Hi everyone this is Nico Carver my website is at nebulaphotos.com
and today I will be reviewing the Pegasus Astro pocket power box, as I said
in my cable management video which I suggest you watch first I got this
device when my previous dew heater controller broke just one day it just
didn't work anymore and I was shopping for a new dew heater
controller and realized I really only needed two channels one for my guide
scope and one for my imaging scope and so I was looking for different dew heater
controllers I came across the pocket power box somehow and I just had two
channels but then I had all this extra stuff built in. It had a environmental
sensor, it had a DSLR power output, it had four 12-volt power outputs so if you're
not understanding why all those things are exciting we're gonna go ahead into
all of that in this video but it really even though I was just shopping for this
simple thing I spent a little bit more and got so much more I love this device
I have it on two setups now one for my lens base setups and one for my main
telescope setup
okay the first thing I want to talk about is it comes with this this is an
environmental sensor its senses or it measures both the air temperature and
the relative humidity and by knowing the air temperature and the relative
humidity you can get the dew point that's important because comparing the
dew point to the air temperature you can know when it is going to form and so if
there's no risk of dew forming it can really turn down the power that it's
sending to those dew bands substantially if there is more of a risk
of heavy dew then it increases the the power the heat and so what this does in
effect is it saves you your battery and even if you have a huge battery it's
it's always better to put less strain on the battery so I like this feature it's
also just fun in their software they have a little client and you can just
graph and watch the temperature and the dew point move over the night oh and
I'll just say that my previous dew heater controller didn't have this and so each
night I'd have to sort of guess what to set it at which is sort of annoying with
this now I just put it on auto dew you set that up in the software the first
time and as soon as you set it up on auto dew then every time you start up the
pocket power box again it remembers that setting so I don't even have to open the
software I could literally just turn on the pocket power box and it would start
using this environmental sensor to automatically control the dew heater
bands
so well I got this for do control the power management features of this device
have turned out to be even more important to me because like I said in
an account cable management video this is what just got me to actually take
care of my mess of cables coming off my mount and get them all on top of the
scope and it's really only through the pocket power box that I was able to do
that I will get into other devices that would allow you to do that at the end of
the video but for me it was the packet power box that made me finally manage my
cables another thing other than cable management that moving to this device
meant is that I wasn't being wildly inefficient anymore if I brought out my
big battery what I was doing was I was taking that big battery running a power
inverter so I'm going from DC to AC direct current to alternating current
then I was out of the power inverter I was running all of these power adapters
to go from AC back to DC to power all my different devices so one this is just a
ton of stuff to bring out onto the field each one of those power adapters weighs
a couple pounds that inverter where you weighed 10 pounds and it's just other
than the weight it's just a bunch of stuff to carry out with this the device
is literally taking care of what the inverter and all of those power adapters
used to do and it's all on my scope now so you can just imagine how I just
wasn't really thinking before that wow this is gonna replace so many things
that I have to bring out there and worry about and might break so it's just been
great in that sense
the last really neat thing that I want to talk about that I've actually I
didn't I got when I got this device I was just using it with my z wo camera so
I wasn't using this feature but it's the DSLR 8 volt power output now I have
bought the Nikon and Canon couplers from Pegasus and so I can now use this with
Canon and Nikon cameras and it's just really nice to not have to worry with
your DSLR about changing out the internal battery you just never know
when it's gonna run out I find that those indicators aren't that accurate
and so just to run power off of the power box has been great too because I
can just run a DSLR all night leave it forget about it if you have automated
focusing then you can really forget about it and I'll just mention that
Pegasus Astro makes these power couplers they just basically fit into the battery
compartment and then run a wire out they make them for most Canon models most
Nikon models some Sony models and some Fuji models so if you have any of those
cameras check out Pegasus Astros website or one of the resellers and you can look
for those so I've gone through a bunch of the features that I really like about
this product and I want to make this a fair review and actually go through some
of the drawbacks or things that I didn't like and I I'll be upfront that I don't
think that these drawbacks are necessarily pegasus Astros fault they're
just something that I wasn't expecting with the product or sort of gotchas that
I think people should be aware of the first is that when I bought the product
it really emphasized online that it came with all the different cables that you
need to run it so in addition to coming with this
environmental sensor it came with a USB cable so this is - you need to run this
to your computer somehow so that the software works after you set it up the
first time if you wanted to get rid of this and not use it anymore
you could but I like actually running a software just connecting making sure
that I can see that it's working and the other nice thing about running the
software through the USB cable is then you can send commands to the power box
through your computer if you want to so why would you ever want to do that well
they you can actually turn off and on the different 12 volt volt power outputs
one by one or all at the same time you can turn off and on the DSLR so this is
just cool it's like you can reset a device in the field without actually
having to get out there and unplug and plug back in so I've used that a couple
times it's also just nice to see that it's working so I recommend using a USB
cable I'm getting to what I didn't like about them sell the cable sorry it's a
little bit long-winded gear the thing that I didn't like about them supplying
all of the power cables and the USB cable is that I'm guessing most people
who use the power box want to put everything onto the scope or onto the
mount and they really don't need cables this long this one's even longer to do
that they want shorter cables so basically I got this device and I'm not
