Moon with De-Bayered PS3 Eye Cam

[Kbramley]

Finally the obsy is complete and its a clear night, been waiting 3 months for this.

Anyhow way back in september last year I set about de-bayering a PS3 Eye cam, which I managed successfully, the bonus being this webcam can deliver the raw sensor info using the diver developed here - http://codelaboratories.com/ it also alowed up to 85FPS at 640x480 - another bonus. I had to write my own capture software to get it to save the raw data which was a challenge as I'm not a programmer so had to learn it on the fly, which involved quite a few long frustrating nights - but it was cloudy so no loss there .

Here is the results of the first test run, I pointed it at the moon and shot 1200frames at 60FPS through a red filter, then processed in Registax and stacked the best 300. Im very impressed with this little cam and glad the hard work paid off, and to think it only cost £7 off Ebay

Scope - MN190

2x Barlow

De-Bayered PS3 Eye cam

Homebrew Capture software

300 frames stacked from 1200 60FPS

Enjoy

Keith

[Mr Bergman]

Nice image! Impressive to program your own software, nice job!

[JamesF]

That looks like an excellent result to me.

I have the same camera that I butchered but found not great for colour planetary imaging.  I'm tempted to dig it out and see if it works on Linux now.  If so I can use it with my own capture application and I'll think about stripping off the CFA.  Did you write anything up about that at all?

James

[Kbramley]

I used some Autosol Chrome and Aluminum Polish to remove the CFA, the cover glass was reasonably easy to remove too with a craft knife (unlike the Canon's), took a while though.

[sologuitarist61]

Nice detail showing through - good image!

[beamer3.6m]

Can you explain how you debayered it and are you willing to share the programme?

[rodrigol]

Very nice work!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Kbramley]

Can you explain how you debayered it and are you willing to share the programme?

The process was reasonably easy, Summarised here with a few pics.

1) Firstly open up the PS3 Eye cam - search google for this as there are some excellent guides on how to do it - heres one http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/4189/

2) Remove the Lens to reveal the sensor

3) With a sharp knife, gently prise the cover glass off, it can stick a bit, but if your patient it should pop off in one

4) I then applied Autosol polish and gently polished the surface with a fibre optic cleaning swab

5) watching the live image as i was doing it you could see the cfa breaking away.

6)I repeated this until 90% of the CFA was gone, I did notice around the edges I had to be careful as some odd artefacts/corruption appeared on the live feed if i went to close.

7)re-boxed with a ir-cut filter and nosepiece

The program I am willing to share, but I can't offer much support, it will either work or it won't but people are wecome to try it. You will need to download the CLEYE Drivers and also I found you also need to install the SDK from here -( http://codelaboratories.com/products/eye/driver/) - there is multicam.dll file that it uses that only comes with the SDK? apologies as I'm not a programmer so not figured out how to sort this.

It works on Windows 7 and this is the only platform I have tried it on, also there are a few bugs as follows:

1)I havent implemented 320x240 resolution even though it appears in the drop down box

2) if you take multiple captures it occasionally crashes

3) its a bit slow, I struggled to get it to stream 85fps and save the file uncompressed without dropping frames, so I dump the data to a tmp file, then post compress, thus there is a short time after capturing that it will pause and compress the tmp file.

4)the menu bar at the top isn't active yet

5) if you choose very low FPS of say 1 or less it can hang sometimes

6) you need a ps3 Eye cam plugged in or the program won't load I'm afraid

The file can be downloaded from here - http://rapidshare.com/share/A9793EB9F46098D984EB1767EC48E7AE  click on "to download" button

Keith

[Kbramley]

And a few screenshots from the Capture program I wrote which allows you to save the raw sensor data as an AVI.

Some other features it has are:

1) Allows you to auto save the capture parameters in the file name such as Gain, Exposure, frame count etc

2) In "proccessed" mode (either Mono or colour) it allows you to zoom and rotate the image, unfortunately this is not available for RAW Bayer mode

3) Allows you to specify a capture time or a number of frames in capture parameter

4) Lets you set the white balance.

5)Should allow up to 10seconds log exposure, however this feature is a bit unstable, upto about 1sec seems to work well.

Main screen

Capture settings

Capturing

Zooma and Rotation

Keith

[redalkmaar]

Hello Keith, love what you did with that cam, i have been tinkering a lot to and made a peltier cooled ps3 eye   

Myself would like to try debayer my cam to but it seems that software download link isnt working anymore, could you please repost?

Best Regards

Ivar

[Blazar]

Well done. Did you use PIPP first to pre-process the AVI? You might find it quite helpful.

[Mick J]

Interesting thread, why did you need your own capture software ?   I know it's an old thread but - you know.  thanks

[jimbo747]

I've made a peltier cooled PS3 eye cam, and was looking to write my own software (been using the standard cl test for long(er) exposure image capture - not done c++ in years though!

BTW, you can safely remove the 4 microphones

[jimbo747]

Dammit, just realised someone bumped an old thread!

[Kbramley]

Hi ,

Interestingly I had a  play with this cam last night for the first time in a long time (will post in seperate thread. I will see if I can upload my capture program again somewhere, give me a few mins and I will see what i can do

Link to the recent image here http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/235902-vallis-schroteri-and-pythagoras-with-de-bayered-ps3-eye/

Keith

[Kbramley]

Ok hopefully this link will work

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bqbawzwlkdgsr2o/PS3EyeAstro.exe?dl=0

Few things to note.

1)Its buggy, I haven't looked at the code for over a year and there are lots of things I need to tweak.

2)The avi capture is not that good, I struggled to get it to capture real time without dropping frames so had to resort to dumpng a tmp file to disk and then encoding it into an avi, so it does take a bit longer. Basically I'm not a programmer and had to teach myself C++ as I was writing this so I was chuffed just to get something that worked

3) only the 640x480 mode works for now

BUT

It will allow you to capture RAW 640x480 avi's at upto 80 FPS (although I suggest no more than 60FPS) that are compatible with Registax. You can also capture standard Mono or RGB too if you haven't de-bayered your camera, although you might as well use the standard CL Eye capture for this.

You will  need to get the CL Eye SDk installed as there is a DLL file it installs that is required if I remember correctly.

Hope that helps

Keith

[redalkmaar]

Thanks Keith, it doesnt matter its not perfect thats what makes it fun .