Definitely a big improvement of over lead acid batteries. The collection of cables in this kit are probably worth $100 USD by themselves. However, some caveats not mentioned in this video or High Point's promotions. 1) This power bank uses Li-ion cells not LiFePO4 cells used in some of Celestron's power banks and in many non-astro specific power stations of similar capacity (Bluetti, Ecolow Jackery). LiFePO4 cells are much less likely to explode or burn furiously than Li-ion cells. LiFePO4 cells can be discharged and recharged at higher and lower temperatures than Li-ion cells (-20 to 60C vs 4 to 40C). Good seeing often comes with sub-freezing temperatures. LiFePO4 cells can be recharged from two to four times as many times as Li-ion cells and have about twice the shelf life (5 vs 10 years). LiFePO4 cells are only about 20% heavier than LI-ion cells, for the same capacity, and the zero to 10% more expensive nowadays. Why High Pont chose Li-ion cells instead of LiFePO4 is a mystery to me. For extensive testing and reviews of power stations from many manufacturers, check out Hobotech on UA-cam.
The High point scientific marketing person really is a genius. If you really want to advertise a product, and you're confident enough in that product, give it to some weirdo who's going to misuse it by trying to charge their tesla with it. I already have a battery bank and this is making me want to get one of these.
I've got the Bluetti EB70 and it powers all. It is slightly more powerful (716Wh) and has LiFePO batteries. Plus it freaking wirelessly charges my phone! In many respects the same conclusion as this one: an awesome addition, well worth the investment! Too bad it's ultimately meaningless, of course...
Decided to build my own. Powerful enough to run my refrigerator at home and it can run on Solar. Looking forward to some remote camping excursions this summer.
Unrelated to astronomy - Are You Gonna Go My Way was one of my favourite songs to play when I was starting drums, the snare fill synchronised with the guitar is always satisfying to play. You two sounded great, full cover when?
G'day Dylan. These are hugely popular in the vanlife space. The Sammeh's going to be needing one for her little van office. Bluetti and jackery are the main brand that make these portable power units, so I'm not sure why astro is making them for astro.. It's purely power in power out from what you showed us!
@@DylanODonnell lithium really has changed the scene... me and sam are building out a removalist truck into a motorhome currently. 1400ah lithium, 1600w solar and 11,000w inverters. I reckon I could charge your tesla!!!
@@DylanODonnell BECAUSE of the rental apocalypse. got moved out from our rental 2021, couldn't find a new place. I ordered a new transit and waited a year, no new vans came to australia. So we bought a TRUCK easter last year. Been working on it since. Kitchen went in Tuesday! It's coming along nicely. Electrics are all done, aircon is done, just plumbing, gas and shower to go. Should be finished by Christmas to go see my dad.
Great option for those who want to just grab and go. I was shopping for off grid power for my shedservatory build and ended up going full DIY. Money went way further. Got a 200AH (2680WH) LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron) battery for 500. Also got a 400W renogy solar setup to charge it and make my whole setup fully offgrid. The thing I've really leaned into is getting rid of all the AC. Way more efficient to directly use DC 12V. I do have a 2000W inverter as well, but I don't really use it. Mounted it all on a harbor freight hand cart. Can unhook the solar and 12V bus bar connections and wheel it inside if we needed to power a heater or the fridge or some during a power outage. I can power 4 or 5 nights of usage assuming no charging and can typically fully charge from dead in 2 average days. It usually tops off each day before noon assuming no major clouds.
I have the jackery 300 and it powers my mount and dew heater without even thinking about it. I think the most the battery ever went down on a single night was like 8% Using these is pretty much a no-brainer these days
They sent me one as well, and I've been powering our new observatory for testing purposes. I'm wondering what would happen if I plugged in a solar panel to the PV ports, would it just run the observatory indefinitely (unless PV does not stand for PhotoVoltaics)? I also need to test it tomorrow with a new 15 volt power supply for the Losmandy Titan mount (which isn't currently working, I think because it's not receiving enough voltage).
I have been using the Ecoflow River 2 Pro for the past several months. It is definitely a gamechanger for doing anything remote. I am planning on using it for my remote observatory but adding on solar panels for recharging.
