Replacement Battery Availability

curtismacc

On the Seestar.com web site under Support/FAQ the following is listed"

" Seestar S50 is equipped with a lithium battery that can be charged and discharged no less than 500 times. If you need to replace the battery, please purchase at https://www.seestar.com/ and replace according to official instructions. "

I have tried the link and not been able to find any listing for a replacement battery anywhere on the Seestar.com web site or even the ZWOAstro.com web site. Where can we find the replacement battery listing?

Regards,
Curtis

Support@Seestar

Hi, we currently do not support the S50 internal battery to be sold to areas other than China, you can contact your local agent to purchase.

curtismacc

Support@Seestar I contacted both High Point Scientific and Agena Astro, 2 of the biggest astronomy retailers in the US and both confirmed that they do not carry the replacement battery for the Seestar. So if they don't carry it and ZWO will not ship them to the US where can we obtain a replacement battery.

Right now it looks like the Seestar will become a dead brick if something unfortunately causes the battery to die.

Best Regards
Curtis

Support@Seestar

Hi, as the batteries have just started to go on sale, so maybe the agents haven't started to purchase them yet, we will contact those agents as well, please don't be anxious, I think your Seestar's batteries are still working fine now, so try contacting them again after a while. We will also sync the message to you. Thanks for your understanding.

curtismacc

Support@Seestar Thanks for the reply. I am not in urgent need of a replacement battery but it is possible that someone could have trouble with their battery and need a replacement soon. Also, I wanted to know about this as I am currently working on my next Seestar video tutorial describing what everyone should know about the internal battery as most people are not familiar with lithium ion battery best practices. There are a lot of questions raised about using the Seestar with the internal and an external battery, especially at low temperatures, and a lot of anecdotal advice that people give that is not correct. So I want to educate people on the best practices when using lithium ion batteries with the Seestar, to get the best, safest long term performance. And I will show examples of how to power the Seestar from an external battery and discuss those limitations. So it would be good if I could also point out when replacement batteries will be available. I expect a lot of folks to view this as the Seestar Video Tutorial I posted last month already has over 11K views.

Best Regards,
Curtis

BZFrank

From what I see the battery is not special - just a std. 1S2P pack of 16850 Lithium cells rated at 3000mAh, 3,7V, max. 4.2v/cell connected by a 3 pin Molex connector. It should be possible to find a plug-in replacement, e.g. Philips Type ICR18650-1S2P 3,7V.

Support@Seestar

BZFrank We do not recommend doing this, as any damage caused by third-party accessories will not be covered under the warranty agreement.

curtismacc

BZFrank As you say the Seestar uses a 1S2P LiNiMnCoO2 battery pack which should not be that hard to find. But I had not been able to find one of these through all of my searches thus far. Everyone I have found so far does not have the embedded thermistor. The one you point out uses LiCoO2 not LiNiMnCoO2 cells. It may work as it has the same nominal voltage and a slightly lower capacity, but LiCoO2 has a lower thermal stability threshold than LiNiMnCoO2. And I don't know if the internal thermistor has the same resistance vs temperature profile as the one in the Seestar battery which is essential for the correct temperature operation. At this point I would recommend sourcing the ZWO replacement battery pack once it becomes available from astronomy retailers here in the US and elsewhere.

Regards,
Curtis

Support@Seestar

@"curtismacc"#p87348I'm glad you're willing to share relevant knowledge, but I'm not quite sure what specific information you're looking for regarding the Seestar battery.

curtismacc

Support@Seestar Just want to know when those of us in the US will be able to purchase a replacement battery. As I said, I don't know of anyone who needs one now, but if one fails due to misuse or a manufacturing defect, the Seestar will become unusable even with an external power source since it requires a working internal battery. And as you said, batteries have just begun to go on sale and you would "sync the message".

Thanks.

Support@Seestar

curtismacc Yes, we currently only sell the batteries through our U.S. distributor. My colleague has already contacted the distributor to inquire about the information. Thank you for your patience.