Sunday, 25 September 2011

Possible new lunar webcam

While still firmly stuck underneath a blanket of cloud and rain, I decided to modify a webcam that I had lying around for use as a possible lunar and planetary imaging camera.

The camera is a Logitech HD Webcam C270 capable of 1280x720 video, with USB2.0:


Modification was very simple.

First I removed the fascia:



I undid the three small screws that hold the front part of the case on and removed it. I then used a drill to increase the size of the hole in the front part of the case to accept a Mogg adaptor I had spare.



I put a little piece of black insulation tape over the LED on the camera board and unscrewed the supplied lens from the sensor housing.



I put the case front and fascia back on and then screwed the Mogg adaptor into the hole I made. I used a little superglue to secure it.




Et voilĂ !



The proof of course will be as they say in the pudding when I get chance to test the camera with my scope. It's likely that the video the camera produces will be compressed but I will experiment with the settings, and see what old faithful K3CCD Tools can produce with it.

2 comments:

Lewis said...

How did this work out? I'm looking at getting this same webcam. Was K3CCD about use it? I've read elsewhere the specs would good but the software setting were a pain. Did you have the same results?

Peter Franklin said...

Well unfortunately it didn't work out. I wouldn't buy this camera for astrophotography. I kept getting a colour cast over part of the image, don't know why. I tried it with/without IR block and no success. I also couldn't get the advertised resolution out of it in K3CCD, but I didn't try that hard because of the colour cast.