How many wires on your rig? Tidy? Fun? Reliable? I recently had a USB cable go bad and I took me hours to track it down so I decided to create a diagram of my rig to help me track down problems. Is this how everyone wires their rig? I am curious. Due heaters are on a different power supply.
PhilMy-Setup.jpg
Every setup is a little different but there’s nothin in your diagram that really stands out except possably power. The Mele needs 2 amps, your main camera probubly spikes at 3 amps on startup or heavy cooling load. Most dealers reccomend 5 amps for the mount. I don’t know if the USB connections to the guide cam and filter wheel play into this at all but with 10 amps available from your power supply, there’s not a lot of overhead.
Mine is controlled chaos… It looks crazier than it is, but I keep photographs of it so if I ever have to pull it apart, everything gets plugged back in exactly where it belongs, same if a cable needs to be replaced.
Luckily for me, my mount takes a 12v in, and has a 12v out in the DEC head - this allows me to only have one cable going from the ground to the bottom of the RA housing… Everything else is upwards of the saddle plate, making it VERY clean to look at (from a distance) and making the chance of cable snags virtually zero.
Also, in the Wanderer Astro power box drivers, you can identify each port with a name, so for example, I have
2600M USB
GuideCam USB
Focuser USB
Mount USB
MiniRouter USB Power
2600M Power
Mele Power
ImagingScopeDewHeater
GuideScopeDewHeater
So once I open up the driver config, I can identify each cable and know where it is going based off what port it is plugged into.📷 5845.jpg
I have an £40 svbony 241 usb/power hub on my payload.
I rind all the payloads’ cables to it, and run one usb cable do to my mini pc near the floor below, and one power cable up to that box.
The mount usb I run straight to the mini pc and the mount's power cable direct from its one PSU.
This seems a neat and cheap solution.
Well I guess we are all doing something similar, interesting. I am retired now but I did spend 30 years in the tech industry, there has to be a better solution for Astro Spaghetti!
Phil
Philip Holland · Sep 17, 2026, 02:22 PM
Well I guess we are all doing something similar, interesting. I am retired now but I did spend 30 years in the tech industry, there has to be a better solution for Astro Spaghetti!
Ragu’?
Philip Holland · Sep 17, 2026 at 02:22 PM
Well I guess we are all doing something similar, interesting. I am retired now but I did spend 30 years in the tech industry, there has to be a better solution for Astro Spaghetti!
Phil
That solution is called USB4 or Thunderbolt 4/5. But something tells me that it will take a long time before we see that widespread in astrophotography equipment.
I’m not sure we need a faster interface, just a more reliable one with industrial quality connectors.
Tony Gondola · Sep 17, 2026 at 04:09 PM
I’m not sure we need a faster interface, just a more reliable one with industrial quality connectors.
It’s not so much about speed. These are interfaces that combine both power and data. So half the cables. And they can be daisy-chained, so shorter cables.
Willem Jan Drijfhout · Sep 17, 2026, 06:16 PM
Tony Gondola · Sep 17, 2026 at 04:09 PM
I’m not sure we need a faster interface, just a more reliable one with industrial quality connectors.
It’s not so much about speed. These are interfaces that combine both power and data. So half the cables. And they can be daisy-chained, so shorter cables.
How much power can it deliver? It would be great to not have to use seperate power cables.
Specs go up to 240W and maximum current of 5A…🙂
mmmm, I don’t know anything that uses it but USB-PD suposedly can get you to 5 amps, 240 watts.