[Aachen]

The kit costs over 200 bucks. I've been very causally considering whether to get into astrophotography, so don't yet know anything about it but I'm curious: what makes this so expensive? A printed frame is cheap, and the other major component is a way for it to automatically move. Are the motors the expensive part then, because they have to be so precise?

[elteto]

If you find $200 expensive for a piece of astrophotography gear you are in for a shock when you research actual prices!

For example, the EQ6R Pro mount is a very popular and decent goto mount and it will set you back $1600. You will struggle to find any decent mounts for less than $1000.

$200 is EXTREMELY cheap.

[sink]

I think in general your point is correct.

However, this is not a fair comparison. In astrophotography, a primary consideration for the price point of a mount is its instrument weight capacity. The EQ6-R has a weight capacity of 44 lbs. This astrotracker has a capacity of 5.5lbs. The difference is, well, massive.

The EQ6-R also has other features, like a built-in polar scope and a periodic error correction. Mounts are also a lot like cars, in that some consumers purchase them for the level of support offered by the manufacturer, and perception of reliability.

With that said, I know I'm burying the lead and focusing on the wrong subject. $200 is very reasonable to get something that will probably provide very good initial results, and get that astrophotography addiction started. And I'm really happy this exists, at this price point.

I don't want to suggest the parent poster is really reinforcing this attitude, but in this hobby (and let me stress, it's a hobby), there is an occasional subtext that expensive gear is the only way to get great results. I don't think that's the case. You can spend as much as you want, of course, and money will let you do more things, but at the end of the day, we're just making sciencey art.

[elteto]

I 100% agree with your points. A more apt comparison could have been against the SkyGuider Pro (or the SkyTracker), which is $400 for double the payload capacity. So, in a sense, this mount is priced very well.

My original point was more along the lines of "if you think $200 for a mount is expensive in astrophotography then you will be very disappointed when you start learning about the hobby". I see this high ($$$) barrier of entry as a very real impediment to getting started in the hobby. But like you said, you don't need to go all in when starting, a decent DSLR and a tracking mount will provide countless hours of fun (and frustration!).

[trishmapow2]

I personally DIYed mine and it took a lot of tinkering to get a reliable setup. The kit is very well polished and uses the new NEMA steppers. As for pricing, I think it includes 20% VAT, which I assume is removed if you are not in the EU. I personally have spoken to the creator and they have tried very hard to make it as low cost as possible.

If you have a 3D printer and live in a country with decent hardware suppliers (not the case for me in Australia), then sure go ahead, DIY and save money. But for people who want an almost ready to go solution it's very well priced, considering commercial alternatives are well into 500+ for the feature set that this mount offers (GoTo, optional guiding down to 1" accuracy).

[Aachen]

So if I understand you correctly, it's the R&D that makes up the majority of the price, not the components?

Not saying that's bad, just that my question is what makes this cost what it does. If it weren't justified, there'd be competitors doing it way cheaper (the field is accessible and large enough for that), so it's just a question out of curiosity.

[polack]

Have you seen how many parts there are? It would probably take most people with a normal day job a week to print all parts in the evenings and weekend. And that's if they do have a printer.

Add another 20 parts that you need to order from different place, make sure they meet the specifications, pay for shipping for a lot of different packages and that many things must be bought in bulk and not single pieces.

USD 200 is a bargain for this kit. Sure, you might be able to save a couple of dollars if you do the work yourself. But is that worth many hours of work, and the risk of ordering wrong stuff?

[dylan604]

Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case? The version that is available now is not the only version that was made. This is something that has been thought about, made, revised, made again, etc. Things like this often go through multiple iterations. Hell, there will probably be a OpenAstroTracker 2.0 in a year.

[Aachen]

> Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case?

