Pro Smart Scope Assembly and Review: ZWO ASI 2600MC Air & AM3
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- In my last video I presented the ZWO ASI 2600MC Air & AM3 as the perfect Pro Smart Scope. But did my claim hold up in reality? Watch me assembling the rig and shooting me first photo with it.
Equipment shown in this video:
ZWO ASI2600MC Air: bit.ly/4dXq48K
ZWO AM3 & Tripod: bit.ly/3zrpYXF
ASKAR FRA400: bit.ly/4c3JoQg
ZWO EAF: bit.ly/4bItkDJ
If you live in Switzerland, please consider Zumstein Optics: foto-zumstein.ch
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Fantastic video Sascha! I built almost exactly the same rig, ordering TC40, AM3, ASIair Mini 2600MC Duo FF80 + reducer using the pre-production deal from ZWO in May last year. I built it up in October 2023. Apart from the differences due to ZWO's innovation this year, and the FF80 needing a reducer to reach the same speed and winning a little more aperture over the FRA400, we are the same. A reducer reintroduces the complication of needing 55mm backfocus in my setup, which the FRA avoids, so the FRA has a plus point for beginners.
For better guiding you might try setting the guide step to 920 and RA & DEC aggression to 95% as start point, and calibrate on a target near the meridian and aequator. You can raise up the gain to 300 adjust and the 220 sensor to have slightly soft focus as well. Then you should to be able to reduce the guide exposure down to around 1 second even with a light pollution filter. With this configuration I'm getting 0.3" - 0.8" (in good seeing, 1s exposure, Antlia Triband RGB). I hear that it still guides OK up to 4s (needed with 7nm dual band filters). I plan to find out tonight.
Everything you say is true about how incredibly easy it is to setup and use, and how great this concept is for "serious" beginners. For me the all-sky polar alignment feature is the key selling point that earns it a place in the "Pro Smart scope" category. My 130APO is feeling very neglected right now!
I also included these in my build:-
1) a 'new' M54 filter drawer from ZWO
2) a PE160 pier extension
3) a Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox (PPB) Micro
This ZWO filter drawer model deals with the issue you mentioned. Its more compact and a lot cheaper than a ZWO 5x2" EFW. The PE160 gives me the luxury of height, and lets me slew around safely, and peek over the glass wall of my tiny west facing balcony. Its also the handle I use to pick up the grab and go ( I carry it on my shoulder).
I can really recommend the PPB. It is "not recommended" to power camera, mount and dewstraps through the Asiair - and while you can often get away with it, the forums are full of people in denial complaining about issues that they swear are not power related - except they are.
The combined maxmum current draw (camera cooler 3A, AM3 2A and dewstraps 1A) can peak at 6A, while the Mini is rated at 5A. So while it is an unlikely scenario, it IS possible to occasionally to exceed spec, and you have invalidated your warranty. We are often working in a damp and cold environment too that can influence both power availability and demand, so its prudent to apply worse-case accounting.
For complete peace of mind I use the PPB Micro, a 10A power cable (also from Pegasus) and a Jackery 500. A PPB mounted on the side of the saddle (or nearby on the tube) lets you bring the cable management to another level. Just one power cable up to the box, the other power and control cables are more or less stationary and can be tethered to the OTA. They only need a little slack to accommodate the DEC slewing, which is minimal near the saddle, and for the focus adjustment. A PPB also gives high and low volt protection, and battery saving enviromental dew control. The Pegasus cables don't fall out of Pegasus sockets either! You might think I owned shares, but I just appreciate their product 😆.
I run my rig from an android phone (or sometimes an A7 tablet). If you haven't tried the live stack calibration frames (master flats and darks) yet they really make live images pop! I always begin the night's capture with live stacking, and switch over to auto run at the point when I want auto-focus to trigger itself and let me go to bed. Another great thing about a (permanently assembled) grab and go is that these masterflat and masterdark frames can be kept in asiair storage and reused for ages, until you decide to redo them and boost the EAA experience.
The minus point is when beginner graduates to using (e.g. Pixinsight) they will ALSO need to take a set of raw darks and flats (and flatdarks) for every filter every night.
Thanks a lot for this treasure trove of tips!!!!!!
Very detailed and helpful, thanks and clear skies from Colorado
I didnt realize a drawer wouldnt work with a duo camera, i was really looking at getting that all in one 2600air but now im gonna have to reconsider. If it was a mono camera it wouldn't be a huge ask anyway to buy that wheel, but for color i much prefer a drawer for the cost difference. Thanks for pointing that out.
Well be careful there - I only said MY drawers would not work. It might very well be that the ZWO drawers might provide the 44mm light path. Just crucial to check that before buying….
Can you put the focuser over the top
Yes, you can, I recently saw that at a rig, with a band going down to the focusser. Would I do it? Not in a million years. It is just asking for trouble. A fixed mechanical connection to the focuser is so much more stable and more protected against slippage. To add the two spacers is really not a bug thing and completely solves the issue.
