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HD Webcam Modification

George

By George
in DIY Astronomer

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neil phillips

neil phillips

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Heres a better reprocess guys, if you can get the lil [removed word] to work properly at 30 fps yuy2 and get the colour right( its a nightmare )

then you got a good cheap astro camera, mine is not working properly i got no brightness control just exposure, and its dropping frames big time, i just managed to get 20 frames per second out of it at 640x360 yuy2 without dropping frames. but later at the same setting, it was off again dropping frames, it doesnt want to do astro it seems, tough i made it lol. Hope you like the shot guys

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4072/4361865251_d888b42bdc_o.png

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rwg

rwg

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Hi Neil,

I like the picture - much better than I'm currently managing. I have an IR cut filter and a better quality barlow on the way to see if that helps any - if the clouds ever go away...

Since it was cloudy (again) over the weekend, I did some experimenting with frame rates for different image sizes and colour settings. The best rate I achieved (aside from MJPG) was with the Microsoft drivers installed, using RGB24 and the 960x544 resolution, where I got 30FPS. Zooming to the maximum amount on this resolution seems to give you a 960x544 crop of the full image, so you are at the native sensor resolution, rather than getting a scaled image.

I didn't have any dropped frames, but I was testing on my desktop PC which is only a few months old, so very fast. Depending on the age of your capture PC and anything else using CPU/Disk/USB resources at the same time, you may or may not get dropped frames when capturing.

Still not seen any problems with the brightness - must be something to do with the drivers or operating system or something. I used the brightness when focusing - turning it up to max to see the spikes from the bahtinov mask, then back down to get a balanced image when capturing. Have you ever installed the MS drivers on the machine? Even if you do an uninstall of the software, it still keeps the Microsoft livecam drivers on hand and uses them in addition to the generic usbvideo driver. Maybe this is why the brightness works for me?

Robin

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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Their perfomance does seem a little bit hit an miss judging by the discussiuons going on on the various astro forums... Seemingly identical setups give different rersults...

I managed to get 30fps at any resolution using MJPG and no further compression and that was on the Semprom 3000+ laptop...

Peter...

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Ogri

Ogri

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If the PCWorld deal is over, I've found it here for £35.65 Computerwebstore :

No idea how reliable the company is though, never used them.

eta: just a thought, as this webcam does seem to have rather a lot of potential, wouldn't it be worth contacting Microsoft to see if they can produce a driver specifically tailored for astro use?

I reckon the sales potential for them would make it very worthwhile. So what would you 'like' to see the thing capable of, write the 'wishlist' down, and e-mail them with it.

You never know . . . .

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neil phillips

neil phillips

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Its certainly worth a try though you never know,

Full explanation on my other post on planetary imagers, im slowly changing my mind about this camera, yes its a pig to use, yes its colour is almost impossible to achieve well. And yes on my system it will just not work right, but when it can produce this under jittery seeing over a house roof with a fogged secondary, im starting to feel CMOSS may actually have arrived. As i said on my other post what do you think guys

Not even full resolution or at 30 fps, this 640x360 20 fps, Gary honis said full resolution is better, I trust hes judgment as hes very experianced.

4370599836_372456f954_o.png

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George

George

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I had a 20 minute play last night as I had other hardware issues.

I uninstalled the MS drivers and installed yuy2 codec and managed 30 fps in KC3DD and Amcap no dropped frames, I was using the newt which is in dire need of collimation so couldn't get anything but a washed out image but..... I finally got colour and the brightness under control.

I still think with a driver hack we could be on a winner here :eek:

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Ogri

Ogri

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Feedback here guys Hardware Customer Survey

mention problems and software/driver 'wishlist'.

Link to this thread as well, as we will probably get MS visitors.

So discuss what would be desirable.

The more feedback, the more chance this will get passed to the right people to get it sorted.

PS wouldn't hurt to offer to beta test the drivers/software versions.

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George

George

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Feedback here guys Hardware Customer Survey

mention problems and software/driver 'wishlist'.

Link to this thread as well, as we will probably get MS visitors.

So discuss what would be desirable.

The more feedback, the more chance this will get passed to the right people to get it sorted.

PS wouldn't hurt to offer to beta test the drivers/software versions.

Just filled that in and my main points were:

Drivers and software and the ability too choose what codec you record with. Also gain control is absent which is needed for low light conditions. All the controls need expanding to enable a lower and higher range.