I have a couple of portable power stations and solar panels to charge them with. Originally I got them for when our power frequently goes out during summer. Only recently I realised I can use them to run my Seestar s50 and Celestron NexStar 4se plus charge my cameras, laptop, tablet and phone all at the same time. Portable power stations are definitely the way to go.
I have a Bluetti EB55 which is a slightly higher 537Wh, does 240V, has proper Aussie plugs, usb etc. and I bought here in Aus for $799au…. I run my entire rig all night and it uses around 50% power - no dome though…
(I also used it extensively to power my house during my recent renos when the sparky’s kept switching the damn power off - these batteries are so useful)
Useful - I use a unit with half the capacity to power my orange-tube C8 220V AC motor drive, and music plyers off USB. One charge lasts for a month....btw they are cheaper on Aliexpress, as you would expect, and available with NZ/AUS plugs as standard outfit.
Nice video thanks. I’ve been using a Ctechi 250 . It does all the same things as yours, like running the NEQ6, ASIAIR plus, dew shields, camera cooler etc for 4hrs and would go on for another 4 if necessary. Oh btw , pity about the Tesla 😢
So far all of the astro gear I own runs fine off 14.4V so I use a lifepo4 battery, which is much lighter than the old lead acids the inverters are going to be less efficient than straight DC so if your after maximum runtime you ideally want to use that for most of your loads.
great presentation :D however - beside the many adpaters and cables, what does make this astro? For me it wouldn't work 1st: LiION (also according to apertura's specs) operate only between 3-40°C - in summer OK, in Winter at -10°C or so not that much. 2nd: In long winter nights 500Wh are not enough to run all my gear (Small PC, DewHeater, CameraCooling, Mount) As others have stated: LiFePO4 would have been a better choice and for "all-night" I'd say rather buy something at around 1000Wh
It reminds me of that line of Bill Nighy's in the movie Love Actually. He says, "Hi kids, here's an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy astronomy gear. Become a rock star and they give them to you for free." At least I think that's what he said...
The Tesla charging bit failed because this unit is either ungrounded (looks like it from the pictures) or has a ground halfway between live and neutral (common with many inverters) instead of tied to neutral. You could trick it by being somewhat unsafe by making a wonky cable that ties the ground and neutral pins together so the car thinks it's grounded, but honestly I wouldn't bother because aside from being dangerous, the about 500Whr capacity of this thing would only be able to charge your Tesla for about 20 minutes before it was empty.
Thanks for the review my man. Power supplies seem to be discussed very little overall in astronomy circles. Or at least to the amount I would like to see. Its hard to discern what might be the best one for one's particular setup. I ended up going with a Jackery 500... for the only reason it was on sale during the holiday for $350 US. Unfortunately I have not had a real chance to test it. I have concerns about how it will perform in extrema cold weather which is common here in the winter. And also I use the EQ6-R which notorious from what I have read for tracking problems if it does not have a good enough power supply. Given I live in an apartment in the city surrounded by trees, I am fully dependent on remote location astronomy where a portably power supply is needed.
Yeh and actually “all night” is pretty aspirational for only the most dedicated missions. 90% of people (me included) consider anything around 4 hours of good data a pretty successful session.
I am curious what is the total power draw your working with? For my rig I have a 9 amp power draw and I do not have the fancy dome you do "YET" I have been looking at the Jackery battery systems that come with the solar panels to recharge them incase I am ever adventurous enough to lug my 68 kg / 150 lb "with 80mm apo" or 91 / 200 lb "with C8" rig out to darker skies.
I have an Ecoflow unit similar to this that I use for camping when I have AC devices. For astronomy and astrophotography I use a homebuilt solution, but it only has DC outlets on it. It's lighter weight and more compact because it doesn't have an inverter. Most of our astronomy devices use DC power. Why waste the space with an inverter and have all the power inefficiencies converting from DC to AC and back to DC again?
That’s true! It’s definitely me being lazy here and now I can plug everything back into the wall like nothing happened :) but this thing is my goto for the portable rig now.
