What are the consequences of a dead battery while imagining with S50?

Gordon

Last night I was imaging the Caldwell 5 galaxy in Camelopardalis. I started with a full battery charge. Unfortunately, I fell asleep and by the time I checked on the S50, the battery was dead with the arm closed, and the image was gone. I have 2 questions.

Is there a way to retrieve the image? I looked in “My Album.” It was not under the “Saved” or Seestar” folders.
Despite the “Auto Shut Down” slider being in the “off” position, the arm was closed. It just so happened (fortunately) that I had forgotten to attach the metal dew shield. Why did the arm close, apparently on it’s own?
Thank you. Gordon

curtismacc

Gordon Auto shutdown shuts down after, I think, 15min of inactivity to save the battery power. The Seestar also performs a shutdown when it detects the battery charge is too low to continue.

starnet59

The SeeStar app requires you to be awake and press the stop button at the right time if you want a file. I stopped complaining about this after a whole year because ZWO decided to do nothing about it. Count it as a waste of useful night exposure time and next time set an alarm.

Gordon

starnet59
I did find the file under the “saved” folder. I was looking under the solar system section by mistake. I am still concerned why the arm was down when the battery died. Should that happen?

Tim1343

Gordon Yes it has worked correctly. It will shutdown prior to the battery being completely empty, closing the arm etc, I think this is below 10% if I recall.

Fivos

Gordon Yeah, if I recall correctly at about 5% charge, it stops imaging and perfomrs a shutdown.

Imagine if you were stacking images of a target towards the east and the seestar was left powered off with its arm open. Then the sun comes up and fries the sensor. It's basically a precaution for anything bad that might happen to the unit if it stays outside by mistake.

x4q8nHzc

Gordon IMO there are pros and cons to the arm going back into the “home” position when it shuts down. It protects the the lens by preventing it being exposed to possible extensive dew build up if say you leave it out all night. Conversely if like me you use an external filter instead of the internal one and it shuts down then the arm can get jammed against the body trying to close (as happened to me. Thankfully there was no damage). It could be argued that we need an option to decide what happens to the arm when autshutdown occurs.

curtismacc

Gordon Please read my reply to your question above.

Gordon

Thanks for everyone’s replies. It makes sense now why the arm closed. The night this happened was before I was using an external power source. The battery was clearly discharged. I was lucky that I had forgotten to install my metal dew shield. I now use a piece of foam board (as suggested by curtismacc) in one of his videos. The foam board dew shield either falls off or just gets compressed when the arm closes. Gordon

Alvarado

Gordon You can also make a dew shield with 3D printer using small magnets, so that the shield falls off if the arm closes. I also included a filter thread on this magnet dew shield.

starnet59

A magnetically coupled dew shield is a nice idea. For the last 6 months or so I have been using a 3D printed dew shield with a relatively lose mechanical fit, very simple really. I use it every single night and I never had a problem with it getting caught between the arm and the body when the S50 shuts down. I know that people are worried about this but for me this is a non-issue.