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Xbox Livecam Mod (Cliff)


gdheib0430

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Bought 3 of these off ebay for £3.95 each brand new delivered!

I bought a 1.25" screw on metal adaptor as I hadnt seen the posts about using plastic piping (dam). How can you work out what length pipe you need to give good focasing?

One thing I found a right pain was getting the camera to work with XP SP3 so for anyone else having the same difficulties- here's the fix:

Driven to distraction - or How to get an XBOX Live Vision Camera working on XP - Dr. Mike Reddy - "Play in Progress" -

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After modding the camera and getting first light this evening, I only appear to be getting B & W AVI's. Any ideas?

Here are my Sharpcap settings.

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=30.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-9

Brightness=132

Contrast=38

Hue=0

Saturation=0

Sharpness=11

Gamma=180

WhiteBalance=2770

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=82

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I found earlier that having saturation just a touch above middle and white balance on auto got me a good colour fuzzy image on screen but by the time i wanted to let jupiter float across my FOV my netbook ran out of battery so i dont know what the AVI would have come out like. blumming dew got me in the end so i had to come in any way.

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After modding the camera and getting first light this evening, I only appear to be getting B & W AVI's. Any ideas?

Here are my Sharpcap settings.

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=30.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-9

Brightness=132

Contrast=38

Hue=0

Saturation=0

Sharpness=11

Gamma=180

WhiteBalance=2770

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=82

Looks like your saturation needs turning up, roughly in the middle works for me.

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Hi all, has anyone tried using one of these cams without doing the mod? I mean just stick a 1.25" tube on and plug it into EP? Just wondered how much difference the mod made!

These little beauties are cheap, I may make a CCTV system using them :)

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Awesome seeing these cams on telescopes well done :) i havent been doing much stargazing recently been unwell had some kind dry forehead and numbness pressure thing possibly from some head viral starting to feel better went for blood test last week still waiting for me results back at docs friday so i'll check then. hopefully i can get back to modding some more cams.

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I shall be giving this a go. Had the one of the cam's since they launched, dropped it some months ago, slight focus damage and it has been sitting in the loft since.

Will be getting it down tomorrow morning and modifying it accordingly.

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I have my xboxcam, I've drilled the face off it, painted the leds with a drop of black paint each and just waiting for mate to cut me some tube.

My question is, which capture software is the best? I tried an astrocapture program but it wouldn't let me adjust the input levels and totally washed out the image. Thanks in advance:D

(I'm on the phone, I may be some time;) )

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Tiddles when you did the jupiter image was that using a AVI or was that just a click capture image as its pretty awesome for a dob.

AVI, it was best 200 of 1000 frames, I just let it drift across the field of view.

Just need to sort out the colour issue. IR filter has been removed.

Stacked and processed in Registax 6.

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Just done mine and can't wait to test it :)

The case came apart pretty easy with no visible marks. De-soldered the LEDs though they melted anyway lol. Cut most of the webcam nosepiece down and dremmeled out to fit the SPC900 adapter :)

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Well I have eventually got round to doing one of my Xbox cams.

Going to try it as a guide scope cam, don't know whether it will work or not but nothing ventured and all that. The heatsink is for the chip on the back of the PCB which gets hot fast.....

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As an update, I've snapped a few shots with my xbox live cam over the weekend - got Saturn and Jupiter, seeing wasn't ideal on either day and my x3 Barlow that I used is a mega cheap one so I'm hoping by upgrading that and waiting for better conditions I'll get better images. I'd really like to be able to resolve the Cassini Division on Saturns rings. I also got some Sun Spot images.

In additon to this, I can finally say I have been able to use my webcam for manually guided DSO photography!! ;)

I've taken a 15min exposure of M42 on my EOS 500 35mm SLR camera using Fujicrome Provia 400X (ISO 400), known for it's low reciprocity failure. Since it's film though it'll be a couple of weeks before I get the results back, I've also still got 30 odd exposures left to take - luckily I'm patient... ;)

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Is there any way of modding this camera for long exposures?

I've been taking a look - although there probably is a way, the chip is arranged much differently to the SPC-900. Therefore, you can't copy that long exposure mod like-for-like and despite searching I've not come across anything else specifically to do with this camera.

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The heatsink is for the chip on the back of the PCB which gets hot fast.....

I like the idea of the heatsink - when using mine as a guidecam I have to put the gain on max (it gets quite warm!). By playing around with the contrast I've been able to get good star images. I'm using the 50mm F5 finder-scope that came with my SW 200P

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I've been taking a look - although there probably is a way, the chip is arranged much differently to the SPC-900. Therefore, you can't copy that long exposure mod like-for-like and despite searching I've not come across anything else specifically to do with this camera.

Is it the same sensor as in the SPC-900?

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Is it the same sensor as in the SPC-900?

Nope, it's a CCD (like the SPC) and it's the same size, but a different sensor. This makes sense since the SPC-900 uses a Sony sensor and I can't imagine Microsoft using Sony gear in their webcams!

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