Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium
by Celestron
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium
Customer Review: Fun for the whole family
Summary: 2 Stars
We purchased this for my parents in their 70s but everyone enjoyed it, even our 9 year old son. It is a wonderful way to learn more about the night sky.Customer Review: Feels like a quality piece but mine arrived dead with GPS error.
Summary: 1 Stars
UPDATE -- I exchanged my first defective one and my second unit works well, although it is slow to acheive a GPS lock (Celestron could take a lesson from Garmin here). Once you have patiently allowed the GPS to lock, this thing IS, objectively speaking, super cool. It is not 100% accurate, but it is darned close -- and the inaccuracy is likely a result of me standing near metal (it has a magnetic compass to determine your orientation which is highly precise and thus highly sensitive).
Anyway, I largely agree with the other positive reviews with my second unit. Warning -- a friend bought one to use on a cross-atlantic cruise, and it cannot be used this way, as it's a bit difficult to get away from metal when you're standing on many tons of it! However, he liked using his after he got home, and does not regret buying it.
If I rate this based on the experience with my second (non-defective)unit, and my friend's experience with his unit, I would give it four stars (it needs to be faster to acheive GPS lock and less sensitive to nearby metal for five stars).
ORIGINAL REVIEW
This looked and felt great as I unpacked it from it's box for the first time. It feels solidly constructed, was heavier than I expected, and was not cheap feeling at all.
Trouble is, it won't even boot up all the way. After splashing the start-up screen, a message reading "Error: GPS hardware problem detected. Please contact Celestron Technical Support." is displayed, and I can only adjust the brightness/contrast of the display or turn it off after this happens -- no other buttons respond.
I'm a gadget-hound and know my way around both GPS receivers and astronomy optics and other goodies, so this is not a case of technophobia. It's dead, Jim.
I see I am not the only one who recently had this error recently, based on other reviews here. I will call Celestron tomorrow and determine whether I should try to get it repaired or just ship it back for another unit. I will revise this review once I have a repair or replacement unit in hand.
Customer Review: Stopped working after 1 year of light use
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought my SkyScout back in 2008 and I used it to aim my 8" reflector. It worked OK but I couldn't get much more than 2-3 hrs of use out of set of batteries even with the illumination set low. The GPS doesn't hold your last position in memory so you constantly have to wait 5-10 minutes for the system to reacquire or manually input this information along with the correct time. My old Magellan hand held GPS fixes it position way faster than this thing. The auto shutdown feature can't be shut off so it is constantly powering down this becomes annoying real fast. After about 12-15 evenings of use spread out over a little more 1 year my unit began having problems getting a GPS fix I also started getting false magnetic interference. I ran the software update but eventually it stopped getting position fixes and the magnetic symbol stayed on constantly. Since the unit was out of warranty I removed the body side casings to see if there was any detectable problem. When I powered up the naked unit it worked great. I got a GPS fix in about 2 minutes and the false magnetic reading also went away. I was actually able to use the unit inside my house near a window which was something it could never do before. Unfortunately when I reassembled it the problems tends to come right back. So for now it will work reliably as long as I remove the casing to use it but this make it a pain to accurately attach to my telescope. I wonder how much lead is in the plastic casing?
I'm giving it one star because if you read the Celestron support forum my problem is quite common after a year or two of use and IMO this unit is too expensive for such poor quality control. Note: if you decide to open yours up be sure it is out of warranty so you don't void it. There are only three things that can fall off the partially disassembled unit. These are the "target" button and the two glass end pieces but they are easy to put back in. If you drop the unit while disassembled I bet it will fly to pieces so be careful.
Customer Review: Think twice about ordering this one
Summary: 1 Stars
I received a new Celestron SkyScout as a gift this Christmas from my wife Lonnie. My gratitude was short lived when I examined this item and found that it did not ship with a pair of battery sleeves that the enclosed literature said was important to the accuracy of unit. After powering up the SkyScout I encountered an immediate magnetic interference message and noticed that the unit would only procure a 2D rather than 3D GPS fix. All attempts to remove the magnetic interference message were futile even though I live in a rural area of Minnesota and can travel only a short distance to be in the toolies. Needless to say, I was unable to use any feature of the SkyScout other than the audio tutorials. I made 3 software upgrades and one firmware upgrade and with no result so attempted to get help from customer support. One call, one FAX and two Emails met with stony silence and no response to my simple suggestion that Celestron merely send me a set of battery sleeves. I returned the item today for a refund as I do not trust a company to handle big problems with their product if they will not address the simplest. Well, at least I didn't get the dreaded CRC Block error spoken of so often in past unfavorable reviews. Ordering this product is a crap shoot, do so at your own risk.Customer Review: Dead After about 5 minutes of Use
Summary: 1 Stars
I used mine for about 5 minutes - then the lights went out, and it never worked again. My impressions during the 5 minutes of use - 1. Difficult to see the stars through the glass - it could be brighter; 2. It would be nice to have a handgrip; 3. It should use a neckstrap instead of handstrap to make sure you don't drop it; 4. It would be nice to have the Identified object show up in the Viewing screen, rather than only on the side of the unit. As it is, you target a star, then you have to go to the side and select which star you want to locate. Then you look through the viewfinder again to have the arrows lead you to the target ..... at this point the lights went out on mine so that's all the feedback I could get with 5 minutes of use.
Oh yes, I changed the batteries and it still won't turn on.
THis is obviously a very cool device. When they get around to version 2 or 3 it will be very nice to own --- but only if they Identified object is identified in the viewing screen - otherwise it's a pain in the neck to use.