Cooking Blight

Thank you! The fins don't extend into the housing as there is no space left. Increasing the surface area would improve cooling significantly. I can't remember exactly what the temperature difference is between the hot and cold side of the PTC at its current "setting", but it is probably around 25-35C. With increased heat dissipation you could get the temperature on the sensor a lot lower. I was thinking about machining a new heatsink for the camera with fins extending on the outside. The problem is the time it takes to machine this part as it is rather complex. I made enough parts for a total of 6 cameras while I had the setup for it (CNC lathe with live tooling), but couldnt get a high enough spindle speed to run smaller end-mills and thereby increase the number of fins and surface area as it would take too much time. A liquid cooling jacket instead of the cooling fins would significanly increase the cooling capabilites, but would also add some complexity to the camera. This is something I will do with one of the space camera housings at some point, but I'm currently working on a lot of other projects for the telescope and other things.

I have actually built two of the CAM86 version. One for myself and another one for a colleague. Because I was going to use it with a hyperstar on my CPC800 I had to design my own round version to keep it from blocking too much light. I also implemented a few improvements in the circuit that had been discussed on the main topic. I also chose a different cooling solution with PTC directly underneath the CCD. The weak point in this design is the custom heatsing which also acts as the front housing. A fan at the back pulls air in from the front which gives it a temeprature delta of around 14C below ambient which is not that great. If I could pull away heat faster it could probably get to around 30-40C below ambient. I have been toying with the idea of a liquid cooling loop to the camera, but I have seen little to no benefit with temperatures below 0C. Because I live north of the polar circle high temperatures are not an issue. The housing is made from aluminium and has mostly been anodized black. A few structural components have been left without any surface treatment. The front is sealed off with a 2" filter (Not shown). One other thing I decided was to re-write both parts of the firmware and the complete low level driver. The firmware was compiled using a software that required registration if I remember correctly, and the driver was written in pascal. The low level driver I have been doing some testing with is now written in C++ and the firmware is compiled with XC8. The driver required a slight re-write of the ASCOM driver due to some of the datatypes used. I have also briefly tested a 64bit driver with NINA, but haven't gotten that far with it.