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Very cheap PGR Firefly 0.3 mono on ebay

riklaunim

By riklaunim
in The Astro Lounge

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riklaunim

riklaunim

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FireFly has a Micron CMOS sensor - and those are very noisy (and the camera is uncooled). It would be very hard to do any DS imaging with it. Also long exposures triggering would require writing some software - if the camera supports external triggers.

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Rihard

Rihard

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FireFly has a Micron CMOS sensor - and those are very noisy (and the camera is uncooled). It would be very hard to do any DS imaging with it. Also long exposures triggering would require writing some software - if the camera supports external triggers.

Thanks for the infos Rik, I was actually planning to PM you to gain more infos about that. Writing the software would not be a real issues as I work for a huge IT company and I while I'm personally rubbish at writing code as I am not involved in tech stuff anymore, I know a lot of nerdy folks who would be pleased to do it for me :)

And I could manage to provide some cooling to the cam, if necessary (bear in mind I would try it on DSO's just for fun/experiment/learning purposes).

The official datasheet states "The GPIO connector can be

used to synchronize the camera to external devices (?) , such as an external

trigger source, power external circuitry, or power the camera via an

external device."

It also says "Shutter Speed: automatic / manual, 0.12 ms to 512 ms.".

So it looks like there is a chance to manually control the shutter speed (and maybe the GPIO is not even involved / useful for this scope) but I reckon that the little camera firmware or sensor might be limited to what the company specified, that is speeds between 0.12 to 512ms, probably far too low for the purposes, unless there is any kind of workaround / can be forced up by an external trigger.

Any additional details / opinions / corrections are welcome :)

Clear Skies

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  • 1 month later...
Starflyer

Starflyer

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I managed to get out with mine on Saturday morning, it's so nice to be able to grab 3000 frames in under a minute - sheer bliss compared to my mono Toucam :D

Some sun spots with 10" f/4.8 newt, AstroZap Baader Solar Filter, Solar Continuum and green Filters. Best 2000 frames of 3000.

8 panel lunar mosaic, taken on the same morning at 10:45am, it was shot through the Solar Continuum filter (because I forgot to take it off)

I'm really looking forward to using this on the moon (at night) at a higher focal ratio :)

post-1103-0-74023500-1347566037_thumb.jp

post-1103-0-67842200-1347566135_thumb.jp

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  • 3 months later...
JamesF

JamesF

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I have a couple of these on order too, actually. I'm going to have a go at making an all-sky camera with one. I did do an LX mod on an SPC900 with a view to using that, but I may have other plans for my SPC900s now.

James

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Cath

Cath

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Received the camera today, updated the firmware to the latest and it works! .. in Windows XP 32-bit anyway, not tried Windows 7 64-bit as yet.

Seems a little fussy with the USB cable, one I normally use it doesn't work with, so tried another and no problem at all.

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Cath

Cath

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Did you get it working in Windows 7 64-bit James?

Tried it but not yet working in Windows 7 64, FlyCap 2 see's the camera but it doesn't get any video frames from it. I guess it must be a driver problem, but not looked into yet.

I had to update it's firmware etc in Windows XP 32-bit, where it works well.

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JamesF

JamesF

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I have it working on 64-bit now, but it took some fiddling with the settings and I'm not at all sure what I did that made it work. Initially when I started the application I just got a blank display, but I now have it doing 752x480 @ 60fps with a very occasional dropped frame (one per minute, perhaps).

James

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