iEXOS-100-2 PMC-Eight Equatorial Tracker System Tripod and Mount for Astrophotography with WiFi and Bluetooth Compatible

This mount is very affordable. Its about the lightest duty mount on the market, far as I know. I used it with a 127mm Mak and currently with the Svbony 80mmED refractor. Im guided with a mini guidescope and DSLR for imaging. For me it was pretty challenging to get setup and working properly as a guided setup. As a goto tracking rig, it was very simple to use. Anything more than a small refractor for imaging or a small Mak for visual and this mount is overloaded. It does work very well for what it is. Its a great starter mount especially.

This is a good mount for the price, but the GoTo is WAY off; even after a 3 star alignment. Hard to align without the azimuth adjuster, but it's possible. The image below was achieved with bad polar alignment, 30 second exposures. Update: got the GoTo working.

I have not had a change to use this mount a whole lot so i will update more in the future. As of right now the mount seems to be rock solid. It holds my Orion Eon ED80 , 50mm guide scope and dslr just fine. The counter weights were just a few ounces too light to balance it so i added some sticky car tire weights to them. The Explore stars app is only available through the Microsoft app store. Which was tricky to get it to work but after some great help from Explore Scientific i was on my way. This is my first telescope and mount so i dont have a ton of experience. After initial alignment and setup it was smooth. I have not done any photography yet with this mount due to bad weather. I should be able to get some done this weekend and will post an update. Over all for the price and quality and support i dont think you could find a better comparable mount for the price.Update: I orderd this item on July 26, 2019. It is now May 2 2020.The Mount its self is well built for what it is. The major problem i have is to make it functional you have to spend a ton of money. I had to purchase a polar scope for it. Which has next to no instructions. No real way to have it in the same spot each time you take it out. Which was not available at the time of purchase. At the price of approx $90 shipped. You have next to no azimuth adjustment. However they will sell you an adapter for $100. They also offer an upgraded tripod for the mount. At a cost of $250. Which requires the special azimuth adapter in order to use it.If you buy this mount and all the other items needed to make it stable and functional you would still not be able to do much. Because the software is complete trash. Tried on several android devices. Half the features dont work. Crashes all the time. Same with windows laptop. The software also makes fine tune adjustments impossible because you cannot look through a scope and look at a monitor at the same time to see where you are doing.So by the time you are done spending 800.00 on this setup you could just buy a mount that will hold more weight and be more functional. The only redeeming quality is its light weight and customer support is fast to reply.I have not been able to get this mount to properly function with any software i used. (PHD2, APT, Explorestars ) I did the latest firmware update. I purchased a new mead lx mount . I was up and imaging with in 10 minutes of setting it up outside.

Who even builds a mount with no azimuth adjustment? Nobody except explore scientific. Another 120$ for that feature and I found it didn't thread on enough for my liking so I cut off the flange on the adapter to get a better bite. Hopefully you get instructions with you adapter because I didn't. I had to watch a video about removing backlash and fix that. The polar site hole plug falls right out, it's a very poor fit. I had to tighten every tripod leg, they were all loose.It seems there's a reason why it's on sale. You get what you pay for.I haven't had a chance to see how it tracks yet, I surely hope it's nothing short of amazing after spending all this time fixing what research and development didnt.

The serial connector is a weak point of failure. I have had to send this mount off for repair because the serial connector (USB) is a point that fails very easily.If you bump the cable while using, it drops connection.I'd use the wifi connection but i need that for my remote desktop to control the mini pc that is running my sequence software.I would recommend a better designed and more robust mount for astrophotography.That said, I use NINA software and usually the mount performs well.Just secure and then don't touch the damn cables!

Update 2: After getting ASCOM connected and rebooting, NINA was able to control the mount (though sometimes takes 2-3 attempts but that's likely a Windows COM issue). When parked it has an annoying hum/ringing sound like a motor is trying to move or a cheap inductor has vibration in its coils, even after a firmware update, so that is currently my only complaint. I'll probably 3D print a version of the azimuth adjuster.Update 1: tried a third power supply and now I can keep a COM session up. It sounds like it is slewing or tracking something new out of box; all of my power supplies were rated 1A so not sure why it needed a special one but I'm guessing that the power draw was causing a brown out on board. WiFi tool put it on my wifi, which is not what I want but something to start with. ASCOM can talk to it over usb/serial now, but not the IP address it got from DHCP, go figure. Hopefully tomorrow I can get it to work with N.I.N.A.I will update this as I go, but so far I've spent about four hours trying to get this connected to ASCOM and no luck. The serial connection seems to be extremely finicky and disconnects every few seconds, regardless of power supply or (brand new) usb cables used on two computers. I really don't want to use WiFi to control it because that seems... a bit stupid to be honest when there are already multiple cables connected for other gear. Not sure if I could even update the firmware over WiFi, the documentation is a bit lacking.