[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by wasyoungonce

Its a good idea but you need some finesse here. Extending the wires from the CCD means there will be more electrical noise induced in them, whether it be more voltage drop or induced capacitance hum from surrounds or your body etc.

Maybe you should use twisted pair wires or coaxial wires. I'm in favour of twisted pair for clean signals but in this case because of the signal type I'd go coaxial cable with the shield well earthed.

Maybe even ensuring that it does earth thru a earth stake to dump all EMI.

Also at this stage have you thought about the CCD power supply. I would suspect the one on the cct is cheap and not regulated much (probably its fed by a power pack). Could be a good time to build in a good low ripple supply for the CCD and cctry ....maybe even battery for the CCT and cctry.

Good work, keep it up. I'm dying to see the results.

edit:

forgot to mention, beware moisture build up from the peltier onto the CCD.

Thanks for the advice. I have similar concerns, and without having done this before I guess that time will tell.

In reference to the ribbon rather than shielded, I'm firstly going to try what has already worked for other people. I, by nature, tend to disbelieve what I read until I either prove or disprove it myself. In this case I know of others that work well as long as the length is kept to a minimum and they are not routed past anything else on the way to the CCD. Most of their length will be stored in the trench I'm cutting into the cooling billet - so should recieve some modicum of signal privacy.

Power to the CCD is supplied by the regulated 5v line via the USB port, and that is elevated to 15v on-board. If it proves inadequate I'll add a p/s.

Originally Posted by http://www.madpc.net/~greg/icx414_amp_off.htm

The power supply works as follows:

The CCD circuitry requires regulated +15V and -5.5V. These need to be generated from the +5V dc USB supply. They are produced using a single switching-mode power supply controlled by the SAA8112 (Vesta) or SAA8116 (ToUcam). The output from the switching transistor feeds a boost circuit to give a raw +18V unregulated supply and a buck circuit to produce the unregulated negative supply. The raw boost and buck supplies feed individual fixed voltage regulators that produce the steady +15V and -5.5V supplies needed by the CCD front end.

Thanks for the input!