Like, pretty much every other product that wasn't an entirely new concept in the last few years? Looking around me, I think the thing with the highest R&D price component is probably the chips in computers (desktop, laptop, smartphones), everything else is just mass production and low markup with hardly any research recuperation in the price (keyboard, lamp, paper, desk, floor, beanbag, fridge, IR thermometer, picture frames, a spoon, a computer display...). Unless you meant "when is that not the case for astro trackers", I don't get what you meant because it's rather exceptional to still be paying off R&D if you're buying regular mass-produced consumer products.

> This is something that has been thought about,

Obviously, but if it's open source (with a free, commercial-use license and no big call for donations other than a coffee) then apparently recuperation that design time is not a goal, they're actively giving it away for free and encouraging people to make it themselves. That suggested to me that the price must be for an expensive component or two. Or perhaps the printing time, but since it's mostly unattended and filament is cheap, I didn't expect it to be that. And the tracking calculations have been long done by people decades ago, so it's just buying parts and putting them together, where the "putting together" part is done by the customer since it's a kit. So yeah I expected the price to be mostly an expensive precise motor or something.

[dylan604]

Great, Apple's new M1 based systems now exist on the market. Go make one for me for less than what Apple sells theirs. Should be easy according you since someone else is already doing it.

R&D is everything in making of something. Just because someone else made it doesn't mean you get to start exactly where they left off (except in cases of open source where you get their literal plans). Even in wood working or any shop type of work, you often spend more time setting up things like jigs or other custom tooling than it takes to do the actual work. Is that supposed to be a sunk cost to the builder? No, it is part of how the builder arrives at the price of the final thing being built.

[sink]

I'll add one more thing to my sibling comment. This person is clearly unaware of whether there is ongoing R&D in the realm of hobby astrophotography mounts. They mentioned they're just considering getting into it. They're talking about mass manufactured goods. They were not aware that this is a field of active innovation.

We could have given someone a warm welcome to the hobby by clarifying that politely.

I know when I was getting started, I didn't know what made some things more expensive than others. I didn't know about doublet or triplet refractors, Strehl ratios, Chroma vs ZWO filters, why a MACH2 is such a grail mount over a Optron CEM120. Luckily I had nice, friendly, helpful people to talk to, instead of a wall of arrogance.

[sink]

I'm not sure why you're so hostile to the GP.

Their questions are sincere. Your comparison to the M1 is not appropriate, and you're not actually paying attention to what they wrote.

They wrote that they are surprised that R&D makes up the majority of the cost, since this is an open source project. This is a fairly non-obvious feature of open source company business models. They give away the product, and its designs, for free, and solicit community collaboration. But it's usually complex or cumbersome to operationalize or build, so they then sell a set of services or pre-builds around it. Datastax and Confluent are two examples of this in the OSS domain.

Woodworkers don't market their plans as open source, put them on Github, and accept pull requests.

Don't create arrogant, sarcastic responses to sincere questions. It devalues this forum, and it's a bad look.

[oivey]

Just do it all yourself then? It doesn’t seem unreasonable that the creators of this want to make a little money off of something that almost certainly took a lot of their time. If the markup is too high you’re welcome to assemble your own.

R&D cost is built in to everything you buy, otherwise the companies that make this stuff wouldn’t be profitable. The amount of per unit R&D markup for, say, a thermometer just isn’t as high due to its relatively low complexity and huge number of units sold. This thing is niche and not going to sell that many units.

[trishmapow2]

Not quite - if they priced in all of the dev effort required to make the mount software compatible (ASCOM, etc) it would be much higher I think. From what I see, ensuring the 3D printed parts are up to spec and look good cosmetically requires a lot of time, not to mention manually wiring and flashing all the electronics.

[noir_lord]

A couple of hundred bucks seems pretty reasonable.

You have to source all the parts, make sure they work together properly and assemble the kit.

I mean $200 isn't a lot of money for something you'd potentially get years and years of use out off.

[Aachen]

Sure, but my question is why it carries this price tag, not whether I'll get years of use out of it.

So if I understand your comment correctly, it's the R&D (making sure all parts work together correctly) that decides the majority of the price here, not one of the actual components?

