MarsG76

Hi all, Bad news is that the Cooled 40D with the clicky shutter fault and err 99 did not come back to life... so most likely the shutter on it has been condensed into the shutter grave.... but I did mod another 40D and am getting it ready for another cooling attempt.. I'll look deeper into the original 40D at a later date. I did not insulate the copper at all since there is not much room to add any insulating material to it.. so my question is @Thalestris24 what is that black rubber you used to insulate called if I wanted to go to a hardware store and get some? Right now I'm thinking of sticking some of the very thin foam you get products wrapped in around the cold finger to stop the water dripping off it, but also silicon and expanding foam seal the entrance of the cold finger which goes inside the camera, fill the inside gaps with silica/desiccant get packets and anti fog strips ... and remove the card storage housing and fill that area with silica gel also, giving me easy access to exchange spend silica gel packets. Hopefully this will keep the inside cold and dry.... But before doing this to the camera, I'll put the cold finger into a empty box (dummy camera setup) filled out with the above description, leave it running over night, checking every few hours the inside condensation status... if dryness is achieved, than the system will go live... this part of the year is a good time to check this since humidity is around the 85% mark and the dew point is around 20 degrees so a dewuey time of the year and so if it's dry now, it'll be dry all year. I honestly thought that dew will be the smallest issues in this project and it's actually the biggest. If anyone who's done this sees any issues with my above plan, please do not be silent. MG

I think I'll only sacrifice one more camera to the cooling camera project before either just reverting back to uncooled imaging or leave the cooling in place, but only use the heatsinks and fans without peltiers to avoid moisture buildup... and end up buying a cooled astro camera and feel like a failure.... @Stub Mandrel did you have this much of a problem with condensation? Honestly I didn't anticipate condensation to be such a problem.... I thought that this would have been the least of my issues, but as it turns out its by far the biggest problem.

Update 14 Jan: I started tonight by comparing the actual difference cooled vs uncooled sensor temperature on a 15 minute ISO1600 sub. The resting temperature was 26.4° and it rose to 33.9° after the exposure when uncooled. When cooling was on it dropped to the 19° mark and stayed at this level. The actual temperature doesn't seem so great but it does make a considerable difference in the noise level on the subs. Well that didn't last long... everything was going well until at around 02:50 I heard some clicks coming from the camera and after powering it on and off the camera malfunctioned with Error 99. The exposed copper plate was wet with dew and the 40D was wet with dew on card side which was facing down after the meridian flip. Looking at the orientation of the 40D, it seems as if the condensation which builds up on the exposed copper plate allowed the water to run down into the camera along the copper plate, and looking at the angle which it was at, it looks like it would have dripped droplets on or near the area where the shutter mechanism is located, so I'm suspecting the Error99 to most likely be a shutter problem. I'm starting to have doubts that I'll beat this dew issue and have a reliable camera but as a last ditch effort I'll try to block the enterence from the peltier side, wrap the exposed copper with some material to stop droplets from forming, insert some desiccant packets inside the body and perhaps install some thin pipes which will gently blow warmish air inside from in between the heat sink fins and have the air inside the camera constantly moving. The sensor temperature is reported at around 21°, which was 2-3° above the dew point so hopefully dew is not building up inside and stopping water from dripping in when the peltiers are orientated above will keep the inside dry. The reason why I think that moisture is not building up inside the camera but dripping inside is because the camera failed both times when the peltiers were orientated up, allowing water to run inside the body along the copper plate. Both times the camera was ok for the few hours before the meridian flip and when the peltiers were oriented to the bottom. Now just to see if the 40D will start to work again after drying out for a few days or whether I'll be using a different body. Edit: On second thoughts I might ditch the idea of blowing air into the camera, potentially adding moist air inside... I'll just seal the camera at the entrance of the copper plate, with desiccant packets inside and foam where ever I can add to cover the copper plate to stop the water from forming droplets.

Especially anything with which you play pool or snooker... lucky that cotton isn't solid... ?

What do you call that ear cleaning cotton on a stick thingy?

These adventures might help someone to skip the mistakes and show them what to expect...

Update: Since it is cloudy tonight and looking like it'll be clear skies tomorrow, (and this was on my mind all day)... I opened up the 40D to replace the faulty sensor. When the back was off and before pulling out the bad sensor I wanted to try and see if I can somehow create a contact between the slightly damaged ribbon cable and/or re-seat the connectors to see if that would make any difference... thanks Louise @Thalestris24 The thing that was obvious when I pulled out the sensor bottom ribbon connector is that it's covered by some thick and obvious gunk, so I cleaned it (as well as the top connecting cable) with isopropyl alcohol on a q-tip. I put the back on and held it in place as I inserted the battery and to my ecstasy the sensor was delivering images again... I assembled the camera and once again it's ready and waiting for the next clear night. Talk about an astronomical roller-coaster ride...

