Philips Webcam Modification and Imaging

[Sirius Bizness]

I managed to get my hands on a Philips TouCam Pro II for a very reasonable price (not this silly £100 stuff for an SPC900 on eBay).

I now want to modify it to accept a 1.25" nosepiece and take some planetary images so I have a few questions....(I have googled but end up with information overload so I am looking for some recomendations of what people who did this thought was the best method)

First of all I need some guides on how to modify the webcam for the attachment of the adapter and how to go about taking images using a webcam. I have downloaded Sharpcap.

I will be using my SW 120ED but i am not use what magnification this gives gives me using just the webcam? I have also heard of using a barlow with the webcam. Would this be neccessary on my scope and what power would be best?

I appreciate any advice that can be offered based on similar experience.

Martin

[JamesF]

Can't help you with the mod as I've not done the Toucam myself, but I'd say you will almost certainly want a barlow in the fullness of time. There's no reason you can't try it without, but your images will just be rather small.

Magnification isn't really a helpful thing to think about from an imaging point of view. What you need to think about is "plate scale" or "image scale" which is how much of the sky is covered by a given size of sensor. If you double the focal length by adding a 2x barlow then you'll half the plate scale and you'll only fit half as much onto the sensor as without, so your image should double in size. Unfortunately you also spread the same amount of light over a larger area, making the image dimmer. Beyond a certain point there's just not enough light falling on a single pixel to be able to pick out any detail.

James

[Cornelius Varley]

Modifying a Toucam Pro II is easy, just unscrew the lens and replace it with a nosepiece job done. If your computer is running Vista or Win 7 you will need to reflash the camera with SPC900 firmware to make it compatible. This site SPC900 uncovered shows how to convert a ToUcam Pro to a SPC900NC, you do need a computer running XP to perform the conversion.

This site Webcam Astrophotography Tutorials has some useful information on capturing a processing.

A webcam has a similar fiels of view to a 6mm eyepiece and I would recommend imaging with either a 2x or 3x barlow.

Peter

[Sirius Bizness]

That easy to fit the nosepiece...great. I thought I was going to hace to start cutting the plastic case.

The driver issue sounds like a pain. I have a vista PC and a windows 7 PC. So I now need to find someone still running XP to get the camera to work. I just binned a computer with XP last year! Is there a way around this.

That tutorial is great. Very clear and concise.

Thanks for the advice.

[JamesF]

It *may* be possible using a virtual machine, though I've not got quite as far as having to try it. There may be another SGL member local to Derby who has access to WnXP and can help out?

James

[66mikeg]

Hi, this may be covered in another topic, but I was given a Toucam Pro II 840k with a mount that I've just bought only to find that there's an issue with drivers for the accursed Vista. There is a work around by loading the drivers for the older 740 and the SPC900. The camera needs to be controlled from SharpCap AstroCapture etc as I haven't found out how to use the SPC900 Philips program yet

[cosmological]

You can get third party drivers that will make the Toucam work on Vista without having to flash the camera, I have the 840K and it runs on Vista perfectly.

[Hawkeye]

You can get third party drivers that will make the Toucam work on Vista without having to flash the camera, I have the 840K and it runs on Vista perfectly.

Hi, Do you have a link to where you can get these drivers?