What's in a Watec 120N+ Control Box

[Macavity]

For those of an enquiring mind? OK, I thought *I'd* have a look...

So: What's in a Watec 120N+ video camera Control Box.

(Yeah, yeah, noone else cares but...)

The Watec cameras have a nice control box, but NO (budget) facility for remote / computer control. Yes, you can chain multiple non-standard, 10m, 16 way, DIN cables at £200 each or buy a wireless unit (perhaps) at £600-800! But maybe this is a(nother!) candidate for Arduino control etc. I wouldn't be keen on soldering the PCB, but maybe spitting the cable and decoding the logic levels for different control settings? I am Tempted!

[Macavity]

Eventually got round to actually doing something re. THIS project!

So, if anyone is still vaguely intereted, I ended up extending the Watec Control cable using two CAT6 cables. No real rocket science, just a fiddly bit of soldering. Certainly works just FINE over 5m - I'm hoping for a fair bit more!

The RJ45 "breakout" boards (very useful!), sockets, headers etc. were from: http://proto-pic.co.uk/

Anyways, saved myself (n x £200) Euro per 10m length of non-standard 16-way cable!

[johnno]

that's a neat and tidy job you've done, anything with more than 2 wires and i'm snookered

[Macavity]

Thanks Johnno - Took a while (weeks?) to work up to this one!

If anyone is following the general ideas, I've decided (for many reasons)

NOT to run TWO 30m CAT6 cables down the garden after all!

A bit of playing - Using a standard DVM, revealed that most of the little wires contain "logic" signals (+0.08 & +4.99V)! Some I can now tentatively identify. It looks like I could control the Watec GAIN and GAMMA with one (analogue) and two (logic) leads respectively. Add a ground, and the whole could run on thin 4-wire RJ11 telephone cable? The rest of the Watec settings (integration etc.) can then happily be left as controlled on the (usefully extended) Watec control box in the observatory.

Will have to check things a bit (a lot!) more carefully - Maybe I can try to beg 1/2hr on an oscilloscope to check the levels on these lines. Some of them seem to contain "A.C." - which I suspect is pulsed control signal. But at least distant remote control of this Watec looks more realistic now.

[Macavity]

No need for an oscilloscope - Checked the Control Box PCB with a bright light shining through! The GAIN control is simply derived from a potentiometer slider, delivering 0V to + 3.3V on the Brown lead. So, all I need is a long telephone cable, and then I can control both the GAIN and (optionally) GAMMA easily enough. FWIW, I did work out a fairly complete "truth table" for the rest of the logic - But then I thought... Nah. Keeping it simple etc. etc.

[Carl Reade]

Thats a neat job. A HDMI lead may work I think it has 19 wires internally and you can get HDMI to screw terminal adapters.

[Macavity]

An idea that was rather sitting under my nose? Was thinking VGA cable had but 15 cores, DBA25 etc. etc.

Probably seduced by the idea that people seems to run everything over CAT5/6, these days.

[Carl Reade]

An idea that was rather sitting under my nose? Was thinking VGA cable had but 15 cores, DBA25 etc. etc.

Probably seduced by the idea that people seems to run everything over CAT5/6, these days.

Lol I agree you can run the world on CAT 6