The Tiny1 Astronomy Camera

[tinymos]

Hello everyone,

We are a Singaporean based startup that developed the Tiny1 - World's first Astronomy camera made Small, Smart and Social. Traditionally, astrophotography is an expensive hobby with a steep learning curve that may deter many from picking it up. We believe in making astronomy and astrophotography easy and accessible to all, which is why we made the Tiny1

You can find us at http://tinymos.com while the Tiny1's specifications can be found here: http://bit.ly/tiny1_specs. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reply to this thread or email us at support@tinymos.com. We are more than happy to address them.

Let us grow the Astronomy community together.

Clear skies,
Team TinyMOS

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Hi team tinymos,
About your camera: What is the lens specifications? How do you focus or is that auto/digitally controlled? Do you get to change exposure/iso for things like star trails?
Thanks!

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by Lognic04

Hi team tinymos,
About your camera: What is the lens specifications? How do you focus or is that auto/digitally controlled? Do you get to change exposure/iso for things like star trails?
Thanks!

Hi Logan,

About your camera: What is the lens specifications?

The camera supports CS mount lenses. It comes with a 4mm F1.2 wide angle lens, equivalent to 28mm FOV on Full Frame DSLR

How do you focus or is that auto/digitally controlled?

The lenses are manually focused. Sadly autofocus doesn't work for stars/DSO etc. We will build in a FWHM calculation tool to determine focus quality. We may have a point to bright star to assist the user to find a bright object to check focus on.

Do you get to change exposure/iso for things like star trails?

Yes you can have manual overrides to the capture presets if you're a pro user.

Hope this helps!
Team TinyMOS

[trent_julie]

Hi Team,
I have seen the video for this project. Good luck it seems like an interesting endeavour!

Trent

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by trent_julie

Hi Team,
I have seen the video for this project. Good luck it seems like an interesting endeavour!

Trent

Hello trent_julie,

Thank you so much for your kind words. We are working hard to bring astrophotography to the masses. Tune in to our campaign page at get.tinymos.com for more updates on our progress!

Team TinyMOS

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Thanks Team tinymos! cant wait to see the finished camera!

[Regulus (Trevor)]

Hi TinyMOS

Is there a downloadable PDF or similar of the complete specs?
I cannot see anywhere the aperture, or shutter speed range, on the website.
This may be an excellent Aurora photography tool, but I need some control for ISO (up to 800) and shutter speed (up to 45secs, or maybe 30 would do with this aperture of 1.4)

Trevor

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by Regulus

Hi TinyMOS

Is there a downloadable PDF or similar of the complete specs?
I cannot see anywhere the aperture, or shutter speed range, on the website.
This may be an excellent Aurora photography tool, but I need some control for ISO (up to 800) and shutter speed (up to 45secs, or maybe 30 would do with this aperture of 1.4)

Trevor

Hello Trevor,

Thank you for the questions. Unfortunately, we do not have a downloadable PDF for the Tiny1's specifications. The only one available can be found at http://bit.ly/tiny1_specs.

The aperture depends on the lens which you use since the Tiny1 allows for interchangeable lenses.

The shutter speed on the Tiny1 can go from 1/10000 to 60 seconds. ISO can go up to 3200 and can be controlled as you would expect for a manual camera.

With regards to Aurora photography, I am pleased to say we have an aurora function that can automate the process for you. Of course, this is just an option so you are still able to use the Tiny1 with your preferred settings.

Hope I've answered your questions

Team TinyMOS

[Regulus (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by tinymos

Hope I've answered your questions

Thank you, yes, answered satisfactorily.
I will keep an eye out for the appearance of Canon EF mount adapters then. Cheers.


Trev

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by Regulus

I will keep an eye out for the appearance of Canon EF mount adapters then.

