First circuit (just for starters).

First thing I did.

After looking at the CCD data sheet I new the Transfer gate was on pin 10 (on the CCD), and the Shutter clock was on pin 7 (on the ccd). Following the traces on the PCB I found that the Transfer gate pulse was driven by pin 28(on the Orbit chip), and the Shutter clock was driven by pin 31(on the Orbit chip).

I decided the best place to break the connections was at the Orbit chip. Click the image for details. The lifted legs gave me a good opportunity for connections, rather than trying to solder to the pads on the PCB I decided it best to just solder wires straight on to the CCD pins.

With these four wires I could control both parameters of the CCD I need.

Control circuit 1.

To make sure I could actually do a long exposure I built (just in bread board) the test circuit shown at the side. This gave me a long/normal mode switch and a PTM button for the transfer controll. I would like to say thanks to Martin Burri for giving me the idea to use the 4066 bi-lateral switchs, with my limited electrical knowledge it probably saved me alot of problems. This gives a cleaner signal I think, keeping the wires shorter.

My first long integration images where in my dark bedroom with this setup. I used the Logitech software and set the exposures to the max. This was about 2 seconds integration. The image was very dark.

So I set it into long exposure mode, I held the PTM in for about 6secs. Before the end of the integration the software downloaded some blank frames, so something was happening. When I released the PTM the next frame downloaded was a glorious bright image, like it was taken in the light with some dark noise showing up. This was great but then I thought how can I capture the integrated form.

I contacted Dr. S.J.Wainwright and told him about the work I had done. He advised me to use AstroVideo, and make sure that I used computer control for the integartion.

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