I purchased a SkyPortal on Sept 18th and received it a couple days later. I was able to connect to it in direct mode (where the device broadcast's a Wi-Fi signal that you can use to connect to it and specify your home Wi-Fi information) without a problem. While connected, I can fully control my Advanced VX mount and it will stay connected however long I need it to. However, this is not optimal because I can either connect to the SkyPortal's Wi-Fi or my home Wi-Fi, but not both. And I would like to be able to have everything connect to Wi-Fi and control it remotely from the patio or the house. However, whenever I tried to use the SkyPortal app configuration screen to configure the settings for my home Wi-Fi, the connection would drop and give me an error. I tried with my phone, my wife's phone and my new iPad. Thinking it was faulty, I returned it to Amazon and they shipped me a new one. I had the same experience with the replacement. Thinking I was doing something wrong, I tried calling Celestron support. I was on hold for 90 minutes waiting for someone. During that time, I was repeatedly given the option to get a call back. After that 90 minutes, I decided to take that option. I was asked to enter my phone number and I did. It again asked for my phone number and I entered it again. After being prompted to enter my phone number and entering it a third time, I was disconnected. Ninety minutes wasted I will never get back. I called back and this time, after two minutes on hold, I chose to get a call back. This time it accepted my phone number and said they would call me back. That was at 11:30am. Around 6pm, I was on a customer call when I saw a number come in from California. I asked my customer to hold while I grabbed that call. I missed it. It went to voicemail. The voicemail was very casual, like he was talking to his lifelong buddy. "Hey! This is [can't recall] from Celestron! You had asked for a call back. Guess you don't need it ? If you still need anything, give us a call. I'll be here until 4." (they are on Pacific time; I am on Eastern). So I called back. It was about 6:10pm. I was on hold until 9:15pm waiting to speak to someone (which would have been 6:15pm Pacific time). At this point, I incorrectly assumed from this that they must just leave at 4pm when the office closes and leave the people on hold waiting. At 9:15pm, before hanging up, I again entered my phone number for a call back. Around 9:45pm ET, almost 12 hours after I started reaching out to them, I received a call back. The technician (Wil) was not knowledgeable on the product or troubleshooting steps, but it sounded like he was reading from a playbook. At some points, I could tell that he was "winging it" and I'll explain why he said that. During the troubleshooting, one of the things he wanted me to do was update the firmware using the firmware app which I had previously used to update the firmware on my Advanced VX mount. He had me connect to the SkyPortal Wi-Fi module and it worked. But when I tried to click the "Update" button as he instructed, it failed saying it couldn't download the software (because I wasn't connected to my home Wi-Fi). So he asked me to connect to my home Wi-Fi to download the software. But that would mean that I would be disconnecting from the Wi-Fi module. Later I realized that I needed to open the firmware app while still connected to home Wi-Fi, allow it to download updates, then connect to the SkyPortal Wi-Fi and update it. But that didn't help. After about 90 minutes of troubleshooting, we were no closer to a solution. By this time, I had tried with my new iPad (8th gen), my iPhone XS and my wife's iPhone X, I had connected all devices to 2.4GHz (by disabling 5 GHz on my Eero) and 5GHz as well as all of the phones and iPads. Nothing was working. I mentioned to him that my wife and I had both upgraded to iOS 14 on Sept 16th. Perhaps what we were seeing is an issue with iOS 14. Both or our phones were upgraded to iOS14 and my iPad came with iPadOS 14. He agreed this could be the issue. He asked if it had ever worked with iOS 13 and I explained to him again that I purchased the first SkyPortal 2 days after we had upgraded our phones so I don't know if it would work with iOS 13. He said he would have to research with the engineers and would get back to me. The next day, he emailed me to let me know that he had opened a support case with them. The next day, we finally got my wife's iPad Mini (2nd gen) back from having the screen replaced. Her iPad was using iPadOS 12.4.8. Surprisingly, it was not disconnecting and I was able to successfully configure the device with my Wi-Fi information. I was able to change it to Access Point mode and I could see in my Eero app that it successfully connected to my home Wi-Fi. However, even though I can now see the device connecting to my home Wi-Fi, I cannot connect to the device with my iOS 14 devices. I can connect and control the mount with my wife's iPad Mini. I tried connecting everything to 5GHz and tried from my phone, my wife's phone and my new iPad. I tried again by turning off 5 GHz on my Eero network but that didn't work either. I emailed the technician back with all of this information and I explained that using my wife's iPad was not a viable option because it was old and didn't hold a charge for more than 30 minutes. I received an email back from the technician two days later asking if it had ever worked with iOS 13. The person sending me the email was definitely the same "Wil" (notice one "L") who I had worked with the first night but I explained to him AGAIN that I purchased the first device two days after we had upgraded to iOS 14 so I don't know if it would work with iOS 13. About a week later, he asked if I could connect everything to 2.4 GHz and try again. Frustrated, I told him he and I had already tried that but I did it anyway and sent screenshots from my Eero showing that all devices (my phone, my wife's phone and my iPad) were connected with 2.4 GHz and that I had disabled 5GHz on my Eero and it was still failing. Responses from Celestron began to take far loner and for the next three weeks he continued asking me questions that we had gone over before. Can you try it with everything connected to 2.4 GHz. Did it work before upgrading to iOS 14. After 3-1/2 weeks and with the Amazon refund deadline looming, and I haven't heard from Wil in over a week, I've decided to just return it. So today I am on my way to the UPS store to ship it back.
