Xbox Livecam Mod (Cliff)

[Aenima]

Nice 1, ta.

Wonderin when jupiter will be back, cant wait to give it a try.

Jay

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Hey Cliff, hows things?

Just thought I'd share the latest result from my attempts with the Xbox vision webcam, I think it's come a long way since you modded that first one.

I had a little help (Thanks Cloudwatcher) with post processing but pretty chuffed with the end result.

Cheers,

Jay

I'm fine thanks and that mars is awesome dude nice one

[DrRobin]

Hi Cliff,

Finally, got my PST working with a Xbox camera and took a couple of pictures of the sun in hydrogen alpha

.

[Gina]

Very good

[sausages]

Lovely Mars image there. Not had a go yet, but do at some point.

[Gina]

Oooh those bangers look nice

[Aenima]

Hi Cliff,

Finally, got my PST working with a Xbox camera and took a couple of pictures of the sun in hydrogen alpha

.

Yeah. V nice. Think there are prominences showing - or Solar flare? not sure, but they are definitely showing!

Really nice, do you think with a pst you can get an image like the ones that are fire colour with what look like magnetic swirls on surface and I think sunspots as well? Bit hard to explain but an awesome image to look at.

Regards

Aenima

[DrRobin]

Hi Aenima,

Yes, I hope so. I haven't got fully to grips with it yet but it should show more surface detail than a plain solar filter. The appear to be several problems to overcome, firstly focus and then focus or filter appears to change across the frame. Finally, the cameras saturate very easily, not easy to tell, and light bleads across from the red in to blue and green. This blurs the image, so it's best to under expose, or possibly use a better camera or a monochrome camera.

I need to read a few more posts to see how to improve, but that £4.50 I spent on my Xbox camera has certainly been worth it.

I think they are solar prominence, although a quick look at the definition on Wiki... seems to suggest they are almost the same thing. I am sure someone more knowlegeable on the subject can set me right.

See the following pages for a description of the two. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_prominence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Xbox cam resolutions from my unique one of kind skycam with f3 lens i put on it.

Clouds clouds clouds lol

640 x 480 i mainly use this setting

960 x 720 mode

1280 x 960 mode highest the cam has

main resolutions

cam also has some smaller resolution modes but they made cam more sensitive to light and has 60 frame rate to them

I so love my xbox skycam i created still got other xbox cam to test but thats kind more zoomed in skies still waiting to test on clear sky.

probably redo xbox cam back to EP for telescope sometime also.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Hi Cliff,

Finally, got my PST working with a Xbox camera and took a couple of pictures of the sun in hydrogen alpha

.

Just noticed and got to say they are totally awesome dude amazing them proms.

[Gina]

Very good We have strange areas of blue in the sky today and there's a strange very bright yellow glowing sphere that we haven't seen in living memory Oh, it's gone now! So that's what a UFO is - don't think I've seen one before!

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Very good We have strange areas of blue in the sky today and there's a strange very bright yellow glowing sphere that we haven't seen in living memory Oh, it's gone now! So that's what a UFO is - don't think I've seen one before!

I know i noticed that little bit of blue and yep gone now lol

[Aenima]

Xbox cam resolutions from my unique one of kind skycam with f3 lens i put on it.

Clouds clouds clouds lol

I so love my xbox skycam i created still got other xbox cam to test but thats kind more zoomed in skies still waiting to test on clear sky.

probably redo xbox cam back to EP for telescope sometime also.

That skycam looks like it would be useful as permanent weather cam, be able to spot clouds or a clear sky from indoors and know to get your scope ready or get a cuppa tea on.

I'm constantly opening my door and freak my neighbours out standing there looking up to see what the weather is doing. Could do with a skycam set up outside.

Nice1

Regards

Jay

[Stargazing_Cliff]

That skycam looks like it would be useful as permanent weather cam, be able to spot clouds or a clear sky from indoors and know to get your scope ready or get a cuppa tea on.

I'm constantly opening my door and freak my neighbours out standing there looking up to see what the weather is doing. Could do with a skycam set up outside.

Nice1

Regards

Jay

In way it is like weather cam it changes colours to different type clouds

sure has some kind sensor.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

I'm going to re-mod one of me xbox cams back as EP for me telescope as i noticed the cam has that special gain control and that is what is needed with some planets.

so now have 1 xbox cam with f3 infinity lens as skycam and 1 xbox cam as EP for me telescope made double tube adapter so i can connect to me newt or me 50mm.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Clouds cleared for little so took some images with me latest xbox cam with me newt

Vega star

Altair

Arcturus i so love color change from this star

I use astrocapture to record avi's then virtual dub to extract image

Awesome!

[Aenima]

Hey Cliff,

I was wondering if you ever use Registax to clean up and improve your pics of the stars? I've not tried stars myself but with any avi of a astro object, the stacking really takes the noise away and give much more detail of the target object.

Just a thought....

It's good to see capture stars individually on the cam though, you may be able to improve on it?

Regards

Aenima

[Leo.A]

I have just stripped my XBox cam to mod and found the chip on the back gets extremely hot.

I have a chip cooling plate from an old laptop which has a sealed copper tube running up to an alloy heatsink. I believe the tube contains a liquid/gas which when hot spreads up the pipe to the alloy cooler, cools, , then back to the actual copper contact plate mounted on the chip.