What would be interesting would be to power this from the socket, then plug your gear into it so it acts as a line conditioner. AC to DC to AC or DC reduces draws and surges and cleans up the power sine wave. I run a dedicated line conditioner on all my computer equipment. I am wondering if you could measure drive accuracy using a line conditioner versus not. Anyway, using this directly after it’s charged will give you very clean power. Because nerd. 🤓
@@DylanODonnell most “UPS” systems are actually “SPS,” so I just bought a hospital line conditioner. They’re not much, a few hundred for 6 outlets. A true UPS usually only gets you a short graceful shut down period, but that’s something.
That’s a ridiculous markup for what looks like an extremely cheesy enclosure and parts. You can hear it when you pick it up and turn on the fans. 18 watt hour 21700 cells are $5. 32 of them plus a super high end charge controller would be half the price of this box.
Definitely a big improvement of over lead acid batteries. The collection of cables in this kit are probably worth $100 USD by themselves. However, some caveats not mentioned in this video or High Point's promotions. 1) This power bank uses Li-ion cells not LiFePO4 cells used in some of Celestron's power banks and in many non-astro specific power stations of similar capacity (Bluetti, Ecolow Jackery). LiFePO4 cells are much less likely to explode or burn furiously than Li-ion cells. LiFePO4 cells can be discharged and recharged at higher and lower temperatures than Li-ion cells (-20 to 60C vs 4 to 40C). Good seeing often comes with sub-freezing temperatures. LiFePO4 cells can be recharged from two to four times as many times as Li-ion cells and have about twice the shelf life (5 vs 10 years). LiFePO4 cells are only about 20% heavier than LI-ion cells, for the same capacity, and the zero to 10% more expensive nowadays. Why High Pont chose Li-ion cells instead of LiFePO4 is a mystery to me. For extensive testing and reviews of power stations from many manufacturers, check out Hobotech on UA-cam.
The High point scientific marketing person really is a genius. If you really want to advertise a product, and you're confident enough in that product, give it to some weirdo who's going to misuse it by trying to charge their tesla with it. I already have a battery bank and this is making me want to get one of these.
Haha exactly
I've got the Bluetti EB70 and it powers all. It is slightly more powerful (716Wh) and has LiFePO batteries. Plus it freaking wirelessly charges my phone! In many respects the same conclusion as this one: an awesome addition, well worth the investment! Too bad it's ultimately meaningless, of course...
Decided to build my own. Powerful enough to run my refrigerator at home and it can run on Solar. Looking forward to some remote camping excursions this summer.
Unrelated to astronomy - Are You Gonna Go My Way was one of my favourite songs to play when I was starting drums, the snare fill synchronised with the guitar is always satisfying to play. You two sounded great, full cover when?
Right? What a kick ass song. It’s so fun to play!
I like the new intro, but WHAT WAS THAT at 3:31!? LOL!!!
Hey thanks for noticing 😆 all clips from actual videos I’ve posted !
@@DylanODonnell Figured OK a power supply test video.. didn't expect to see Uranus.
Hahaha
G'day Dylan. These are hugely popular in the vanlife space. The Sammeh's going to be needing one for her little van office. Bluetti and jackery are the main brand that make these portable power units, so I'm not sure why astro is making them for astro.. It's purely power in power out from what you showed us!
Yeh I used to lug a generator around when I lived in a van :) this would’ve been perfect.
@@DylanODonnell lithium really has changed the scene... me and sam are building out a removalist truck into a motorhome currently. 1400ah lithium, 1600w solar and 11,000w inverters. I reckon I could charge your tesla!!!
@@youtubehandolthat sounds super fun G .. ready for the rental apocalypse too :)
@@DylanODonnell BECAUSE of the rental apocalypse. got moved out from our rental 2021, couldn't find a new place. I ordered a new transit and waited a year, no new vans came to australia. So we bought a TRUCK easter last year. Been working on it since. Kitchen went in Tuesday! It's coming along nicely. Electrics are all done, aircon is done, just plumbing, gas and shower to go. Should be finished by Christmas to go see my dad.
@@youtubehandol Well played, sir.
Great option for those who want to just grab and go. I was shopping for off grid power for my shedservatory build and ended up going full DIY. Money went way further. Got a 200AH (2680WH) LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron) battery for 500. Also got a 400W renogy solar setup to charge it and make my whole setup fully offgrid. The thing I've really leaned into is getting rid of all the AC. Way more efficient to directly use DC 12V. I do have a 2000W inverter as well, but I don't really use it. Mounted it all on a harbor freight hand cart. Can unhook the solar and 12V bus bar connections and wheel it inside if we needed to power a heater or the fridge or some during a power outage. I can power 4 or 5 nights of usage assuming no charging and can typically fully charge from dead in 2 average days. It usually tops off each day before noon assuming no major clouds.
