£13.50 Star Tracking Cam Mod

[mlwood37]

Ive been looking into web cam modding for star tracking and noticed the over inflated prices people are paying for cameras that are well pretty much rubbish for star tracking. Web cams are just pretty much useless for any thing but planet imaging and unless your willing to spend a small fortune you are not really going to get what you pay for unless you mod the hell out of it.

So ive set off on my merry way to make my own cam mod for as little as possible. I have no interest in high definition cameras as i have a DLSR camera for photo work and would just like a star tracker that doesn't kill my bank balance and have my wife murdering me because i waisted £1000+ on some that just say see that point of light, follow it.

On with the show as they say.

First i got a Smoke Detector hidden Camera from Hong Kong. The item is definitely is not what it is described as in its listing as it says "700 TVL Hidden CCTV Camera", it is a 600 TVL which has a much higher lux rating of 1.0 Lux not the stated 0.001 Lux how ever the asking price is £12.00 so is a bargain never the less. This was got off the bay ofc.

It arrived with in 5 days of ordering whoot

I then pulled the camera out of its housing and mounted it directly into a Box i got from Maplins form there bargin bin for £1.50 and removed its eye peace and replaced it with a Phillips web camera adaptor.

I will be connecting it up to a USB TV capture card that i all ready own and know works.

I have all ready tested the picture quality which isn't bad and seems to pick things up in the dark quiet well with very little light. I just need to now test it out when there is clear sky's next time .

[knobby]

Looks good!

keep us informed...

[mlwood37]

Will do its got a 1/3" CCD so we can see how it goes but alas the weather is miserable tonight .

[simonmc]

That does look interesting. I will be interested to see the results, its a nice tidy mod.

Simon

[Oily]

Very interesting,I was considering doing something like this with this ECL-377 bullet camera I had for another project but didn't know whether it would be suitable?Here are the specs

1/3" B/W OUTDOOR BULLET CAMERA

weatherproof design - 3.6mm standard lens - Auto electronic shutter - 420Lines - Minimum illumination 0.1 Lux - 12 VDC - 110 MA - 2 inch length - Scanning: 2:1 interlace - Gamma: 0.45 - Shutter speed: Max 1/100,000 sec. - Reverse polarity protection: Yes - Effective pixels: 270,000 - Sync. type: Interval - Operating Temp: -10~50 C

So how have you connected the camera leads to the capture card?Excuse the poor photo

[mlwood37]

Ist the 12v goes to a battery and the Video out goes to video in on the capture card. Your specs are close to the same as mine. How ever yesterday my nexstar+ handset died on me for no reason and im now stuck lol.

[Oily]

Ist the 12v goes to a battery and the Video out goes to video in on the capture card. Your specs are close to the same as mine. How ever yesterday my nexstar+ handset died on me for no reason and im now stuck lol.

Damn!

But thanks the info,another job added to the ever growing list!!

[The Sailor]

I have done the same when I first started astronomy a couple of year back, same spec cameras though a little dearer, connected the BNC to a BNC\RCA adapter and then to the RCA video card connector, was fun but found it was no different to say a Xbox webcam which is dirt cheap.

Necessity is the mother of invention but one can only go so far with the webcam type cameras and you will get what you pay for

Jim

[mlwood37]

This is for star tacking though not for picture taking as said i have a decent dslr or the photo taking.

[The Sailor]

This is for star tacking though not for picture taking as said i have a decent dslr or the photo taking.

Sorry if you misunderstood me, I never meant it for anything but tracking .

Jim