Philips Toucam Pro SC1 CCD Camera |
This is the Philips Toucam Pro webcam that I modified for long exposure so it can be used for deep sky CCD astrophotography. The modification was developed by Steve Chambers and you should refer to Steve's site and notes to learn about the details and the technical background of the mod. Steve has created two modifications, the standard modificacion also referred as SC1 and the "advanced modification", aka SC2, both were developed for web cameras using the NEC mPD16510 CCD vertical driver chip. The mod allows to control the camera shutter and the frame transfer function so the exposure lenght can be set by the camera controlling and image acquisition software. Camera housing and telescope eyepiece adapter
If you are familiar with the egg-shaped Toucam you will inmediately realize that the modded camera looks very different. The original housing of the camera board was discarded. The new case is a 35 mm slides box and the eyepiece adapter was done with a reel of solder thread whose center part happened to be very close to the eyepiece outer diameter. Electronics The original SC1 mod uses a 74HC00 IC, a quad 2-input NAND gates IC. Jean-Pierre Bourgeay suggested the use of the 4066 analogue switches as a simpler alternative to the 7400 IC and this was used by Steve Chambers in his advanced modification. As I plan to do the advanced modification in the near future I decided to do the SC1 mod using the 4066 IC. These are the schematics of my setup.
The camera at work
M42 and M43 The Great Orion Nebula (Celestron ST80 f/5), image captured with K3CCD and stacked with RegiStax
Copyright � 2003 Antonio Fern�ndez |
