From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: November 10, 2006 4:56:05 PM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Anybody else using Pt Grey cameras?
Hi Tim;
Besides the assortment of unibrain cameras, I have a TIS (a DFK21BF04 640x480 color), Flea (640x480 color that I bought) and Flea2 (1394B 1024x768 Color) cameras. Both TIS and PGR were kind enough to loan me the DFK21BF04 and Flea2 cameras for testing purposes.
Like you said, the Fleas are exceptionally small and light cameras. Size wise you can fit about eight flea cameras inside the cube space of a single TIS camera and weight wise it's about 4 fleas to one TIS cameras.
Price wise the TIS cameras are a lot less expensive than the Fleas are. However the Fleas can deliver higher bit depth (bigger dynamic range) and with Astro IIDC 3.01.00 (beta) you can now access all the Format 7 modes with Region of Interest, higher frame rates (I get 107 fps with the Flea camera I have here) and longer exposure times (to 60 minutes).
For guiding with the GPUSB, I could fairly easily guide off a 6th magnitude star at 133 ms exposures / 7.5 fps using a color unibrain camera in 4x4 binned mode with an 80 mm aperture cheap refractor under light polluted Mag 1 to 3 urban skies. The big issue with the Unibrain and other cheap cameras is that they are really noisy when used in "overdrive" mode, so you need to take a dark frame subtraction to reduce the back ground image noise.
Also, for those of you that do not have FireWire 800 / 1394B capable Macs, you can still use the 1394B Flea2 and other cameras using the supplied FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 cable. You can't run them as fast as 1394B (i.e recording 30 frames per second in 16 bit at 1032x776 pixels which is 46 megabytes per second to disk) but they work fine on 1394A.
HTH..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.
Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5
1-(403)-229-9456
www.outcastsoft.com
On 10-Nov-06, at 3:34 PM, Tim wrote:
Reason I ask is that I'd like to add another camera, and be able to
switch back and forth between it and the Flea as to which I use for
guiding while I image with the other. I have to admit that i like the
color on-chip cameras the best. I have a ST2000XM, Meade DSI Pro, and
prototype Starfish cameras for grayscale, and the SBIG and Meade have
color filters with them. But I must be the ultimate in lazy dude
units, as I use the flea far more than the others because it's so easy
to set up and use, and weighs essentially nothing. (Ever see a C-8
with an ST2000XM with the AO-7 and CFW-10 attached on an EM-10?:
Can't balance in Dec without adding a weight on the sky end of the
dovetail, and then it looks pretty comical).
I also like the Pt Grey cameras' long exposure capability.
But not necessarily their prices. (it looks like I might be able to
buy about 3 low-end TIS cameras for the price of a flea, and I'm
drooling over the even more expensive Scorpions).
I'm planning on adding a Shoestring GPUSB gizmo so I can guide with
one camera, but I haven't ordered one yet.
I still have the Aplux version of the Fire-i, but it's pretty old (4
years) and its sensitivity is pathetic. I've never been able to see
any but the very brightest stars with it.
Thinking out loud... ...hope the noise isn't disturbing! ;o)
-Tim.