Evscope Card Waiting

The new telescope is dead and not working. The card with
software is bonkers and needs internal replacement.
This little micro sd card with "oops" software has posed
challenges for purchasers of new eVscopes from
Unistellar. Right out of the box, this smart telescope is not
smart and needs brain surgery to rectify its comatose
mental condition. Unistellar won't specify the number of
affected telescopes but it could be in the thousands.

Evscope Card Waiting

and

Arrival
This is a record log of waiting time to receive the eVscope micro sd card with the correct software from Unistellar company, to be installed inside the defective new smart telescope to replace the card with the defective software. 

Currently the telescope does not work and the LED is stuck on the steady purple light indicating the scope will not boot or function properly. 

Unistellar eVscope founders: left to right, From right to left: Antonin Borot, Arnaud Malvache, Laurent Marfisi, Franck Marchis. November 2017 in Aix-en-Provences.

Photo Unistellar

The card will be shipped from San Francisco according to Trevor, stating his associate was informed to ship the card on Aug. 28, 2020. I requested expedited air service which did not happen. As of this writing, there is no contact with the shipper, and no shipping or tracking number, and I was not initially provided the name of the shipping company. As you can see below, Unistellar waited another 5 days before saying they just shipped the card (United States Postal Service USPS). 

Update: the card arrived on Tuesday afternoon, September 15th, 2020, postmarked San Francisco California on August 31st. The envelope had a crossed-out return address from the SETI Institute, at 189 Bernardo Avenue, Suite 200, Mountain View CA 94043, and Franck Marchis name handwritten over it. The Sandisk Class 10 Ultra Micro SD HC I 16 GB card was taped to the SETI Institute calling card of Dr. Franck Marchis, Ph.D., one of the four original founders of Unistellar and the eVscope (see photo above). A personal note was also included! It was a surprise and a great honor to hear from the original founder of Unistellar and maker of the eVscope! I'm totally blown away by this great personal touch.

The SD card was shipped USPS from San Francisco by Dr. Franck Marchis, an original founder of Unistellar and the eVscope, along with a personal note handwritten on an index card.

Checkmark indicates waiting for the card

✔︎ Thursday Aug. 28  NO CARD Trevor: card ship now

  arrive 1-2 weeks

✔︎ Friday Aug. 29    NO CARD
✔︎ Saturday Aug. 30  NO CARD
✔︎ Sunday Aug. 31    NO CARD Card actually shipped
✔︎ Monday Sept. 01   NO CARD Trevor: Shipped today

  arrive in 1 week

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 2   NO CARD
✔︎ Wednesday Sept. 3 NO CARD
✔︎ Thursday Sept. 4  NO CARD
✔︎ Friday Sept. 5    NO CARD
✔︎ Saturday Sept. 6  NO CARD
✔︎ Sunday Sept. 7    NO CARD
✔︎ Monday Sept. 8    NO CARD

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 9   NO CARD

✔︎ Wednesday Sep. 10 NO CARD

✔︎ Thursday Sept. 11 NO CARD

✔︎ Friday Sept. 12   NO CARD

✔︎ Saturday Sept. 13 NO CARD

✔︎ Sunday Sept. 14   NO CARD

✔︎ Monday Sept. 15   NO CARD

✔︎ Tuesday Sept. 16  CARD ARRIVED!!!

Evscope Anomalies

The latest offering from Unistellar Optics is this massive all electronic 22-inch dob which
sets on a plastic alt-azimuth mount of John Dobson design. We are trying it out for beta
testing. It performs 100 times more powerful than a classical telescope which makes it
much like a 2,200-inch gigantic light bucket scope. It penetrates light pollution, concrete
walls and sides of mountains through redundant para-refractive indexing. Ok, just joking.

Unistellar eVscope

First Light is this 16 second exposure of the Helix
Nebula. The Enhanced Image app function crashed
before the exposure was complete and the Helix is
absent in the photo. By comparing the stars in the
image with other Helix Nebula photos, it's confirmed
the eVscope successfully found and centered the
location of the nebula in the Bortle 9+ sky.

After several days of trying to get the Unistellar telescope to work, the eVscope is still not working. Main problems are: can't connect to scope properly, wifi appears to drop out on the scope (not connected error), it disconnects during an operation, the app appears to have many

Rotating this Helix image from another
telescope confirms the stars line up with
the Unisteller photo. The Helix is NGC
7293 or Caldwell 63 and at 7.6 apparent
magnitude. Why the Helix? It was the only
object suggested for viewing from the sky
limited balcony.

connection issues with freeze up bugs, app crashes, and the scope is unstable and unusable. If you are lucky enough to get to enhanced vision, it will go for a few seconds (16 seconds) and then crash. Attached is a first light image of the Helix Nebula at 16 seconds just before it froze and enhanced vision stopped, then the notorious "not connected" error happened. However, the telescope did properly find the Helix Nebula and center it so for a short time, therefore goto worked so a brief thumbs up for that. I used an image from another telescope for comparison and by rotating the eVscope image, the brighter stars line actually up. I have contacted OPT and Unistellar and the big issue is still unresolved. I have also contacted other users of this telescope who all had similar issues, but still no fix for my telescope. Unistellar support is through email and requires several days of waiting for a reply. So far, the reply discusses issues but is not in any way troubleshooting the telescope for positive results. In any case, I'm still waiting for a reply. issues, but still no fix for my telescope. Unistellar support is through email and requires several days of waiting for a reply. So far, the reply discusses issues but is not in any way troubleshooting the telescope for positive results. In any case, I'm still waiting for a reply.