your leads could follow ?