I have the jackery 300 and it powers my mount and dew heater without even thinking about it. I think the most the battery ever went down on a single night was like 8%
Using these is pretty much a no-brainer these days
Cars will switch to LiON eventually too. Good to see the adoption increasing, it’s so convenient.
They sent me one as well, and I've been powering our new observatory for testing purposes. I'm wondering what would happen if I plugged in a solar panel to the PV ports, would it just run the observatory indefinitely (unless PV does not stand for PhotoVoltaics)? I also need to test it tomorrow with a new 15 volt power supply for the Losmandy Titan mount (which isn't currently working, I think because it's not receiving enough voltage).
I have been using the Ecoflow River 2 Pro for the past several months. It is definitely a gamechanger for doing anything remote. I am planning on using it for my remote observatory but adding on solar panels for recharging.
I have a couple of portable power stations and solar panels to charge them with. Originally I got them for when our power frequently goes out during summer. Only recently I realised I can use them to run my Seestar s50 and Celestron NexStar 4se plus charge my cameras, laptop, tablet and phone all at the same time. Portable power stations are definitely the way to go.
I have a Bluetti EB55 which is a slightly higher 537Wh, does 240V, has proper Aussie plugs, usb etc. and I bought here in Aus for $799au…. I run my entire rig all night and it uses around 50% power - no dome though…
(I also used it extensively to power my house during my recent renos when the sparky’s kept switching the damn power off - these batteries are so useful)
Superb product with a lot of 'positives'
Useful - I use a unit with half the capacity to power my orange-tube C8 220V AC motor drive, and music plyers off USB. One charge lasts for a month....btw they are cheaper on Aliexpress, as you would expect, and available with NZ/AUS plugs as standard outfit.
Nice video thanks. I’ve been using a Ctechi 250 . It does all the same things as yours, like running the NEQ6, ASIAIR plus, dew shields, camera cooler etc for 4hrs and would go on for another 4 if necessary. Oh btw , pity about the Tesla 😢
So far all of the astro gear I own runs fine off 14.4V so I use a lifepo4 battery, which is much lighter than the old lead acids
the inverters are going to be less efficient than straight DC so if your after maximum runtime you ideally want to use that for most of your loads.
Look at you with your fancy new B roll in your opening stuff!
Hehe the update was a bit overdue!
@@DylanODonnell Fair, it made me miss Professor Nobby Roberts so I went back and watched that again!
great presentation :D
however - beside the many adpaters and cables, what does make this astro?
For me it wouldn't work
1st: LiION (also according to apertura's specs) operate only between 3-40°C - in summer OK, in Winter at -10°C or so not that much.
2nd: In long winter nights 500Wh are not enough to run all my gear (Small PC, DewHeater, CameraCooling, Mount)
As others have stated: LiFePO4 would have been a better choice and for "all-night" I'd say rather buy something at around 1000Wh
It reminds me of that line of Bill Nighy's in the movie Love Actually. He says, "Hi kids, here's an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy astronomy gear. Become a rock star and they give them to you for free." At least I think that's what he said...
Haha!
The Tesla charging bit failed because this unit is either ungrounded (looks like it from the pictures) or has a ground halfway between live and neutral (common with many inverters) instead of tied to neutral.
You could trick it by being somewhat unsafe by making a wonky cable that ties the ground and neutral pins together so the car thinks it's grounded, but honestly I wouldn't bother because aside from being dangerous, the about 500Whr capacity of this thing would only be able to charge your Tesla for about 20 minutes before it was empty.
Does High Point sell a cable management solution 😉
Thanks for the review my man. Power supplies seem to be discussed very little overall in astronomy circles. Or at least to the amount I would like to see. Its hard to discern what might be the best one for one's particular setup. I ended up going with a Jackery 500... for the only reason it was on sale during the holiday for $350 US. Unfortunately I have not had a real chance to test it. I have concerns about how it will perform in extrema cold weather which is common here in the winter. And also I use the EQ6-R which notorious from what I have read for tracking problems if it does not have a good enough power supply. Given I live in an apartment in the city surrounded by trees, I am fully dependent on remote location astronomy where a portably power supply is needed.
