Celestron - StarSense AutoAlign for Celestron Mounts

I purchased this in August of 2016 and had some difficulty getting it to work out of the box as advertised. It was really frustrating not having it work as expected after reading the features and specification information from Celestron. After about two attempts to auto align I feel back into the original CGEM DX manual mount alignment process.
I came back to it a couple of nights later, really dislike having to align my scope daily after setup. What I did differently was get my scope setup pointed with a pretty close physical alignment on Polaris. Once I thought I was close, having Polaris in the center of my 24mm illuminated eyepiece and making sure all the settings, time, date, location in longitude and latitude, etc. were correct I pressed align button and it went to work. In less than a minute it was ready for star alignment. If you want really tight GoTo use more than the default 2 star setup. You can add up to 10 star into the alignment procedure. Pointing accuracy was great. My next challenge will be a Polar Alignment after all the rain stops in Northern California. (Posted on 3/5/2017)

I purchased this accessory for my CPC1100. I also purchased the USB to serial adapter (Celestron #18775). The serial cable (Celestron RS232 cable #93920) came with my telescope, so I didn't need to purchase it. First thing was to update the camera/hand controller firmware. Daniel, at Woodland Hills Telescope, sent me the Celestron link: http://software.celestron.com/updates/CFM/CFM/. I went there and downloaded latest CFM zip file (I grabbed version 2.0.5200). After unzipping the file, I plugged in both the camera (via a mini to standard USB cable which isn't provided but I had one laying around); and the hand controller (via the RS-232/USB cable/adapter). Note: the downloaded zip file has a picture of everything connected. Next, I started the java script from a prompt terminal (typed "java -jar CFM.jar) and up popped the update window. It recognized the devices and I updated them to the latest firmware. I took about 10 minutes. After all this I was ready to start testing the Starsense Autoaligner. I followed the manual exactly, using the manual alignment procedure. This all went fine. However, the section of the manual dealing with first time setup: Calibration Center is wrong. It states to locate a star and press "enter" to adjust the camera center position. If you do this, the telescope will just move back to the object. Instead, press "Align". This will allow you to fine tune the alignment between the camera and telescope. After this, you will need to go through the alignment process again (either in automatic or manual modes). However, after this the unit worked perfectly. I moved to a few objects and they were dead center in my objective. Finally, I connected my WiFi telescope control module and found that it still worked perfectly through the new StarSense hand controller. SkySafari (version 5) controls the telescope exactly as it did with the original hand controller. Very easy to setup.

It took a little setup, but was well worth the effort.

Overall, I love this accessory! (Posted on 12/28/2015)

this accessory is an outstanding value for people looking for more than just an automatic alignment solution. While the telescope is going through its automatic alignment routine, time is freed to set up imaging computers as well as any other accessories. up to 10 alignment images can be taken with this system making it deadly accurate and allowing it to compensate for any errors due to imperfections in the mount as well as tube flexture. After connecting the mount to the starseek wifi transmitter and connecting to skysafari on a tablet, it becomes very apparent that you can completely eliminate the finderscope on your telescope, its that good! (Posted on 7/19/2015)

I just bought this 2 weeks ago and really like the service I got from this company, but that is the best I can say. The product DOES NOT live up to the written expectations. The alignment it does is neat and very thorough and does work, however, after that it is not a good product. Doing a polar align with the included hand control is ridiculous and in trying to do a PEC it actually caused the DEC motor to develop a very loud and scary clicking noise that isn't there if you do a PEC with a regular HC. When contacting Celestron I got a tech who tried to tell me I did it wrong and then tried to tell me another way. Unfortunately, the HC won't let you do what the tech says. Also, The manual from the website does not match up with what the HC tells you to do. I'm hoping my new DX mount isn't damaged in DEC. Will be testing that tonight with the old HC. If I could return and get my money back I'd be really happy. This is the second highly hyped accessory from Celestron that didn't live up to expectations. NexGuider was lousy too. (Posted on 6/10/2015)