Flea3 questions

[John Hothersall]

Hello Guys, I have emigrated from the UK and our shipping has finally arrived today so am checking scope later today (tube looks fine), I am a deep space/lunar/planetary imager. Was thinking of upgrading my DMKfirewire to a Flea3 which this forum has shown to be the latest quality planetary CCD with improved red sensitivity.

*Do Australians have to pay any tax or charges for goods entering this country (I had to in UK at 17.5%).

*Will the Express Card in the development kit work with my Inspiron Vista laptop which has a 54mm card port. I assume Express card has a power input pin for powering Flea3.

Anyway it will take a couple of weeks to setup the mount and scope and align if the kit is all accounted for - missing the pedastel tube, it must be somewhere with plenty of boxed still unopened.

Thanks, JohnH.

[Hans Tucker]

You do not pay duty for Astronomical products and if you can keep your total purchase & shipping costs below $1000 you are not up for any GST or custom fees.

Above $1000 add 10% plus admin fees which usualy are around the $60 mark for processing paper work. eg for a purchase cost of $1000 AUS the total cost you would end up paying would be around $1160.

I am looking at the Flea 3 and trying to decide between the ICX 618, 5.6 micron or ICX 414, 9.9 micron sensor...so I am also trying to work out the PCI or PCI express development kit issue.

[John Hothersall]

Thanks Hans, the Flea3 looks very exiting and without customs tax is cheaper than the Skynyx and may be better. The 414 sensor is 9.9micron but is not as sensitive as the 618 even though larger. I have heard elsewhere that the 414 is more of a deep space CCD not sensitive enough for planets.

John.

[Hans Tucker]

Thanks John..whilst I did know the 414 had larger pixel size I didn't know about the sensitivity..guess the choice is made and the 618 is the way to go.

If you want a user perspective of the Flea3 check out the Images>Solar System section of IIS (if you haven't already)....Quark (Trevor) and Bird (Anthony) are Flea3 users and the results they are posting are impressive and something to aspire to. Drop them a PM if you need more specific answers to your questions.

[John Hothersall]

Thanks Hans, I have been sending questions to Dorothy Milde of PGR and she says the Express card in the development kit should work with my Inspiron laptop EC 54mm slot.

Looks like when I have set up my mount and scope I will be getting this within the month and am quite excited. It would be too expensive from the UK but now I am in Oz all is possible.

Bird and Quark are performing wonders and replacing my 8bit DMK with same size pixels will make an easier progression.

JohnH.

[bird]

Hi John, if the expresscard is a 34mm version (expresscard/34) then it will work in either an expresscard/34 or expresscard/54 socket. All the firewire-800 expresscards that I've seen (umm, all two models) are expresscard/34 type.

I'd expect the one with the dev kit to be the unibrain expresscard/34, same as I have although I bought mine separately from www.1394store.com.

cheers, Bird

[John Hothersall]

Thanks for that Bird, looks like I will be ordering one soon and will be a significant improvement over my DMK21AF which has served me well. As a first time user of PGR CCD I have to get the development kit but it seems like it should be fine.

Not sure what bit depth the F3 will give at what frame rates so I will have to experiment but the red sensitivity looks wonderful.

JohnH.

[Hans Tucker]

Ok..I need a bit of education here....I have an ASUS M50SA Series Laptop which has a IEEE 1394 port. Do I still need the development kit..if so what does this do and what is the difference between the standard and express. I thought I had a basic understanding of computers but this Firewire has me stumped..sorry for the display of ignorance but I initially thought the development kit was to provide an 1395 port to computers that dont have Firewire capability.

[John Hothersall]

Hello Hans, the IEEE port on your computer is probably 4 pin which will not provide power unless you use a Y connector, having an Express card slot makes it much easier not sure if the IEEE port will work with an adapter. I am not computer literate myself but the link below may help.

http://www.ptgrey.com/support/downloads/documents/Flea3_Getting_Started.pdf

John.

[Hans Tucker]

I have been in contact with Dorothy Milde of PGR but I can't get a straight answer about whether PGR offers adapter cards for laptops. All the so called PCI & PCIe adapter cards contained in their Development Kits are for desktop computers and it appears they won't sell the Flea3 camera unless you also purchase the Development Kit. So I guess I will have to look at another brand of camera for planetary imaging.