Peltier Cooled ZWO Camera

[1CM69]

Hi, just thought I'd share a project that I have just finished & made in to an Instructable

There are various iterations of this mod floating around, this is just my take on it.

Total build cost excluding the camera was around £60 so quite a bit less than the difference of £300 odd between the cooled & un-cooled version of my camera.

Thanks for looking

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Nice one !!

[JamesF]

Very neat

James

[Gina]

Very interesting - good work

I made up a Peltier TEC cooler for a ZWO ASI185MC camera for use in an all sky camera but I upgraded to an ASI178MM camera and a much better fish-eye lens and found cooling unnecessary

[astrorg]

Hi Gina

I stumbled upon this thread and I was thinking about cooling ZWO or other maker's cameras, as for example ZWO adds about £. 350 [in UK] for 'cooled' cameras!
A bit steep I would say for a 'hard-working' average person.

Is it really OK with the 178MM? I have a 178C and thinking to get a 178MM and I nearly got it.
Then I checks the 174MM and the less known or talked about 290MM which seems to have very low noise - better than the 1600MM!

What is your thought and other amateurs' thought?
M

[Gina]

The ZWO coolers provide cooling down to -30°C (or 45°C below ambient) with a two stage Peltier TEC cooler.  Getting that much cooling is very difficult.  I have tried a two stage cooler in the past but didn't manage that amount of cooling.  I have since found better Peltier TEC units costing around £30 or so which might work.  I don't know the interior structure of the ZWO cameras and whether the cooled cameras have better imaging chip to cooler thermal conductivity than the non cooled ones have to the case.

The ASI178 has much higher resolution than the ASI290 with smaller pixels though slightly larger imaging sensor.  The 174 has much larger pixels and lower resolution.  It all depends on what you want to use the camera for