Passive Cooling for Microsoft Lifecam

[Stub Mandrel]

Well this idea seems to have worked. I made an aluminium case for a Microsoft Lifecam months and months ago, with a small fan on the end and grooves down the side of the nose to allow air from drawn inside and over the camera and its chips. The little fan only takes 100mA so I just wired it into the USB supply with a smoothing capacitor, which seems to have worked.

I finally used it tonight, not the coldest of December evenings and even with  gain & exposure right up in Sharpcap there was very little noise on the subs compared to what I'm use to. Unfortunately the seeing was awful and no bright stars handy so focusing (Venus & Mars) was hit and miss to say the least, just get the shaky blob as small as possible. Seeing calmed down a bit later so hopefully something usable...