EFW of choice? Pegasus Astro Indigo Filter Wheel (7 position, 2" or 50mm filters) · Nick Grundy · ... · 31 · 1236 · 2

John Hayes:
I have a Pegasus FW sitting in my shop but I was so unhappy with it that I replaced it with a FLI FW.  My concerns were:

1)  It does not come out of the box with an acceptable method for mounting the filters.  I had to use 3D printed filter holders.
2)  It came out of the box with gaps in the housing that let in dust.  Pegasus did send me a part to fix this problem but the way that the FW attaches adapters is Mickey Mouse.
3) Filter positioning was not very repeatable.  Maybe that’s fixable but I gave up on it before I looked into solving that problem.
4) The housing is not very mechanically rigid.  It will flex, even with only moderately light equipment attached to it.  It looks to me like it’s made of very thin architectural grade aluminum, which might be fine for backyard use where you can fiddle with it, but I wouldn’t send it to a remote installation.
5) The mechanical design for the motor drive relies on friction that does not include a spring pre-load.   Instead it relies on slight compression of a rubber o-ring on a drive wheel to keep everything running.  It works but in my view, that’s a cheap way to make it work but that’s not reliable enough for a remote system.

If someone wants a virtually new Pegasus FW set up for 50mm x 50mm square filters, PM me and I’ll give you a good price on it.

John

I, as someone who has in the past said good things (in my backyard) about the Pegasus Wheel -- agree with John. The part I will not agree with him on is FLI wheels. They are very rigid in their construction but are pretty poor in use since they have a silly requirement of using very small set screws to secure the camera -- which I have measured are never orthogonal no matter what you do.

The best wheel I have used, is the one from Moravian. It is made for their cameras, and is extremely rigid (like FLI) and is completely sound and solid in terms of its orthogonality. No muss, no fuss, no BS.

My next deployment of a camera and filter wheel combo is to Chile, I am very likely to send a Moravian unit based on my excellent experience with them remotely in New Mexico.

I second your opinion on the Moravian EFWs. I have one on my TEC140 in New Mexico and the whole camera system is very nice. I have the C3-26000 with enhanced cooling and it just works. The shutter is a nice feature if I have to take more darks or bias frames. I haven't had any issues at all with their filter wheel. It is very solid (and heavy).

I did have a Pegasus Indigo EFW on my Epsilon but I swapped it out with a ZWO EFW before I sent it to New Mexico. I had a lot of issues with their filter position not being centered in the camera opening. My first version would not home due to the pin they use to detect the home position. It wasn't anodized correctly and they had my color it with a black sharpie. Surprise - it didn't work well (sometimes it would find the home position and other times not so much). I sent that one back and the replacement had issues with the centering of the filters.

Daniel Carter:
disappointed with Pegasus Astro

wow, I thought I had a less probable error and for the most part the units were doing well. It sounds like there's similar issues with nearly everyone on the thread!

I was tempted to try one only because I though a heavier EFW would be more robust and rigid. Turns out that ZWO EFW is really good, especially at the pricing it is. 

Similar to John, I've got a near new indigo EFW ready to ship if anyone wants a deal and thinks they can solve the issue. (my thought was that the tensioner on the motor was weak and allowed it to slip over the course of the night)

It's my impression it that Pegasus's core strength is electrical engineering.  I think their power boxes are well designed and I've had no issues with mine.  Where they're lacking is on the mechanical and software engineering sides of things.  I hate the Unity software and I still run the original control programs.  They're not great, but better than Unity.