Trev

The Tiny1 supports the Canon EF mount adapters, but available only in manual focus

Team TinyMOS

[sil (Steve)]

I'm really excited to get mine and see how well it performs. My hope is it'll allow me to get more astrophotography done easier, as a stroke left me without a working left arm and walking/balance difficulties that make it difficult to use my heavier gear (hell any gear really). I think this'll work nicely on my polarie and I really hope the built in augmented reality star map will make it easier to get my targets in shot without a lot of painful guesswork I currently have. I also hope it doesn't rely on a mobile phone for operation, I've been burnt a few times because the apps tend to only be developed for current generation OSes and I can't afford (or want) to upgrade my phone every few months. My iphone is permanently stuck on iOS7 and won't update.


Also sounds like it might be fun to play as a daytime IR camera, I assume there will be a manual/custom white balance option to help with that? I couldn't see anything about photographing the sun, again I assume the sensor is safe to do that with an appropriate baader filter attached or through a solarscope (I havent done much photoagraphy with my coronado again because of difficulties).

I've heard on forums some people "poo-pooing" the Tiny1 for all the usual ignorant reasons: sensor size, pixel size, etc etc. TinyMOS are not claim this is a pocket replace for expensive SBIG and other dedicated imaging systems. Nor is it a replacement for DSLRs. But it does look like an easy option for people to get into some good astrophotography a bit more accessibly, and maybe fill in the gap between traditional photography and typical astrophotography (ie lots of capture frames and post processing work). I'm definitely keen to test it against my D800 and hopefully get back outside looking at the skies a bit more.

I've just gotten an email from TinyMOS. There's an android app demo you can check out (I only have one phone not android so can't try myself) http://bit.ly/tin1demo.

Also there are some Tiny1 cameras available to preorder at early bird price at: http://bit.ly/Tiny1_secretperk.

[dannat (Daniel)]

sensor size appears fairly small, even compared with u4/3 which can also use c-mount lenses -all for the cost of a new entry level d-slr or u4/3 camera.
am i wrong in thinking its a webcam in a pocket camera housing?

[Regulus (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by dannat

am i wrong in thinking its a webcam in a pocket camera housing?

Interesting thought Daniel. A webcam with software to give manual controls.

Trev

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by sil

I'm really excited to get mine and see how well it performs. My hope is it'll allow me to get more astrophotography done easier, as a stroke left me without a working left arm and walking/balance difficulties that make it difficult to use my heavier gear (hell any gear really). I think this'll work nicely on my polarie and I really hope the built in augmented reality star map will make it easier to get my targets in shot without a lot of painful guesswork I currently have. I also hope it doesn't rely on a mobile phone for operation, I've been burnt a few times because the apps tend to only be developed for current generation OSes and I can't afford (or want) to upgrade my phone every few months. My iphone is permanently stuck on iOS7 and won't update.


Also sounds like it might be fun to play as a daytime IR camera, I assume there will be a manual/custom white balance option to help with that? I couldn't see anything about photographing the sun, again I assume the sensor is safe to do that with an appropriate baader filter attached or through a solarscope (I havent done much photoagraphy with my coronado again because of difficulties).

I've heard on forums some people "poo-pooing" the Tiny1 for all the usual ignorant reasons: sensor size, pixel size, etc etc. TinyMOS are not claim this is a pocket replace for expensive SBIG and other dedicated imaging systems. Nor is it a replacement for DSLRs. But it does look like an easy option for people to get into some good astrophotography a bit more accessibly, and maybe fill in the gap between traditional photography and typical astrophotography (ie lots of capture frames and post processing work). I'm definitely keen to test it against my D800 and hopefully get back outside looking at the skies a bit more.

I've just gotten an email from TinyMOS. There's an android app demo you can check out (I only have one phone not android so can't try myself) http://bit.ly/tin1demo.

Also there are some Tiny1 cameras available to preorder at early bird price at: http://bit.ly/Tiny1_secretperk.

Thank you for your kind words Sil. Yes, we did get some flak because we're quite unconventional in our hardware design.

