Author Archives: james

Xbox Live Camera on Linux (Part 3)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by james

It seems I made an error in my initial attempt to get the exposure settings working for this camera in the uvcvideo driver. The camera appears to accept a far greater range of settings for exposure than I initially thought. … Continue reading →

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Xbox Live Camera on Linux (Part 2)

Posted on April 16, 2012 by james

Last night I discovered that I wasn’t able to change the gain setting on the camera using the V4L2 API. No matter what setting I used all my captures turned out the same, using what I presume to be the … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astronomy, Linux, Projects | Leave a comment

Kernel Patch for Xbox Live Camera on Linux

Posted on April 13, 2012 by james

I’ve done some more work on getting the Xbox Live camera to work properly on Linux this evening and have submitted a patch to the development mailing list. I don’t know if it will get included in some future driver … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Linux | Leave a comment

SPC900 Camera on Linux

Posted on April 13, 2012 by james

Because of the problems I’ve been having with the Xbox Live camera with my SheevaPlug I decided to give one of my SPC900 cameras a try. I don’t really want to use these as I had another purpose in mind, … Continue reading →

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Xbox Live Camera on Linux

Posted on April 13, 2012 by james

I’ve been tempted to build a couple of camera projects recently, the first being a camera to capture the images to create an Analemma, which shows the path of the sun through the sky at a fixed time (usually at … Continue reading →

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The Beginning of a New Dobsonian

Posted on April 12, 2012 by james

I recently had the chance to acquire some bits left over from a damaged Skywatcher 250mm Flextube dobsonian telescope for not very many pennies. As a result I’m now the proud owner of a the mirror and cell, spider (with … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astronomy, Projects | 1 Comment

Veg Plot Progress

Posted on April 12, 2012 by james

Busy times at the moment. This is the veg. plot as it looked at the start of March. It’s a big plot and in previous years has taken a very long time to dig over by hand, so this year … Continue reading →

Posted in Polytunnel, Smallholding, Veg plot | Leave a comment

Focal Ratio and Capture Length for Planetary Imaging

Posted on March 26, 2012 by james

Thus far with my planetary imaging I’ve used capture times and focal ratios just “by the book” without actually understanding how the answers were derived, so I decided it was about time I worked things out for myself. I’ve summarised … Continue reading →

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Notes on Using the SPC900NC for Planetary Imaging

Posted on March 24, 2012 by james

A while back I was looking for information on which codec was best for data capture from the SPC900 cameras and found several web pages suggesting that YUY2 (aka YUYV, I believe) was best on the grounds that it generated … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astroimaging, Astronomy | Leave a comment

Observation Report 23 March 2012

Posted on March 24, 2012 by james

I’ve not written many observation reports recently, mainly because I’ve spent my time concentrating on planetary imaging. I’m still doing that, now starting to turn my attention towards Saturn as well as Mars, but there’s time during the imaging runs … Continue reading →

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