****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Just got the camera a few days ago. Included everything advertised including a video capture device I was not expecting. It seem sturdy and well made. I connected the battery the first night and charged it a full night with the battery power switch ON. I do not recommend connecting the camera and monitor to the battery while charging as the camera will power up and this could sap some of the energy needed to charge the battery. The charger is not meant to power the equipment, only charge the battery. The next day I checked the battery out connecting the camera and monitor to it . After connecting the equipment to the charged battery, I had no problem powering up the camera and the monitor. When you first power up the camera, you will not see any images on the monitor. the monitor will tell you if a signal is not being received from the camera. When the monitor is first powered on it may say no signal, but that should disappear promptly. I used the hand controller for the camera and was able to bring up the menu. Even though the menus are not extensive, I would recommend reading the "HOW DO I" section on the Revolution Image website before you start playing with the settings. I found the menus to be fairly simple once I did some reading. I did an initial test during the daytime with my Celestron Nextar 102 SLT. If you connect the camera to your telescope and try focusing without making some adjustments in the menu first, you may find that there is no way to focus. I went into the menu and selected SCENE SELECT CUSTOM. With SCENE SELECT CUSTOM highlighted, I pressed the center button on the remote control. At this point a new menu appeared with SHUTTER/AGC at the top. I used the left/right arrows on the hand control to set this to AUTO. I did not remove the diagonal mirror from my scope, but simply replaced the eyepiece with the camera. Depending on your scope you may need to remove the diagonal mirror place the camera directly into the focusing tube to obtain focus. Some scopes may even require extension to the focal path in order to focus. I was able to quickly focus the camera on an object about 1/4 mile away. If you have trouble focusing, remember that the problem is not with the camera. Do a little reading and you can get it to focus. I used a pencil to mark the focus point for the camera on the telescopes focus tube. This put me in the ball park and made it much quicker when I went out at night to achieve focus. I went out tonight to try the camera. I went out right after sunset and was able to quickly focus on a star. Remember, the settings needed to focus on a star are different than those I mentioned for daylight. Before you try focusing at night, go to the Imager website and refer to the how to section/ focusing. Use their recommended settings before you try to focus at night. Unfortunately, clouds started rolling in and I bumped my scope causing the tracking to be off. I was able to view some very dim stars on the monitor proving the camera sensitivity, before the clouds ended viewing. I did not have enough time to realign my scope and it was FREEZING. Bottom line is I know the camera is working and is very sensitive. I will wait for a warmer clear night and try to capture some images to upload and edit this review. The cables seems to have been extended since some earlier reviews. I tested the Video capture device on my windows 10 laptop. After installing the software that comes on the CD, It worked and was identified by SharpCap as a video input device. The Video cable is a coaxial cable with BNC connector on the camera end and a RCA connector on the other. During my COLD night out the cable was fairly stiff. I am going to by a BNC to RCA adapter for the camera $5, and use a thin RCA video cable instead. I believe this will solve that problem. Bottom line I am very impressed with what I got for $300. I took my first look at m42, did not bother to align scope and track, and settings were not optimum. it would have looked much better if I had connected the laptop to the camera. Got a lot of glare from my phone camera. Anyway it is much better than what i am used to seeing through an eyepiece.The packaging I recieved seems to have been a repak. Everything was there but from the box that it came in to the packaging of the internal contents...seems like I might be the second owner.When I attached the camera to my scope there were quite alot of dust and "hair?" on the sensor. I managed to blow it off with a bulb blower and got most of the junk off.Everything is functional but the operation instructions seem like an afterthought instead of a important part of the package. Frame collection, calibration, export, etc. are not even covered. Software is on MiniCD. My laptop doesn't have a CD drive. I know $299 isn't a ton of money but I think I might have wasted it on this oneProduct seems to be a good product,not easy too use though,I was trying this during cold weather which did not help matters,tried inside for practice,deep sky takes some time trying different parameters,moon was pretty quick to view, lots of features and setting not sure what they do,,manual sheet kinda vague,doesn’t really give you a accurate starting point,lots of return emails from seller when I was considering buying,answered all my questions within a few days, but once I purchased imager they never returned my email,as I had a bad video cable ) intermittent )from camera to video monitor,replaced that video cable myself,this is why only 3 stars on this reviewI purchased the Revolution Imager R2-Live Video CCD Video Astronomy Camera System with high hopes and expectations for a complete stand alone kit. Unfortunately my example did not deliver on the promise.The kit consists of three main components and the cabling to connect them together. There is the display monitor, a camera with a nose piece adapter to fit the 1.25” focuser of your telescope and a lithium battery to power everything. It also has both a wired and a wireless infrared remote controls.The documentation is almost nonexistent. There is a written list of the connections but when followed there ends up with two connectors not hooked to anything. Although confusingly they are compatible with each other and could erroneously be coupled together. There is no overall picture diagram showing the complete system connected. There is no explanation of the functions of the various buttons on the camera, remote controls or the monitor.I checked out their website, not much there, and clicked on the R2 portion which has a short video about the system. Still no picture showing the system connections and the video is on the older R1 system so there are different connections to the monitor.The reason I am going on about this lack of documentation is that I was unable to get my system's monitor to power up. I clicked the on/off button on the monitor, pushed all the buttons on the camera, the monitor and both remotes, even charged the battery overnight and still no joy. The monitor just sat there with a black screen. I don't know if it was a bad switch on the monitor, a broken wire in the monitor, or just not getting a signal from the camera to the monitor. I was very tempted to break the seal and crack open the monitor's case to troubleshoot the problem further. Instead better sense prevailed and so I took part in Amazon's return policy and sent the unit back for a refund.
