I am planing my power requirements for battery size decisions. I am running an STT-8300 with the self guiding filter wheel and AO8 unit. How many amps does the camera draw assuming the cooler is running at 80-85% how many amps would the camera be drawing?
Doug, My camera has developed some odd behavior. I normally run my camera from an 85 Ah battery. I have installed a power meter on my battery so I can see how much current the camera is drawing. On my last few imaging runs, I would notice the cooler would go off during the initial cooling run when it is running at 100%. As long as it does not hit 100% it runs fine. If I lower the temperature of the sensor gradually by dropping the temperature 1 degree at a time, it the cooler does not go off. Then I looked at the power meter and noticed that when the cooler is running at 100% it is pulling a full 4 amps of power which is even more power than the rating of the original power supply. Does this indicate a problem with my cooler? I wanted to indicate that at no time did the battery voltage drop bellow 12 V Thanks Hilmi
Mileage may vary a little on the power draw; the thermoelectric coolers vary a bit from unit to unit. In my experience these power supplies are very conservatively rated and can go to 4A no problem. Normally you wouldn't sustain 4A as you need to regulate. As for the cooler shutting down at 100%, yes that is potentially a problem. I haven't looked in detail at the STT cooler supply design yet, but in my experience many switching power chips have overcurrent protection that is a bit on the "hair trigger" side. Might I suggest you connect it to the AC supply and see if it will run at 100% without tripping out?
I will look for the original power supply, I remember that I stopped using it because the connector was falling apart. I would highly recommend you look into getting a different supplier for your connectors as the stress relief on the connectors is not very durable. Other users have faced similar issues too. I would also like to thank you Doug, since your company took over SBIG, tech support has become far better. And having the developers of the software used by most imagers also own the hardware manufacturer has been great for me as a customer. Finally the star faded issue is getting looked at after years of complaining about it. Keep up the good work
I've seen this symptom twice but both times it was in a STXL. As long as cooling never reached 100%, it was fine. If it reached 100%, the cooling stopped and wouldn't restart until 0% was hit, then you could start cooling again. IC failure (U8 or U9) both times. -Bill
I attached the camera to a different battery and the problem went away. This is odd as my power analyzer says the first battery was outputting a steady voltage above 12.2 volts. So it would seem the problem was caused by either my cabling to the first battery or the first battery itself. Thank you for your support
