flashed scp880 from morgans

[devilgas]

quick question.....

i'm looking at getting the above, but understand there are different firmware flashings available for this webcam - optimised colour and RAW. does anyone know which version morgan's flash to the cam? i'm presuming optimised colour or is it just the spc880 --> 900 hack?

and a bonus question.....

would i be correct in saying that the eeprom can be re-flashed between RAW and optimised as necessary using WcRmac?

thanks!

[yesyes]

Morgans flash the normal SPC900 firmware into the SPC880s.

And yes, you can reflash with different firmwares and/or settings. I tried the RAW mode once and reflashed back to the normal SPC900 firmware.

If you're planning to do that, then there is no need for you to get the initial flashing done by Morgans. You might as well do that yourself. But as far as I know flashing only works on Win XP because the original SPC880 only has XP drivers, no Vista or Win7 drivers.

[devilgas]

thanks chris. i need the full kit, so it makes sense to get it flashed by them. will it need re-flashing for optimised colour mode?

i was thinking of the b&w RAW mode for use with the PST, but optimised colour mode for DSO (with the LE mod) / planetary work

[yesyes]

The flashing software (WcCtrl) has something they call macros that you can load into the webcam. I'm not sure they are different firmwares. It seems they are just different settings for the same SPC900 firmware.

[devilgas]

great. thanks!

dave

[AstroTux]

The flash code from Morgan's converts the SPC880 into an SPC900, and is the complete firmware to run the device.

The macros simply reprogramme certain registers within the device that affect things like the brightness, sharpness, gain, colour and gamma settings so that when you restore 'factory settings' you actually restore these settings instead. The raw macro also disables compression and the way that the camera interpolates colour information, so any resulting images need to be 'de-bayered' to retrieve the colour information ( for a full explanation of this it is best to look at astrobond.ebrawe ).

I use the Optimized Colour Non-Raw mode and find that it gives nicer balance than the standard 'factory settings'.

You will need WcRmac to send these macros to the webcam, and this needs to be done using XP.

WcRmac is also used to flash the webcam from being an SPC880 into an SPC900, so if you are thinking of going down this path then don't bother buying the flashed device from Morgan's and save yourself a couple of quid.

I am in the process of trying to write a similar utility for Linux users.........

[yesyes]

ah, yes, it's WcRmac, not WcCtrl as I said. That's a different piece of software... ;-)

[devilgas]

thanks both. have ordered the flashed kit from morgans. i don't think i'll lose any sleep over the £2 i'd have saved in not getting it flashed

the netbook runs xp, so should be simple enough to swap between raw and opti-colour.

thanks for the link, i'd bookmarked it yesterday during the 'research'