I covered all connectors with tape and insulated them from the conform spray... that is not an issue since the camera worked flawlessly for 3.5 hours.... I had a look this afternoon again and the live view is still just purple vertical lines changing and flickering, but otherwise all other aspects respond with no freezing. Another thing I did notice is that one of the ribbon connectors on the sensor was slightly torn, damaged by the despldering of the aluminum plate that covered the connectors where the sensor is plugged into, so I'm thinking that it was just barely contacting by microns and now let go. The other thing is that I didn't bother replacing the aluminum plate on the PCB since it seems like it's for heating purposes, unnecessary now, or am I mistaken? It's only a plate that covers the sensor connectors and some ICs under it. When I replace the sensor, I'll spray the conform on the exposed pins on the back top/bottom of the sensor... ...and so it continues... something is telling me that this project will exhaust all of my 40D spares and I'll end up reverting to the order original uncooled DSLR...

I was celebrating too early. At about 3:30 I was presented with vertical lines instead of the actual image after a 600 second exposure than just black after the following 900 second sub. The camera responds and triggers the shutter and works properly except that the images are always clean black frames and live view only shows vertical lines!!! Did my sensor fail now?

Think of it as getting in the mood to see the results that that unit will deliver..

I think that you should definitely look into your 550D, look on eBay for a replacement main PCB, they don't seem to be that expensive when are from salvaged stock.. I ordered a main PCB for my 40D for $60, so when it arrives, providing that its not faulty, I'll have all of my 40Ds up and running.. talk about plenty of redundancy.... Thank you and all for the ongoing help and input...

Hello all... Today I powered on the 40D with the hope that it might come back to life after sitting and drying for a week but no such luck so I pulled apart the dead 40 and replaced the main PCB with the PCB from my other 40D. It was a pity to pull apart a perfectly good camera with the risk that it might not come back but I figured that this way (if successful) the hardware/camera will get more of a use than just sitting in the bag. Before installing the PCB I sprayed it with the polyurethane electronics protection spray to coat it and protect it from the condensation. Another mod I done to the original design is adding the thin NTC temperature probe between the sensor and the copper plate as I wrote about doing in a previous post, result is shown in the image. This will report the actual temperature of the sensor. When I assembled the unit I was very happy that it still worked!!! WOO HOO... so now I'm more confident that I won't have another dead camera due to condensation! ...at least not for a long time. After the preliminary check of the function of the camera, the sensor and the USB connection, I put the cooling controller back on the camera but instead of making the same rats nest of cable ties I had before, this time I put the controller into the 40D hot-shoe, looks much neater. I have the system setup and doing some 600 and 900 second ISO1600 Halpha sub of the Rosette Nebula to test it out right now... so far so good...

The thin NTC probes have arrived and it might take some time for the spare replacement main PCB to arrive since it's coming from Portugal, also there's no guarantee that the spare PCB will work so, next free day I have, I decided to swap the main PCB from the Canon 40D which I won on eBay and replace that with the one which is coming from Portugal. Of course this time that PCB will be insulated from moisture using the Polyurethane conform spray... hopefully this will make the Astro40D reliable. The thin NTC probes inserted between the copper plate and the sensor will give me the actual temperature of the sensor.

True that...

I agree with @alacant and @billyharris72 that the sensor size is a major difference and adventage... the ASI1600 is the closest to a APS-C sized DSLR for considerably more money than a second hand DSLR with modding... IMHO the ASI 1600 is the next best camera for astrophotography when cost and sensor size is concerned.

Still modded.. still "against the grain" ? You mentioned that you 550D was mono.. that's one thing I couldn't achieve... I destroyed 5 sensors before giving up on monoing my 40D....

I like to doubt that the sensor would cause this problem since it would most likely just deliver a distorted image instead of freezing the whole camera. I read a bit about electronic, damage and dew online and apparently condensation can destroy a electronic circuit quite quickly, either way I'll get to the bottom of it.. if replacing the main PCB won't do the trick, than I'll mod my other 40D, properly protect with acrylic it this time. I'm curious to see if you can get your 550D working and to what your camera fault is... yes I'm sure that the Atik made the Canon redundant but (to me) there is something special when creating astro images using a self modded camera, especially when such extreme mods are involved rather than purchasing a already cooled CCD camera. The way I see it that, sure, a dedicated astro imager will deliver better images than a astro modded cooled DSLR when all things are equal but either way none of us will ever match hubble images and a big part of the hobby (to me) is the engineering part of it, not just capturing images but capturing them with a camera I modded (maybe one day a camera I'll create from scratch), but also create electronic circuits such as, for example, a auto close circuit and system for my observatory for when it rains, this is why I'll keep tinkering.

