SVBONY dew heater review

[konza]

Purchased SVBONY 40mm dew heater for use with ES 102cf apo. Cost for the heater with "stepless temp control" was $21.99 plus S&H via Amazon (there are reviews on Amazon also). About as bare bone simple as you can get.
Did a quick test inside the house. At max setting temp peaked around 128ᵒf with instant read meat thermometer tucked between heat strip and OTA. Any lower settings on the uncalibrated inline rheostat like controller caused my power pack, harborfreight.com/lithium-ion-jump-starter-and-power-pack-62749, to make a faint buzz then shut down after 10 seconds. Some kind of over/under load protection in the power pack I suppose. So I removed the controller section (male USB-controller-female USB) and ran it direct, no problems. Temp hit about 133ᵒf. So much for using the controller.
Observing test: Evening temperature at 44ᵒf humidity 77%. Unregulated the dew strip maintained 100ᵒf with no dew build up for two hours. The last thirty minuets of which the scope was pointed straight up at zenith to really expose the objective. Still no dew! By this time battery pack was down to 25%. Oh, it does require a 5v2A usb connection.
No idea about how the strip itself will hold up yet. I only visually observe so on coldish nights a two hour run time with direct power will exceed my cold weather tolerance. Two thoughts to leave you with. 1)5v2A power supply, 2)temperature control incident. ~YMMV~
Would I purchase this again? Simplicity has it's virtue but given the controller issue I am honestly not sure. I'm pretty green here on TSS so still learning basics.

[Lady Fraktor]

Some points for thought.

Normally you only want the dew heater to raise the temperature in front of the lens 1-2° above the dew point so you do not create heat waves in the views.
I would be a bit apprehensive about putting unregulated 38°C (100°F) into a piece of glass on a cool night. The temperature change could be quite extreme.

Thank you for the review

[konza]

Thanks Lady for the insight both in this post and my first query "SVBONY dew heater?yes/no". Other than the Kendrick website's FAQ section there is not much info out there for the novice. Am now looking at their Micro Controller and a dew strip for my 102apo. Thanks again!

[Lady Fraktor]

I would actually recommend paying the extra and getting the Standard Dual Channel in case you buy a larger telescope or need more heaters in the future.
It has the 2 channels but if you mind the power draws, I have run 8 strips on my controller at once.