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PS3 Webcam arrived


Mikejh

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Yeah, I've done quite a lot with it. If you've got one of these it'll fit the PS3 cameras lens mount (if you can get the lens off without destroying it!):

http://www.firstligh...o-spc900nc.html

if you don't have one of those, the you can glue a 35mm film canister, like this, onto the end:

http://www.ebay.co.u...b#ht_500wt_1288

Also, there are 2 types of lenses on the PS3 cameras, the good one you can remove the IR filter and still use the lens, the bad one you can't:

http://nuigroup.com/...iewthread/5189/

You can get the driver for the cam here "CL Eye Platform Driver":

http://codelaboratories.com/downloads/

As for camera settings; for Jupiter I use 60fps RGB32 with the following settings, then adjust the gain to suit:

post-6495-0-21384200-1347721375_thumb.pn

Here's a Jupiter I took with the cam and my 150P:

post-6495-0-13958600-1347721611_thumb.jp

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Thanks Russell-just trying to remove the glue on the lens holder so I can unscrew the old lens out of the holder so I can screw in the adaptor- other than that all done. I am leaving the slot where the base was open to allow air to circulate better. Thanks for your help. Will be interested to see what this camera an do for guiding as well as imaging!

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The glue is a [removed word] to get off! I was lucky because one of the cameras I bought, the lens just twisted out the mount with minimal effort!

I was trying it out tonight with PHD and seemed to work not too bad! The driver lets you select an exposure of 2 seconds, but the picture does tend to get a little noisy.

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post-21284-134795082627_thumb.jpg

All done - cloudy last night so no chance to try out but Russell your PHD S/S looks good! Thanks for all your help. Took a while to remove old lens but by drilling 0.5 mm at a time I managed to get it thin enough to prise out with damage to the thread - the glue must have copiously applied!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hello folks, would you mind giving me some advice on the ps3 cam?

I have the 'bad' lens model, but replaced the housing so as to fit the spc adapter - can this be used like any other webcam as normal for planetary images?

The settings/software seems a little restrictive as well as different to my other cams, is this a problem?

Appreciate the above pics and links, very helpful.

Regards

Aenima

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Aenima, you should be able to use the camera just like any other and the software settings really are all you need. Keeps things simple!

If you use the settings I posted earlier and then only adjust the gain, you should not run into any issues (make sure all the auto boxes are unchecked).

What I do is I set the colour and exposure sliders to the max and then set the gain to near the max (about 90%). Then when I have the planet in view I turn down the gain until the exposure is satisfactory. If I'm still over exposed at minimum gain, I then turn down the exposure. Hope that helps.

Thinking as I'm typing, you may want to keep the gain to minimum after you have your subject in view and then reduce the FPS until you're happy with the exposure on the screen. It's really a trade off between gain and FPS.

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Yes, thank you. That is very helpful.

So pretty much what you see - onscreen - is what you get, providing focus is sorted etc. then just watch the screen..

Nice one, I have difficulty knowing before stacking how the exposure should be for optimum ie no over exp. areas or colour fringes - and focus is hard to tell although trying a nearby star with a bahtinov mask seems to pin it down better to within good range of accuracy.

Many thanks,

Regards

Aenima

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Jupiter's moons are so faint its amazing they showed up, was this with or without a bahtinov mask?

Also, thanks for the advice and recommending the eye cam - I'm looking for a webcam that will give me better images than the spc900, but one thing I have very little of is hard drive space and when you mentioned fps - to lower it till it looks right on-screen I wasn't clear on what that meant. How does the trade-off work between framerate and compression, or fps and gain? Sorry, the question isnt phrased very well but I'm wondering if its a case of the fastest fps the better or what the exposure times mean in real terms?

Any ideas on that?

Thanks again,

Aenima

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Hi Russell - plucking up the courage to buy a new mount- looking at the HEQ5 so mount less at the mo! And yes down here on the South Coast it is eternally cloudy.......or so it seems! ( might order the mount today - been looking for s/h but the prices asked you might as well buy new!).

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Jupiter's moons are so faint its amazing they showed up, was this with or without a bahtinov mask?

Also, thanks for the advice and recommending the eye cam - I'm looking for a webcam that will give me better images than the spc900, but one thing I have very little of is hard drive space and when you mentioned fps - to lower it till it looks right on-screen I wasn't clear on what that meant. How does the trade-off work between framerate and compression, or fps and gain? Sorry, the question isnt phrased very well but I'm wondering if its a case of the fastest fps the better or what the exposure times mean in real terms?

Any ideas on that?

Thanks again,

Aenima

I don't have a mask. I use an electric focuser and go in and out of focus while watching for when the star looks the smallest and time it so I stop the focuser when I think I've hit the spot. It only takes a minute.

First off, the Playstation Eye doesn't compress the image so no need to think about that. The exposure is linked to the FPS such that at 1FPS you will get an exposure of 1 second and at 10FPS you will get an exposure of 0.1 seconds. I.e. the exposure is 1/FPS (assuming you have the exposure slider set all the way to the right).

Therefore, as you lower the frame rate, the exposure time will increase and the image will brighten. You can also increase the exposure/brightness of the image by increasing the gain, but this also increases the noise, so you'll want to keep the gain as low as you can.

I don't think there's any getting away from the amount of space you will need though! if you capture at a low frame rate, you will need to capture for longer compared to capturing at a high frame rate for a shorter period of time. You still end up with the same number of frames and file size, it's just the duration that changes.

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Thanks russel. V helpful stuff. :)

Its interesting in that, until now, I used to play with the exposure and gain like there wasn't much difference but that was due to a lack of understanding what they really mean - ie if I want a brighter image I would randomly increase gain or exposure indiscriminately, even the gamma would occasionally be used as gain or brightness, so a lot of my avi's were sub-par compared to when I (almost accidentally) got it right.

But knowing the gain brings noise and frame rate determines exposure length, I can at least try to control noise better and avoid overexposure as well. :rolleyes:

I'm currently juggling about 6-8 Gb of disk space, deleting as and when it becomes necessary but my harddrive is a mess. A different story....

I appreciate the info, thanks - you thought about doing a tutorial? Some of the general info isn't all widely known or available, so....

I certainly just learned something anyway. :grin:

Cheers.

Aenima

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  • 3 weeks later...

i am unable to get the drivers for the ps3 eye to load, eye test loads but no drivers ,click on control panel and check the cam and it comes up as code28 no drivers, tryed on windows 7 64bit on laptop and windows7 32bit on notepad ,any help will be much appreciated

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yes and on that site is a vid on how to install and it shows two green lines on the installer i only get one but go to the download folder and it shows a folder for the drivers but still code 28 no drivers , reinstalled it about 10 times now and still no joy,

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