I'm going to modify this cooler today (butcher with hacksaw and file) and try and fit the cam's board to it, then mount the lot in a small jiffy box. The bulk of the copper tube and heatsink will protrude from the case but I don't see it as a problem. The whole thing is very, very light so it won't affet things due to weight.

Everyone mentions the heat output of the LEDs, I couldn't see this being much of a contributing factor to hot pixels, more a light intrusion for the lens. I simply painted the LEDs with some dark nail polish I picked up for $2 at a local supermarket.

Of course, the likelihood of this rotten rain and constant cloud cover disappearing within the next 6 years is slim, I picked up another scope (Skywatcher 102mm X 1200 refractor), it has to keep raining. I won't have a chance to test it till the weather clears a bit.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Hey Cliff,

I was wondering if you ever use Registax to clean up and improve your pics of the stars? I've not tried stars myself but with any avi of a astro object, the stacking really takes the noise away and give much more detail of the target object.

Just a thought....

It's good to see capture stars individually on the cam though, you may be able to improve on it?

Regards

Aenima

Nope never tryed Registrax not sure how to use it but could allways learn like.

not sure what to do with it do you just load like 1 image into it or do you need to load loads of images.

what i do is align the cam with spotter scope i look through spotter aim at star and it appears on me screen on me mini laptop focus telescope little then i hit the record with astrocapture.

i dont have no electronic mount nothing like so just have to watch the star orbit past with earths rotation

then i just used virtual dub to extract loads of images from avi.

so do i just get 1 best looking image frame and put in registax and that does somet with noise stuff like.

you have to make some diagrams how to use registax.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

I noticed with xbox cam if using linux op system like xubunto with astrocapture if gives in the property's on exposure settings it gives brightness and 2 lots of gain controls

also the option for auto exp or you can set exposure also from various settings and set FPS from 5 to 60 also the shut settings

they that many different settings you can do with cam

very interesting with linux

I tested the gain control by looking at some lamp post and the gain does take away noise dotty things and just leaves the lamp post light showing.

also tested clicking on some of the shut settings

sure does make the lamp really brighter. guess that must be shutter exp control for more senstive to light stuff.

then noticed with windows doesnt give as much settings as linux does.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Leo.A i'm sure i seen somet like that cooler thing on inside of xbox 360 on the gpu/ cpu chips and i actually have old broken 360 in shed i mite open it and take out the cooling tube thing thats attached to some chip and do similar thing attach it to xbox cam chip let us know how that cooling thing goes and how it helps cooling cam.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Aenima i had go with registax 6 i loaded in one of them star images i took other day

and i tested

Normally image

Now using registak clicked around with some of settings testing

and saves image below i see difference takes out some of noise.

does make it look lot better.

[Aenima]

Cliff

Try it. As its a great program once you get to know it. It needs a bit of video footage - like a minute or so - can you get a good focused image of a star captured on video? I've only ever used it on planets and moon, so this is bit different for me. Find a nice object to get a minute of okay footage (avi format, in sharpcap or similar) try to get it not wobbly, but best you can will do if the object is solid well focused etc. Then look where its saved, load Registax 6 and tap on SELECT to open your minute of avi (try moon but if not venus or a bright star) and your video's first frame out of the couple hundred in your footage will be showing in the image area. There should be a slider in bottom left that will slide along the bottom going through the vid frame by frame, look for a frame that looks like the best well focused image of your object.

That frame will be the reference frame that registax will use to align the rest - so when you got good frame click ALIGN and wait while it scans your video for the good ones like the first.

When its done the button LIMIT should be green lined, ready to be clicked on. This gets rid of the bad frames. When limit is done find STACK and this will stack the good 'uns.

If you can find the menu up along top of screen go to automatic and click the three options - align to stack, stack to wavelets, and the other one (cant remember at the mo, soz) but it helps to go from start to finish when on automatic all 3 ticked.

But for now, when LIMIT has finished and you clicked STACK you should get a rough image of your object in the main screen, now just gently slide the wavelets - 5 of them at left hand side of screen and it should sharpen a little and give contrast to bring out details.

! SELECT find your avi, select it.

2 find a good frame with the bottom slider when its on screen click ALIGN

3 When aligns done you should get the option to LIMIT the stack to get rid of bad frames, hopefully leaving you a few to stack

4 click STACK and wait.

5 the image you get after stacking should be okay and you use Wavelets gently to bring out detail.

Never tried it with a star so here's hoping it works.

Hope this helps,

All the best

Aenima

ps. i dont have linux or the others, just vista. So try it on vista/xp type set-up.

[DrRobin]

Hi LeoA,

Its a heat pipe and works pretty much as you described. The tube has a small quantity of fluid/gas in it and works in the same way as a fridge. The liquid evaporates at the processor end and turns in to gas. It then flows to the cooler heatsink where it condenses back in to a liquid. The liquid then flows back down the tube to the processor and starts all over again.

When the liquid evaporates it takes heat in and when it condenses it gives heat out. They are very efficient at moving heat and work with very small temperature differentials. Of course unlike a fan there is no moving parts so if the tube doesn't leak they never wear out.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

Thanks Aenima i will try that when it's clear sky take min or so of star or planet or moon try keep telescope stable.

focus as best as i can with earths rotation and record avi what ever i'm looking at go past normally then i'll try that stuff with registax.

at moment have to just put up with good old british weather for now clouded out.