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Old 27-11-2012, 09:24 AM
Poita (Peter)
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Skytracker: Competition for Polarie?

Has anyone gotten their hands on iOptron's entry to the tiny camera mount arena?

http://www.ioptron.com/index.cfm?sel...4-ef192192a93f

Looks a bit like the Polarie...
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Old 27-11-2012, 01:11 PM
Poita (Peter)
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I contacted ioptron for details, it comes with a polar scope and I wanted to know if it was setup for Southern Hemisphere.

This was the reply.

Quote:
Hi Peter,

The polar scope is the same one as what is used in our iEQ45/30 mounts, with
smaller footprint. In southern hemisphere, Sigma Octantis is used for Polar
Alignment. You need an iPhone/iPad app
(https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iopt...564078961?mt=8) to
display the exactly position if you want an accurate alignment. Or read from
a 8401/8406/9407/8408 hand controller screen.


Thank you for interested in iOptron products.

Tech2
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Old 27-11-2012, 02:33 PM
rolls05 (Roland)
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G'day Peter. Interesting. I see the specs stack up well with the polarie. Same max load. Seems to have gruntier bearing and worm drive. Roughly the same price?
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Old 27-11-2012, 06:19 PM
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Ummm already have a Polarie and Astrotrac. But this comes with a polar scope. ......
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Old 27-11-2012, 09:05 PM
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Competition is hotting up.
Polarie has the runs on the board so it'd be interesting to know what competitive advantage this one has over it if any.

Greg.
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Old 27-11-2012, 09:35 PM
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*If* it works as well as the Polarie, then it has two advantages from a price/specs point of view.. the first being that the polar scope is included in the base price. For the Polarie you have to fork out an arm and a leg extra for the polar scope. The other big advantage is that here you don't have to remove the camera etc to do the polar alignment. With the Polarie, the polar scope goes through the middle of the main bearing, which means you have to remove camera/tripod head to use it. Quite inconvenient, but then you don't even need the polar scope for a lot of the intended type of imaging work.

I can also vouch for the Polarie down to about -30C ..

Phil
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Old 27-11-2012, 09:41 PM
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hmm.. the iOptron has a DC servo motor, whereas the Polarie has a stepper motor. unless they have some clever encoders inside, the polarie tracking rate is likely to be more accurate?

(EDIT: OOPS.. obvious mistake here.. see below)

Last edited by Phil Hart; 28-11-2012 at 09:04 PM.
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Old 28-11-2012, 11:13 AM
Poita (Peter)
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They also have that mini equatorial mount that only weighs 2.6kg and has a 5kg payload for $400, not a bad option for grab and go and widefields.
http://ioptron.com/index.cfm?select=...b-0c0ba49ddf1d
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Old 28-11-2012, 12:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by philiphart View Post
hmm.. the iOptron has a servo motor, whereas the Polarie has a stepper motor. unless they have some clever encoders inside, the polarie tracking rate is likely to be more accurate?
The definition of a servo motor is a motor with positional feedback. This is more often than not an optical encoder.
If the motor has an encoder with as few as 50 lines/slits and a quadrature encoder it would be equivalent to a 200 steps/rev stepper, tho steppers are usually micro-stepped.
Probably plenty accurate for the sort of focal lengths used on these.
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Old 28-11-2012, 09:02 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrB View Post
The definition of a servo motor is a motor with positional feedback. This is more often than not an optical encoder.
If the motor has an encoder with as few as 50 lines/slits and a quadrature encoder it would be equivalent to a 200 steps/rev stepper, tho steppers are usually micro-stepped.
Probably plenty accurate for the sort of focal lengths used on these.
oops! that's what i get for making posts in a rush at the end of a very long day. thanks for picking up the obvious and rather embarrassing error .

Phil

Last edited by Phil Hart; 28-11-2012 at 09:21 PM.
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Old 28-11-2012, 09:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by philiphart View Post
oops! that's what i get for making posts in a rush at the end of a very long day.
Done that myself many times
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Old 10-02-2013, 02:24 PM
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I have one of these on the way from the US. Got it for $400 AU including the polar scope & shipping. Looking forward to giving it a crack in some semi-dark skys in early March. Will be sure to post up my experience .
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Old 10-02-2013, 10:54 PM
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Peter there is a thread on CN about the SmartEQ pro version, some pictures posted (Sourced from another forum) seem pretty good. For $499 this looks like a nice portable mount.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthrea.../o/all/fpart/1

Thread in Source forum by actual user of mount
http://www.astronomyforum.net/telesc...ng-images.html
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