Please please can this be done?

I wont be holding my breath.....but you never know :eek:

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NickH

NickH

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Good luck... that's all I can say (and we're an MSDN premium partner)

If someone jots down a list of exactly what is wrong and emails/pm's it to me, I can get it to someone on the inside.. it may help a bit..

What I would need is

1: A list of known issues. bullet pointed

2: A wish list in order of priority (e.g. Gain Control)

Maybe it's also worth someone contacting K3's developer and getting his take on some of the issues...and the team that modded the Toucam drivers

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neil phillips

neil phillips

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couldnt agree more Peter, infact all comments here are noteworthy, if only we could get microsoft interested in the astro side, but its a tiny market so dont hold your breath, wonder if its worth me sending them this image, probably not ?

But certainly worth complaing that the camera doesnt always work as advertised, i tried Peters camera here on microsofts own software, and still the brightness control was not staying put,

If this tells you anything guys about the cause, ive found a way to stop the the levels changing at capture, ive noticed when i set the exposure to say 160 on k3 ccd tools level meter, then set the brightness to exactly the same level, no more changing levels, only problem is, it has to be set to the same level as the exposure, so again no control, but its a fix of sorts for those that get levels changing during capture start up,

ok my wish list would be gain control. 30 fps at full resolution none of this having to go down to 640x360 marlarky just to get 20 fps out of it, at least a two colour slider control. oh and uncompressed codec ( or at least very little ) at full res 30 fps.

If we had all that, i think the spc 900 would probably be outclassed, just a early impression, dont hold me to that, but i suspect it strongly, CMOSS may not be as good as CCD but 30 fps against 10 fps, well ill take the 30 fps with this CMOSS sensor, i was a little harsh on my first judgment of it, now im learning how to process with this camera, i think the results are getting better all the time, and yes its the same capture im working with, made a pigs ear of my first attempt, im only human This is a very interesting if troublesome camera

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neil phillips

neil phillips

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Good points there Nick, my wish list is here, just the droping frames issue, and brightness problems mentioned, is the main faults. Oh yes having to use mjpg codec for 30 fps full res,

mmmmmmmm Peter Katreniak wonder if he would take a interest, thats a maybe i reckon Nick. I think before i complain to MS i might have to test a new unmodified camera, we know what MS would say if they know its been modded right

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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One school of thought is the cameras performance has been deliberately knobbled in the Microsoft drivers because of processing power required for higher frame rates at higher resolutions...

By setting the max frame rate 10 fps then most people using it as a "standard" webcam wont see any issues...

The chip itself seems quiet a tasty little beast...

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neil phillips

neil phillips

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Im thinking a astro company should redesign this camera with all the features required, using these chips, but keep the price fair, no 200£ jobbys daylight robbery, 100 £ for a proper version of this is not unreasonable i dont think. If microsoft can make a packet on 40 quid, then we know how much its costing. some wizard should get these chips redesign the camera and make the best cheapest damm single colour camera ever to hit the market. if i had the money and knowledge hell id do it. looked at that link Peter of note they mention gain control, and 10 bit via raw mode, even the Imaging source can only knockout 8 bit images ( not positive on that ?

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NickH

NickH

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IS cams are 8 bit but deliver exceptional results (I have one and a Lumenera Skynyx...and it's a close call between them, the skynyx being 12-bit does help a smidge)

Problem is scale...Ms can do it for £40, because they will sell probably hundreds of thousands of them...astro cams, you'd be lucky to shift 3000 in a good year. When you buy 200,000 chipsets, it costs way less than a few hundred

But...working on baseline markups, £100 is not unreasonable for this one..

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rwg

rwg

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I think I have learnt a little more about dropped frames and frame rates...

The camera supports different frame rates on different machines - this may be to do with the speed of the machine, since I can get a much higher frame rate in RGB24 on my (new) desktop machine than my (3 year old) laptop. I'm trying to track down any documentation on how Windows deals with USB video class devices to see if there is any way this could be tweaked.

I get lots of dropped frames if I turn the exposure up to -5 or above with a frame rate of 30 f/s. This is probably because by this point the exposure time is actual bigger than 1/30s. If I keep the exposure down to -6 or below I get no dropped frames. If you have auto-exposure on, dropped frames will start happening automatically in a dark environment.

Robin

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