[dylan604]

Why are you arguing this? Are you really arguing the price of the unit because it's made from $2 worth of plastic, so why the mark up? Why does a car cost so much when there's clearly not $30k worth of parts in it. Why does a house cost $500k when there's only $70k of material. Trolls have to eat too I guess.

From your continued asking of the "why" question, it makes me wonder if you've ever tried to build a DIY anything yourself. Developing something like this involves a lot of the designer's literal blood, sweat, and tears. There are all sorts of levels of DIY from using 2x4s to machine precision accuracy. I will say, that precision is what astro is all about though. A seemingly innocent +/-1 degree accuracy will be okay-ish for something like wide-angle DSLR type shots, but once you start using longer lenses, you will be wasting your time.

[sink]

I don't think this person is trying to argue this. They're asking a sincere question about a non-intuitive aspect of open source company business models, and they just keep getting answers that indirectly answer their questions in a veil of condescension and sarcasm.

This person is trying to have a discussion, you're trying to have an argument.

> Developing something like this involves a lot of the designer's literal blood, sweat, and tears

I retain a lot of water so I can see the sweat part. But I think blood and tears are an OSHA concern.

[dylan604]

If you've ever built a PC from 90s era cases, you'll know it is quite easy to get a slight scratch/cut from some edge in that case. If you've ever done enough electrical wiring, you'll have felt the tickle at some point. If you've ever worked with near a stove or anything hot, you'll have touched something you shouldn't have at some point. There are a lot of oops that happen that are not life threatening OSHA violations.

If you've never shed a tear over something so close but ultimately not working, then you must be a robot or souless. It's human nature. You could just as easily add and/or swap tears for curses. Personally, I lean toward the cursing as it's more satisfying.

Also: argue: intransitive verb: To put forth reasons for or against; debate.

The fact that this word immediately sets forth a hostile emotion for you does not mean I am being hostile.

[sink]

re Argument definition: I don't think this person is trying to debate you. That's sort of the core of my point. You're giving a really forceful reaction to someone I perceive to be asking clarifying questions. But, since you are perceiving their messages with a different tone, and I'm perceiving your messages with a different tone, and we're never going to find any ground truth, who's to say who is correct?

And if people regularly bleed and cry at my workplace then I think it's reasonable to call that a toxic environment.

Since definitions of terms and semantics are now a part of this Internet conversation, I think we're done here. You can reply once more and have the last word, if you like. :)

[yreg]

It seems like there is a lot of human work as well (print the parts, pack it, ship it, customer support…).

I wouldn't do this for random internet people for less.

[amelius]

The entire thing is on GitHub, so if you think you can build it for less then go ahead!

[KMnO4]

For reference, there are 2.5 types of star trackers (called mounts):

- Equatorial: follows star in one direction. Works best on lower stars since the move E-to-W mostly. Cheapest models start at $200 USD (MSM)

- Altazimuth (azimuth+altitude): follows the star in two directions. Can be used for stars higher in the sky. Models start at $400+

- Computer guided and GOTO: Use a secondary telescope to lock onto stars and counter small integration errors. GOTO means you can type a star by name into a computer and the mount will move to its location in the sky (based on a database of where the star is at that moment). These start at $1000+ and can easily be a lot more.

These systems are so expensive because they need to swing a typically very heavy telescope with a lot of precision. My mount (on the smaller end) is rated for 11lbs. Being off by 1 arcsecond (1/3600 degrees) at the distance of Alpha Centauri is an error of 200,000,000 km.

If this tracker can provide all these features + precision at $200, that’s a steal.

[jcims]

I’m DIYing one for radio astronomy, mostly as a learning exercise, and have about $400 in it. I wanted to try direct drive, which requires larger motors and controllers, and the costs just add up unless your entire goal is to keep it under some amount (at which point you spend more time engineering cost out of it than features into it).

[spacemark]

There are other options in this class, such as the Nyx Tracker at $125.