One big caveat, the cables supplied by ZWO are frankly, garbage. Throw them out and get better ones.
Yes. So unreliable
ZWO recommends 12V/5A to power the AM3, however the 2600MC Air power outputs are only 12V/3A.
additionally, can loose the AM3-2600 USB cable. The 2600MC Air can connect via bluetooth to the AM3
I would highly wonder, for what the mount needs 5A, and it worked perfectly with the 3A provided. With the AM5N this issue is resolved as you can thread the power through the mount to the cam
I think for bluetooth is great for visual. But for guided AP I personally would not feel comfortable with a wireless connection.... And as you anyway have to provide power from the cam to the mount or vice versa having a parallel USB cable is not really as issue....
@@viewintospace whether to power a mount via the AAP is a well-worn topic over on CL. General consensus is it's not worth the risk of frying the control boards. Additionally, in 'Heavy Mode' for use in cold or w/heavy OTA, the mount will draw additional amps. I use a Y splitter and power the AAP. and AM3 using the same line-in.
Great to know - thanks!
Well - at just over $9000 Australian dollars I personally certainly wouldn't be recommending this setup to a rank beginner - who may, or may not, find that astrophotography is for them. This setup costs more than 12 times a Seestar S50 ($750 Australian dollars). When you say you've never used X,Y and Z before and it was so easy, I think you grossly underestimate the vast amount of skill and experience in astrophotography you have, which would be a massive advantage over the rank beginner.
I think you underestimate the amount beginners are willing to spend. When you are at a certain age, you want to start with something that produces good results from the start.... So in this short time since I published the first smart scope videos, I personally already know of two beginners who bought such a rig like I outlined.... I myself started my AP journey with a CPC-800 - and I can tell you, this rig would have been a million times easier to start with 😉
@@viewintospace I guess I am at different level of disposable income to the two beginners. As a retiree I can afford a $750 AUD entry point - just - but $9000 AUD is beyond my means , now and into the future. I'll desist in championing the low-end smart scopes as my view is obviously biased by personal affordability. Looking forward to your take on the Seestar S50 though.
I don't know if I will ever test an entry level smart scope, but looking at the amounts of reviews around, I think the demand is covered already 😉 But if you want to know my take: From my point of view the Seestars and alike entry smart scopes fill a gap that it is high demand. Affordable, easy to use, lightweight devices for beginners, people on a budget, public outreach, handicapped people, children and many more. So I think it's amazing that they exist and I'm happy for everyone who can because of them enjoy the beauty of space. What I present in this video should not be perceived as a competitive approach or putting these smart scopes down. I simply explore if this successful concept is unscalable to the pro level - that is all.
@@viewintospace Oh - I've misunderstood. When you said "You will see in my next video my experience and opinion after using it" - I thought the "it" meant the Seestar S50 as that's what I was talking about. I think perhaps that the take I should be looking at is from someone who has actually used one. My mistake. My apologies.
@@viewintospace I should just add that I may have a different point of view about getting people into astrophotography. In my view if I grabbed 100 people off the street into a hall - with a Seestar S50 on one side and a PRO setup on the other and said the Seestar S50 and an app on your smartphone is all you need to get pictures of galaxies and nebulae while costing $500 USD. On the other side we have the PRO setup costing $6000 USD, but you have to assemble it and connect cables plus export data to process into pictures. I'm pretty sure the line at the Seestar S50 table would be the longer of the two. Or am I wrong ? For me it's getting as many people looking up as possible. As I'm fond of saying "one's point of view depends very much on where one's feet are planted"🙂
So based on a quick price search this is an AUD$8,800 package: not including a power supply. This is hardly an affordable smart telescope setup. You could get started with one of the existing higher end smart scopes, say ultra-portable Vespera 2 (granted no EQ) for $3000 to discover if you have the astrophotography bug and *then* make the decision to really blow the budget. Even the very capable Origin is $7,000 and while it’s still Alt-AZ it’s a VERY fast F2 light bucket. With the introduction of a wedge, camera upgrade & star tracker due later you could invest the $2000 you didn’t spend on this package to source those upgrade parts later on.
Lets be clear - AUD 3000 is also not cheap - and you buy this and learn to use it only to find out you want more, and then you have to start again and buy a real rig? From my point of view this is wasted time and money. And don't get me going again about the Origin -with the wedge (if it will ever come) it will be as expensive as the rig I propose and be a monster weight wise. I had a wedge on my CPC-800, so I know what it means and it is not something I would recommend - especially not to a beginner..... And just to point it out - the "affordable" is your one assumption of the term "smart scope". I never mentioned it.... Just because entry smart scopes are cheap, it does not mean a pro smart scope must be cheap. I very clearly layed out my understanding of smart scope in my last video. But yet, everybody has his/her own perception of this term.