Pegasus Issues of Late

Hi Timothy,
 I recalled a recent thread discussing this issue here: https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/equipment-forums/pegasus-astro-powerbox-advance-gen2/unity-software/      
Hope it helps. I have several PPADV Gen1 and Gen2 units running with Unity and have not personally experienced this issue. I believe I skipped that particular update by luck though. 

I did notice that Windows USB Power Management had be enabled again after one of the recent updates. This allows Windows OS to turn off USB ports as it thinks it is needed. I do not know if that was a Windows Update or Pegasus Update that caused that. If you are using a Windows PC that is possibly something to check. I always disable that function using the Device Manager > USB > Power Management in Windows. It has caused problems with The SkyX software for me in the past. 

CS,
Jeff

Fwiw i have been using unity since its inception. In my experience it has been very buggy over the years. I wish pegasus would return to the stand alone product drivers and control apps. I only update unity when i absolutely need to and when i get a version that works i rock it for a long time and ignore subsequent versions.  Hope your troubles are behind you.

My philosophy is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Updates are risky and once things are working, I avoid them at all costs.  Windoz is a house of cards so I'll probably be forced to update something at some point and I'm sure it will brick my systems but for now, I just hold my breath and keep going.

John

Yes, I have had these issues, and drove me mad, and also got the same response from Pegasus, there was a time when they were really helpful and would answer and help right away, now they have gotten bigger and they have no interest in dealing with customers issues, and palm it out to people they now employ on a help desk that know f*** all about the products and how they work.
I thought my guide camera had packed up and bought a new one, and it turned out to be the update on Unity for my UPB V2..😡
I won’t buy another Pegasus product, they are good, but way overpriced, and the software is garbage, especially since they changed to this Unity crap.

Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
Interestingly, windows is the one software that has never caused a problem for me as long as i KEEP it updated. When ive held off for too long thats when it gets bad.  Now i manually update once a month and pause it the rest of the time.  Since then, all good (knock on wood)  Everything else though, i resist updates as long as possible. Lol.

Win10 updates totally bricked one of my observatory PCs.  I struggled to fix it and eventually gave up.  I unwound to the previous version, turned off updates and everything has worked fine for 3 years.  I also had updates trash my operation out at DSW and that took forever to resolve.  These PCs just operate as controllers and once they are working, updates aren't needed. 

The frequency of Microsoft updates is simply absurd.  It just ecourages sloppy coding.  Screwed it up?  No problem, we'll just send out a new update tomorrow.  The class A software that runs the Garmin NXi avionics system in my airplane never needs updates.  Why?  They tested the heck out of every line of code and it was delivered 99.999% bug free.  Of course it's also not connected to the internet.  Regardless, it shows what's possible if it's done right.

John

My wish is that Pegasus would provide update notes as I would evaluate whether I need to upgrade. I have the Pegasus EFW sitting in my cupboard as their ASCOM driver does not support certain attributes that are defined in the ASCOM EFW specs (e.g they don't maintain filter positions but leave it to the software developers (ala NINA,..))

I agree that Pegasus needs to get a lot more like a commercial software developer and manage versioning and patching better - with release notes.

hi, all

I had a similar problem and switched to USB3 port (900mA). It was related to my Pegasus Rotator after updating the software. (Utility)

CS
Brian

Another thing to note, I also recently had the problem of frequent disconnections of my Pegasus device. It turned out that while windows 11 had already been set to NOT be able to disconnect usb devices to save power, its latest update had re-enabled it. So check that.

While I'm prone to forget this sometimes, I did check that. It wasn't the issue this time. Pegasus, after initially blowing smoke up my skirt by telling me Unity doesn't control USB connection (c'mon, there's a button to turn off the USB2 ports), released an update that fixed that issue. But I still have the power-up issue with the UPBs. I know there has been an update or two since then, but I have no stomach for any more updates right now.

I too had this problem on one of my PPAdv boxes.   I did all the troubleshooting I could think of and the problem still persists.   

When I wrote Pegasus, they gave me a huge troubleshooting guide that was completely irrelevant to the issues present and even went as far as to swap with another powerbox.   I consider myself rather good at troubleshooting these issues, and I confidently narrowed the issue down to the powerbox.    The response given from Pegasus was rather disappointing.   I simply bypassed the two devices that were giving me issues and ran them through the camera hub, haven't had any issues since.  

Pegasus response really burned me a bit.  At that point, I could make things run with my bandaid option so I gave up further troubleshooting.  With that, I don't have a huge desire to buy more Pegasus products.

Dark Matters Astrophotography:
I never update the UPBs once they are configured and up and running.

That's not a terrible guideline to follow, but it's not always 100% workable--and it has certain drawbacks.

One example of the workability thing is the circumstance I faced last summer when I was traveling back and forth to the observatory at a cost of about $2,000 per trip--five trips in all--to deal with what turned out to be faulty Delta-Ts. I hit the lottery. I got three bad ones in a row. All Planewave ever said about them was, "Bad board." And with each effed up Delta-T, Planewave got haughtier and more difficult to deal with. Certain expletives come to mind. 

So I lobbied Pegasus hard to update the Unity software to allow independent autodew settings for each of the three ports. One aggressiveness setting for all three ports was a non-starter because with an aggressiveness setting high enough to prevent dew on the primary, the secondary would get hot enough to cook Wagyu. 

After six months, Pegasus came through. But it required both a firmware and a software update. That update was so good I got complacent about Pegasus updates--my mistake. It completely eliminated the need for me to have the EFW or Delta-T on the scope as well as the need to run the c. 1999 PWI software, which I hate with the heat of the nearest star. That particular thing has been running for a year without issue. I'm eternally thankful to Pegasus for doing that, and it buys a lot of leeway for them from me. But it's not infinite.

I was in the software biz for 40 years. I get that a release may have unforeseen issues--no matter how great your Q/A is. That's not an issue for me with Pegasus. But I do have two other major issues: (1) there absolutely should be release notes with each update that you can access before you apply the update, and (2) there should be an easy rollback procedure to get to the immediately prior version--and the version before that, and the version before the version before that, and so on. That's basic software dev procedure.

But moving on. The aforementioned drawbacks include, inter alia, the situation where externalities force you to perform a Pegasus update (e.g., a Windows update that breaks something in third-party software). Now you may be jumping 10 versions ahead, and that may create all sorts of issues. So all you've done is store all the difficulties from prior updates and unleashed them all on yourself all at once. Still, given their track record, it makes sense to hold off on Unity updates as long as possible. Sad, but true.

I'm certainly never buying another Pegasus product. Bought a PPBAdv and about a month later it completely bricked itself. Had to send it back to them to pay for repair even though it's under "warranty". Got it back and all worked but still deal with random bugs from time to time that make no sense.

Between weather and wildfires I have not had a lot of time to test the NYX-101v2. I have been able to get some older versions of the Unity software, version 2.1.4531.275 from Mar 2025 worked great with no mount disconnects. I will be trying some other, newer, versions when I get some clear skies. If the version of unity is the problem for my mount then their has to be a chip problem. Most mass productions buy parts in bulk, a few chips in a batch will have flaws. This is usually handled during testing and quality control. Firmware usually deals with chip design errors, but that is not my issue.

 

Where the version of Unity can crash my mount but works fine for almost all others leads to the equipment being the issue. In time as Unity is updated to add new functions, update existing features, to stay comparable with other software, like PHD2, ASCOM etc. the older versions will become unstable or dysfunctional over time.

 

For now I have it working, I hope it last as long as the warranty.