Now to answer your questions:

1) Yes it works in standalone mode. That's a major thing we wanted to solve. We tried using scientific cameras before, the fact that we needed our laptop leaves a lot to be desired. It makes the trip so much more complicated.

2) It is designed to work with both iOS and Android. We try to maintain compatibility as much as possible but cannot guarantee iOS 7 at the moment.

3) Daytime IR would be possible with a software switch. However you'll need to find a way to get an IR pass filter. That is something we haven't looked into yet.

4) We've imaged the Sun before with a Thousand Oak filter during the solar eclipse. We've also imaged the Sun before using a 0.5A Etalon with help from the National University of Singapore. We'll see if can publish those soon.

5) Regarding WB for IR in day time - we're looking into that but we can't confirm if we can get natural colors without the IR cut filter. It appears we need to use some color remapping to achieve that and it wouldn't work in all conditions. Probably best left to advanced users (:

Keep the questions coming, we'll answer them to the best we can.

Cheers,
Grey
On behalf of TinyMOS team
get.tinymos.com

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by Regulus

Interesting thought Daniel. A webcam with software to give manual controls.

Trev

Hi guys,

We're not a webcam with software to give manual controls. We previously built a prototype in a similar manner to show the use case but the performance was horrible. USB doesn't have the throughput to give good refresh rate (think a 2 second refresh lag), especially since the images need to go through an Image Processor (ISP) to give a preview in real time.

We did design the camera with pro-users in mind though. We realize from the start that a 1/3" sensor won't compete with the large sensor cameras for DSO imaging. So we went all out on the planetary, lunar and solar side. We're doing 4MP at 60fps for lucky shot imaging, by buffering into 4GB of RAM on the system.

Best,
Grey
On behalf of TinyMOS

[sil (Steve)]

Originally Posted by tinymos

5) Regarding WB for IR in day time - we're looking into that but we can't confirm if we can get natural colors without the IR cut filter. It appears we need to use some color remapping to achieve that and it wouldn't work in all conditions. Probably best left to advanced users (:

get.tinymos.com

By IR photography i'm more interested in creative IR. Currently I'd use an unmodified camera with an R72 IR filter attached, switch to custom white balance and point the camera at a green tree or grass to set my white balance, then my landscape shots come out with white foliage. Its a creative look i like, the rest of the colours are of course all wrong and i leave them as the camera sees them.

No doubt I'll play with the Tiny1s daytime capabilities but dont want or need it to be a daytime camera. Keep your focus on getting the astrophotography correct

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by sil

By IR photography i'm more interested in creative IR. Currently I'd use an unmodified camera with an R72 IR filter attached, switch to custom white balance and point the camera at a green tree or grass to set my white balance, then my landscape shots come out with white foliage. Its a creative look i like, the rest of the colours are of course all wrong and i leave them as the camera sees them.

No doubt I'll play with the Tiny1s daytime capabilities but dont want or need it to be a daytime camera. Keep your focus on getting the astrophotography correct

Cool, that sounds like fun. I think our CTO used to do that with a modified DSLR. It just didn't occur to me. - Grey

[Nikolas (Nik)]

All quoted in US dollars which means it's more expensive for Aussies, bit of a putoff for the budget conscious.
I'm still not sure if this is just a gimmick or not.
I'd like to see a proper video showing its capabilities and not a slick marketing vid. Is that possible?

[tinymos]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

All quoted in US dollars which means it's more expensive for Aussies, bit of a putoff for the budget conscious.
I'm still not sure if this is just a gimmick or not.
I'd like to see a proper video showing its capabilities and not a slick marketing vid. Is that possible?

Hello Nikolas,

We are able to do a Skype video with you to show you the prototype. If you know anyone else who is interested as well, you can invite them to join us as well. I'll PM you the Skype ID which you can reach us on.

Team TinyMOS

[Nikolas (Nik)]

I'd prefer all to be out in the open on the forum for transparency, some of us have a life and no time to skype.
Can you answer my questions on here? If not then I'm not convinced.