Sky Watcher Star Adventurer Mini – Motorized DSLR Night Sky Tracking Mount For Nightscapes, Time-lapse, and Panoramas

About the same size and weight as my Sigma 35mm F1.4 lens, this tracker fits perfectly in my photo backpack so I can take it anywhere. I did a test with a 70mm lens, 2 min exposure on Andromeda galaxy and the stars are perfectly round. Really happy with my purchase. Doing starscapes with 16 and 35 mm lenses is going to be a breeze. Judging by the result with my 70mm I expect I'll be able to mount my 135mm to do deepsky shots. I see a lot of comments about how it can only be controlled by a cell phone and it's true for the very first use. After that you can set "Auto-run" in the settings menu and it will run the last program you entered the next time it's powered on, without any cell phone input.

To be fair, I haven't tested every aspect of this product, but here's what I know: I bought this after researching on Amazon for a few weeks. I was looking for a device that I could use to make panning, time-lapse videos. I wanted to use my GoPro, but I also wanted to use my Nikon D500 with an 18-200mm lens mounted. Many of the cheaper panning devices were reporting that they either couldn't handle the weight of the Nikon or they had issues with being smooth when they panned. Truthfully, they all looked like they were the same unit, but rebranded by various companies. I couldn't see how one would be different from the other when they all looked exactly the same. I already own a Sky Watcher Adventurer from this company so I'm already fully accessorized with a wedge and so on, and am familiar with setting up the mount for astrophotography. But that's not what I've done with this mount. I've used this one to make panning time-lapse images. The mount uses a phone app for control. What it does is broadcast a WiFi signal that you link up to with your phone or tablet and the app allows you to control the mount. You can start, stop, set a particular profile to run, and configure just about anything you could imagine. When you're panning, you can set the mount to pan left or right and set the rate of pan by several different criteria. I'm not sure how fast the mount will pan, but it wasn't fast enough to do, say, a non-time-lapse smooth pan on a video. I usually do a 15-minute shoot at one frame per second or a 30-minute shoot at one shot per 2 seconds. The only issue with this mount, and it's not a big one is that the manual is pretty lacking, leaving you to just figure it out. And the phone app is kind of complicated, primarily because it does a bunch of stuff. For that reason, it's a good idea to spend some time getting familiar with its use before you head out into the field and end up missing your shot. I use it when I'm traveling and don't want to take the larger and heavier Star Adventurer in my bag. I power it with a USB phone charger (which I always carry anyway) so I don't have to mess with batteries. The polar aligner seems to be of really high quality and I can't wait to get to a spot where I can try some wide field astrophotography. For Time-lapse panning videos, this thing is ready to go. For astrophotography, I would recommend buying a wedge which makes polar alignment a lot easier.

inserted 2 batteries to this brand new unit, wow! voltage is 136.21V (see attached screenshot), and power light is flashing red. can’t control anything. power cycled few times, no luck!

I was sad to find the battery option was broken, thankfully it has another input for external power. Great size for travel.

This mini SAM kit can’t work without a WIFI connection to it. If there are multiple wifi signal sources around the setup, then you can never connect to its wifi, makes it completely useless