Yeh and actually “all night” is pretty aspirational for only the most dedicated missions. 90% of people (me included) consider anything around 4 hours of good data a pretty successful session.
As a power supply designer - thanks for the hot psu asmr
😂
What about the beer spill test?😂
💀
I am curious what is the total power draw your working with? For my rig I have a 9 amp power draw and I do not have the fancy dome you do "YET" I have been looking at the Jackery battery systems that come with the solar panels to recharge them incase I am ever adventurous enough to lug my 68 kg / 150 lb "with 80mm apo" or 91 / 200 lb "with C8" rig out to darker skies.
I wasn’t looking but honestly I don’t think it was much. Probably 1A. The dome sends move pulses occasionally but is otherwise sitting still.
If you build/buy a neutral ground bonding plug to short the neutral to ground it will charge your car and get rid of that error.
Really? I need to google that !
I was wondering if i can power my 55" UHD TV with Philips Home theater 😋 + PS4
Easy :)
Nice!
I have an Ecoflow unit similar to this that I use for camping when I have AC devices. For astronomy and astrophotography I use a homebuilt solution, but it only has DC outlets on it. It's lighter weight and more compact because it doesn't have an inverter. Most of our astronomy devices use DC power. Why waste the space with an inverter and have all the power inefficiencies converting from DC to AC and back to DC again?
That’s true! It’s definitely me being lazy here and now I can plug everything back into the wall like nothing happened :) but this thing is my goto for the portable rig now.
Hey Dylan is that Ibanez guitar some kind of Steve Vai model? Cheers
Tim Henson signature ! I love it! (And I love polyphia)
@@DylanODonnellah cool yeah I now remember you playing Polyphia in a vid. Rock on down unda!
Your 1st view bro🎉
Thanks Bruva
Cool review. I enjoyed seeing your son. How long does it take to recharge the ion battery?
Not as fast as my Tesla on the recharge. Definitely something I’d do overnight from 0-100 (if you let it get that low, which you shouldn’t generally).
I got a power oak battery thing and I use it to power my scope
Neat.
no car dc socket (cig lighter) as not good to use AC converter to save power
There’s an adapter for the vintage gear :)
@@DylanODonnell face slap taken with pride ;)
You can plug your drums in!
I need a bigger portable amp 😆 … I should’ve used the PA for this test though!
I thinhk you really need about 100Wh to 1500Wh to power an astro rig. People in our astro club (in Sydney) like Bluetti units
With laptop yes
What would be interesting would be to power this from the socket, then plug your gear into it so it acts as a line conditioner. AC to DC to AC or DC reduces draws and surges and cleans up the power sine wave. I run a dedicated line conditioner on all my computer equipment. I am wondering if you could measure drive accuracy using a line conditioner versus not. Anyway, using this directly after it’s charged will give you very clean power. Because nerd. 🤓
True .. it would wear out the battery though right? I’d love a dedicated ups in there. Even a Iittle one
@@DylanODonnell most “UPS” systems are actually “SPS,” so I just bought a hospital line conditioner. They’re not much, a few hundred for 6 outlets. A true UPS usually only gets you a short graceful shut down period, but that’s something.
What's the cost ? In aussie dollars?
This should show a currency conversion .. if you see an Aussie flag at the bottom then it’s in AUD : bit.ly/4ctkzhF
@@DylanODonnell thanks mate
I hate fan noise. It's a no-go for me.
Shoot! I don’t even have the money 😭😭
Rather than supplying all the cables under the sun why not reduce the price and let us only buy the cable(s) we actually use.
True!
Those look like American 220V adapters, hahaha. I just bought a good power supply from HPS and then this thing comes out :-(
I hate when that happens !
I'll keep my 2 power supplies, so no thanks.
Just don't plug up your laptops to it cause it'll drain it fast asf it just is what it is
Interesting
That’s a ridiculous markup for what looks like an extremely cheesy enclosure and parts. You can hear it when you pick it up and turn on the fans. 18 watt hour 21700 cells are $5. 32 of them plus a super high end charge controller would be half the price of this box.