I have a dialogue going at the moment with Liquid Digital Solutions re long exposures on the Agent web cams. I don't think they knew about the modded ones and were quite interested in what we have done with them. I'll post any more info when it comes to hand.
What modded ones Bill????? I got mine going the other night on the Tak - and it was overwhelmed by the moon until I turned all the settings right down. What have you managed with yours? Any photos?
Here's one I did the other night - a real quick'n'nasty. Lots of improvement to go once I get to understand its characteristics.
I tried mine on Tuesday night for the first time, after receiving my Mogg adapter. I've taken the camera board out of the metal casing and at the moment it just mounts via the adapter.
First tests indicate that the camera is very sensitive to IR.
I wouldn't wait for anything technical from Liquid Digital though. When I had questions they basically said 'we don't know, we'll ask someone who knows'. That response never comes.
Are you guys definitely getting 1.3MP? Mine maxes out at 640x480.
One thing to look out for after extracting the board from the housing, well this is how mine went anyway.
I found that there was one wire (thicker black one) that appeared to have come away from the pcb. There were five wires, five solder pads, but this wire was hanging loose above the pad. I soldered the wire back on, but the camera wouldn't work. I checked for shorts, breakages, and whatever else for a while, but found nothing. The only thing different was that I'd soldered that wire on, so I desoldered it, and the camera fired up again.
Has anyone managed to do a one-on-one comparison to the ToUcam yet? I can't remember my ToUcam's performance well enough to be able to draw any conclusion - but I suspect the aGent isn't as sensitive under 1 lux.
I'd love to be able to set the software to default values and then swap the two around and see...
I tried mine last night on the 102mm. Full moon does flood it unless you turn everything down. I've used it on partial moons with some success on the 150 reflector.
It goes to 1024x768 & 5 frames/sec with the latest software. (You can download it from the LDS site) but I think its the later version, Vista compatible, cam. Worth trying the software with the earlier version, it could improve things.
Don't think its as sensitive as the toucam from what I've seen, tried it on some dimmer objects with no success, thats why I was enquiring about conversions for longer exposures. I have a DSI 1 that won't show much if the exposure is under 1 sec in Nebulosity, thinking it might be the same for the Agent.
This is stack of 20 frames from a 1/4 waxing moon.
I've managed to download the ver3 software but it doesn't recognise my camera, so it must be a Ver2.
Just been trying it on backyard things mounted on a 28mm camera lens using K3CCD tools and it appears long exposures may be possible using that software. Cloudy here again so not much chance of a star test for a day or two at least
I stumbled across this thread and got interested.
I searched the web and found there is an Agent V5 webcam now which is a 2 MP low light CCD with a glass lens that seems ideal to adapt to a scope, there is even an optional lens adapter to 37mm lenses. One review says it gets hot after an hour though.
Anyone tried one of these yet?
I am looking for a digital cam for my new scope (which hasnt arrived yet, a Nexstar 8SE)
I have both V4 and V5. Will try testing it tmw night hopefully if other users with tracking scopes don't mind.
I hve managed to get full resolution but it is extremely sensetive to IR and needs stacks of filtering. Managed to get an image with my 12" DOB but very difficult to hold the image and the DOB is extemely powerful. 20mm lense gives me a full moon image while the Agent give me massive magnifacation without lensing.
The image resolution is dependant on the software.
Just arrived this morning is my IR Filter, Moon Filter and Focal Reducer along with my right angle finderscope so I will give it another go.
Due to the high res the AVI I get is extremely large file but I downloaded and installed Advanced Video Editor which allowed t manipulate the AVI into BMP. Only really tried this over 1 night plenty more experimenting to go.
One thing about my setup is no tracing so I relied heavily AVI mnipulation which is difficult at best.
Just arrived this morning is my IR Filter, Moon Filter and Focal Reducer along with my right angle finderscope so I will give it another go.
Update, this camera is excessive bright. With IR, Moon and even a single polarising filter it was still excessive on Jupiter. The only way I could get the bands to show on Jupiter was to place the cover on the front of the tube. This though reduced the resolution significantly.
Interesting to see how well this goes for bright dark sky objects.