That red light hanging phenomenon is thing which is happening to my 40D... also when the Live view occasionally comes up, shortly later (if not just frozen camera with a black LCD display) it becomes seqment split lines that resemble a freeze of digital version of an old un tuned CRT TV noise pattern... To me it looks like the main PCB has been compromised and can't process the data without crashing,,, zapped ram due to the short circuit?? The processor was zapped?? either way its all on the main PCB which is the closest circuit board to the cold finger. The shutter looks like it still works, the LCD on top is OK, and the back LCD is good too... I did win a used 40D on ebay so I can attempt the mod again, but before I pull apart this "new" 40D which looks like its it very very good condition, I'll attempt to replace the main PCB which I found on ebay for $70. Another item I found is a thin temperature probe, which I can insert between the sensor and the cold finger and get an actual temperature reading of the sensor and with the temperature controller even keep it a degree or two above the dew point if need be.... although with the acrylic conform spray I might not need to worry about this unless my sensor starts to dew over...... Let the mod games continue... ROUND 3, ding ding....

That's exactly what I'm doing, I'm still hopeful of it coming back because a couple of months ago my Obsy laptop was rained on and drenched to the point where it did not power up at all.... I took it inside and the next day it powered up and boot up but with a bunch of USB unrecognized errors, PCI-ex not recognized and the WiFi was not working at all, simply not found in the device list. A week later the laptop was back in full operation, USB fully functional, PCI-ex recodnised and WiFi operating.... so there is still hope.

As of now, allowing the camera to dry with both batteries out for 24 hours did not resurrect the camera, same as before... on for a short while than hangs. I need to sus out a cheap main 40D PCB to replace...

Hello astronomers... I have good news and bad news... I cleaned up the cooling mod, replaced the dead peltier, inserted a NTC probe in a way which touches the copper plate, giving me the temperature of the cold finger rather than the air inside of the camera. I replaced the styrofoam with expanding foam in between the copper and heatsinks to insulate the heat transfer, added plugs to the system for east connection and tested and the cooled DSLR. On startup the system worked beautifully, the initial temperature was reported at 27 degrees (summer time here) and it started to fall FAST.. within 30 seconds the temperature dropped to 13 degrees and settled on 14... and stayed there. This is measuring the temperature of the copper and not on the actual sensor, but I though that the proof will be in the pudding" so I setup to capture some wide angle subs, than later DSO imaging (Rosette Nebula) in RGB and HAlpha. Results are beautiful, there is near no thermal noise... as shown in the attached unprocessed subs, RGB is 120s exposures and the HAplha is 900s both at ISO1600. Center cropped and scaled full frame below them. The little noise that there is there is easily removed with single pixel noise reduction... These results were consistent in the 7 or 8 nights of imaging both the wide angle constellation exposures and the Rosette nebula during last two nights.... I was very happy... I say was because I didn't heed @Thalestris24 warning about condensation protection (thinking that dew doesn't conduct) and last the Dew Point was at 19 degrees while the camera was cooled to around 14 degrees and as a result last night my 40D died... Sometimes it powers on, takes a exposure, every so often goes into live view mode but shortly after power up it hangs. I know that the sensor is OK since for the shot while when it works it sees the light but the powered on state doesn't last longer than 20 seconds before hanging. I'm still hopeful that when it dries out it'll come back to life but otherwise looks like I'm replacing the main PCB. Of course I'll be spraying it with conform acrylic and by the time the spare PCB arrives, I'll insert a thin temperature probe between the sensor and the cold finger which will give me the actual temperature of the sensor. And so the cooled DSLR adventure continues.

Great site.. thank for sharing.... Heres my report...

Than that completely changes the meaning of your comment... The peltier is definitely dead.. I tried to directly power it but its dead.. As I'm currently exposing a wide angle constellation shots in between moonlit/cloudy nights, I do not want to pull the setup apart to investigate the state of the peltier. If it's clear tonight, I collect the final set of data and hopefully on the weekend I can pull apart my cooling system to investigate the reason for the failed peltier. That said, with only one peltier cooling, the ISO1600 subs are all noise free...

I don't think it is a odd question... regardless to how reliable it's claimed to be I noticed that one side of the cooling system is not warming up, hence the question. Tonight I tested both of the peltiers individually and one was not working, so I guess it's not as reliable as it's cracked up to be.

As I was exposing last night, I noticed that one of the peltiers isn't working, so one peltier was all that was used with a heat sink and fan on the other side... Temperature wise it didn't seem to make so much difference, if any... but I might have had a faulty/open circuit peltier from the beginning... Do peltiers fail easily?