using any of the cables that came with it just which just feels sort of
wasteful I'm gonna keep them all in the box here just in case I ever resell or
need them for some reason but I bought all shorter cables that made more sense
with how I was setting it up so I don't fault them for supplying the cables and
it makes sense that they're making them longer because with a longer
Kable you can at least connect if it was too short you're never gonna be able to
do anything with it so I understand the choice but I didn't end up using any of
the cables that the device came with I just used the power box and the
environmental sensor and right replaced all the other cables okay the other
thing about cables that I didn't get when I bought this is I looked at my
devices and I measured I just quickly with a ruler I measured the diameter of
the ports of my different devices and the power ports and they all seemed like
they would work with the cables that came with it or cables that I was going
to buy that are shorter they're called 2.1 millimeter
ports what I didn't realize is that the diameter of the pin inside that port can
vary and so different devices I have don't actually work with this cable or
the new cables that I bought based on this and so after the fact I finally was
putting everything together and it just like wouldn't fit and I was like what's
happening so I looked it up and realized that yeah the center pin can be a
different diameter - the good thing is there are adapters you can buy so
instead of having to buy a whole new cable you can just buy a little adapter
that goes on top of this and so that's what I did okay the last drawback for
some is that this is a $200 accessory and if you buy some of the extras like
the AC adapter if you want to run the whole thing off AC power that's another
65 if you want to buy one of the couplers for your DSLR that's another 20
so it's not cheap but a lot of things in deep sky Astro photography aren't cheap
I think it's fully worth that price but the other thing I found is that I've
shown this to people and it's sort of like when you're looking at it it's just
like well this is just a little plastic box with some power inputs why is this
$200 because it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like substantial but
they made it lightweight for a reason because they knew that it was gonna go
on top of people's scopes and really I feel like what you're paying for is the
design which takes a lot of time and the software which has worked flawlessly so
I don't feel that the price is unjustified but for some that would be a
drawback the only way that I have seen to do power management cheaper than this
like you know proper power management is to home brew your own solution and
probably the cheapest way to do it is to buy a power distribution block from like
a Chinese company I'll show one right here and put the link in my description
if you're interested in this idea and then you can buy what are called
anderson power poles and they're just these little connectors that work with
this distribution block and what you would do is you would find you would
round up all your cables and cut off the ends and put on crimp on the anderson
power poles and then run it directly like that i was thinking about doing
this i do not want to wreck all my cables when i when i looked into buying
new cables and the power distribution block and all the other little things
you have to do get with this i realized that it was gonna run me about as much
as the packet power box you might find that you can do it for cheaper i know
that people who do a lot of DIY projects often can can do things cheaper because
they know where to find things or they buy things used so i'm not saying it's
impossible to go cheaper than 2-hundred with the anderson power pole idea but
the other thing that didn't really appeal to me about it is that for
instance with my lens setup I'm trying to think keep things pretty lightweight
and that that distribution block I think was heavier it just seemed like they'd
really thought through how to make the Pegasus Astro as useful as possible by
while still keeping it lightweight okay other alternatives most of these are
more expensive than the Pegasus option but I just want to go through them real
quick there is the Dew Buster this is a classic device it's us-made I've seen a
lot of people use it and be really happy with it has a nice warranty it provides
lots of do options so if you have a complicated setup like with like you
want something for your secondary mirror your primary mirror and you want a bunch
of different dew heater bands this might be a better product for you it only I
think in the classic design provides two 12-volt power outputs while the pocket
power box offers four but I've just heard good things about it I've heard
it's really well made so you could also look at the Dew Buster I think it starts
at $250 there's also the ultimate power box from Pegasus Astro I was considered
this but it's a pretty substantial increase in price and most of the
features I didn't need right now it might be nice to put all the USB ports
into one device rather than having my separate USB hub but honestly a separate
USB hub has been working great for me I have had no problems with just this
simple anchor 7 port USB 3 hub it is powered by the pocket power box which I
think you Alois for this kind of for astrophotography I always look at a
powered hub and lastly and this is just going to replace tons of things for you
if you go this route including the laptop the computer is the eagle from
prima Luce lab this thing does all the things that the power box does plus it
is a high-performing wind 10 computer and all kinds of bells and whistles so
if you're interested in just something that's like really turnkey and has all
kinds of features you might go in that direction but to wrap up for me this is
the perfect device it's very flexible I can move it from set up to set up but I
found that now that I wanting to run two setups at times that I did want to so I
bought two of these and it really just does everything that I want it to do and
nothing more if you have a setup that's a little bit more complex or you are
making something more permanent like an observatory you might want one of these
higher-end products but for me this is perfect
I just set it and forget it it's really just become so easy to use that I really
don't even think about it it just manages my power it manages the do it
has cleaned up my cables and now I can just get out there put my scope on the
mount plug in a couple things and start imaging so to wrap up this review was
not sponsored I bought my two Pegasus Astro Pocket power boxes with my own
money and I just really liked the product so I wanted to review it if you
have any ideas for future reviews that you really want me to do sooner than
later you can let me know in the comments and thank you so much for
watching my channel if you're not subscribed please subscribe if you
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support me on there as well alright thanks everyone
clear skies