850fps at VGA Resolution, Heads Up!

[cuivenion]

Just came across this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1623255426/fps1000-the-low-cost-high-frame-rate-camera/description

Not cheap, but 850fps at VGA resolution would be good for planetary I imagine. As far as I can tell you can't connect it to a computer though, it uses SD cards, which makes things problomatic.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I do not think that would work well for planetary, as the amount of light is too low to allow exposure times short enough to collect sufficient photons per pixel. The key feature is quantum efficiency, which is not listed.

[cuivenion]

I must admit it was the fps that mainly caught my eye. Oh well not like I can afford one anyway lol.

[NickK]

Just looking at the circuit board it's a simple design:

SENSOR -> FPGA (controlling high speed signalling, ADC etc) -> 2x 16GB RAM frame buffers, probably interleaved to give additional bus speed.

ARM chip to provide USB control and SD card storge integration.

The fact that the system keeps the signal paths as short as possible - using the sensor on one side and the FPGA on the other also means that the FPGA heat will heat the back of the sensor - so chilled cooling!

Cameras like this: http://www.adept.net.au/cameras/automation_tech/pdf/C4-1280-gigE.pdf already exist and are used with lasers to provide optical analysis and inspection. It's 20,000 LSB at 680nm.

One thing that they don't indicate is if they're sub-sampling as every other row.. Sounds to me like they're using the same sensor..

[NickK]

Actually looking at the sensor.. it looks like a Sony CMOS backlit sensor. The reason I say this is that the sensor has an active square and controlling circuitry rectangle that's what you'd see in the sony backlit sensors.. see here: http://www.sony.jp/products/overseas/contents/pickup/contents/ExmorRCMOS_T_ver2.0/index.html

Something like this would be better: http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/new_pro/february_2014/imx226_e.html although 1.85um pixel means a small image area and a need to really get the image off the chip before the well fills up! 2000mv - so inline with the common Sony astro sensors used.. 

PG have already got a corp page dedicated to astro too: http://www.ptgrey.com/astrophotography

[cuivenion]

Cool, I've had a look at the PG stuff before, looks pretty good from my limited understanding.