Unboxing the iOptron SkyHunter goto equatorial mount

The iOptron SkyHunter is a light, full-goto equatorial mount for wide to moderate focal length astrophotography. It can be controlled by a phone app for viewing with a light telescope, but when it's controlled by a computer, it can become a full astrophotography rig, including autoguiding, as it communicates with other equipment through the ASCOM protocol.
Bill from Sidereal Trading unboxes the SkyHunter and talks you through putting it together and making it work. He demonstrates how the mount works with the Commander Lite app for smartphones, with Sky Safari, and with a laptop.
At the end, he also answers the question of whether it will work on a William Optics wedge. (Spoiler alert: for many locations it can, but if you live near the equator, you won't be able to polar align.)
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Sidereal Trading is a developer, designer and manufacturer of high-end telescopes. We're based in Melbourne, in South East Australia, under the awesome Southern Hemisphere skies.
We sell and support telescopes, mounts, domes and electronic gear, including dome automation. We also sell a wide range of cameras, focusers, macro gear, and other accessories.
And because we're staffed by astrophotographers, not only do we know something of our trade, we're also obsessive about quality.
Follow us:
WWW: www.siderealtr...
Facebook: / siderealtrading
Instagram: / sidereal.trading
Search for our KZbin channel under "Sidereal Trading"
Introduction music: www.bensound.com
Incidental music: Kevin MacLeod / www.incompetech.com

[@dagryl]

How to polar align without iPolar?

[@siderealtrading2415]

For my own rig I use SharpCap, which has a polar alignment procedure in it. This will depend on what camera you use, because SharpCap can only work with astrocams. If you don't have any other means of polar aligning and you're using a wide angle lens, like 17mm, you can simply make a guess at it, using a magnetic compass corrected by local magnetic declination, and an inclinometer. Your smartphone can probably do both of these.

[@LogansAstro]

Nice video overview. Great to see iOptron coming out with a nice, small, and very portable goto mount. As for NZ being part of Australia, no thanks, you can keep all that deadly wildlife🤣🤣.

[@siderealtrading2415]

Australia isn't the only place with weird wildlife. There's a parrot over there that seems to have a diet exclusively made up of car windscreen wipers! 🤣

[@LogansAstro]

@@siderealtrading2415 🤣🤣

[@philiprea3280]

Hi Nice video, I particularly liked the ending! I do have a question, using an android phone, with SkySafari 7 Plus and Ioptron Commander Lite, what settings do I need to adjust, to get SkySafari to talk to the mount? If you have a link to somewhere that shows this, that would be great. Thank you.

[@gathrik]

he only wants like clicks and cant be bothered to research for your answer..

[@stevenickolls8016]

Thanks for your information full video. iOptron need to produce a means to control the iPolar that doesnt require a laptop but can instead be controlled from a mobile or tablet. Cheers, Stdve

[@bsgcylon86]

Agreed! If I need to carry around a laptop, why get a tiny "ultra portable" mount?

[@jeffweiss2131]

Super video very nice explanations, thank you!

[@dhriti1]

Hi, really nice video. I had a question - can we mount a DSLR to the iOptron Skyhunter mount with a camera tripod attachment? If not, can we use any other adaptor? Thanks

[@MrsBMusic]

Would this hold an 80 cm doublet refractor? It weighs 3kg. Adding a flattener and DSLR, or a 2" diagonal and eyepiece is going to take it over 4kg.

[@cevoner]

Could you explain the RA balancing? It works easy with the DEC but the RA is not usual since you have to loosen the dove bar below.

[@nickgoli2348]

Thanks for the video! Any word about if e can auto guide with this little mount?

[@marangogio]

Hi and thanks for your indepth review. Do you know if this mount is compatible with ASIAIR pro/plus?

[@siderealtrading2415]

This is something we have not yet tested as we don't have a spare AISair at the moment.

[@stevenbarousseii7331]

@@siderealtrading2415 any update on this? I’m looking to pair this with an asiair plus

[@AndreH3d]

I got one and it’s not properly tracking in RA, search for the thread in CloudyNights forum. I wish it was working right because is such a nice small rig, so lightweight… but I’m getting a lot of jittering as a lot of others are reporting

[@siderealtrading2415]

Hi Andre, where did you get the mount? If there's something wrong with it it should go back for inspection and testing.

[@lazy3521]

Hey I tried charging my mount and it just didn’t work, any idea what it could’ve been?

[@siderealtrading2415]

If it's not charging, then you'd start by checking the power supply, including fuses.

[@lazy3521]

@@siderealtrading2415 lol I just couldn’t figure out which side of the button was on and which is off, mount works wonders, perfect guiding almost every night🙂