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

The app works totally fine. I use iPhone . I had no issue for connecting and running the tracker. It was my first time using a tracker and it was kinda hard to do polar alignment so I did roughly. Because it was dark and cold in IL and didn't want to waste more time. I was able get 8 mins with 14 mm, 2 mins with 85mm lens. I think that's very good for my first try with really bad polar alignment. I studied a bit and I hope it'll be easy to find the Polaris next time lolHowever, I got this tracker for light weight compared to the bigger model. When you pack everything like eq base , Declination bracket, polar scope will be really heavy. It'll be just 600gr less than the bigger model in the field. My thought is either go with the star adventurer pro model or just sam mini and use with ball head for light weight.But this is a great gadget I really enjoyed it and not that difficult to use this thing. Have fun and Clear Sky!

UPDATE: I contacted the company by phone, and they promptly sent a replacement unit that functioned correctly.Now that I have a properly working unit, I used the tracker for what it was intended for: long exposures of deep sky objects. I was able to do a five-minute exposure at 300mm, which is ridiculous, but there was no trailing at all! There was wobble caused by wind and other vibrations, but that has more to do with the limits of my equipment, not the limits of this tracker. If you have a really solid tripod and a really good camera/lens, this is a fine tracker for the price.The only thing from keep me from giving it five stars: Is there a reason there can't be a simple button to start siderial tracking? Nothing wrong with the phone app, but I bought this to do one thing, as I'm sure a lot of people did. I'd rather not have to fumble with my phone, especially in very dark conditions and at stargazing gatherings where any bit of light can ruin people's night vision.COMPANY SUPPORT FIXED THE ISSUE BELOW. The replacement arrived promptly, but it took a couple of weeks to get a return label from them. The important thing is they made it right, and quickly. THANK YOU.I'm glad to update my rating once this is resolved, but currently this appears to be a dead unit:* First time, the unit turned on, wifi activated, and sidereal tracking worked.* One time afterwards, there was a slow blink on the red led (once per second, which is not documented in the manual)* Now, the unit will not power on. I have tried pressing once, I have tried double-tapping, I have tried pressing and holding. I have swapping the brand new AA batteries with a completely different pair of AA batteries.Contacting the company website for support.

Unfortunately for me this product is past it's return period. I purchased it in Aug for a trip I was supposed to take. The trip got canceled so it stayed untouched in the box until this week. When I was able to make up for the trip. I took it out, got it all hooked up, aligned, fresh high quality batteries. my lens / telescope mounted (made sure it was under the weight limit) ... and ... nothing. I finally got the power to come on, but it would not connect to my phone or iPad and if it doesn't connect, it's useless. The light would randomly go on or off. I tried an android device. At least it would connect to the WiFi but the app didn't work. I tried literally everything I could think of to get this to work, and the app was just garbage as well. So I was left just screwing around in the dark, with nothing to show for it. No way to get support now that I'm back and can't get a refund for an unused faulty product.

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.