Today cheapest Deva, it used to be $275, is gone from the market and others are significantly more expensive. So I advised using Samsung Ultra High Resolution SCB-2000 or similar CCTV camera with sense-up and EasyCAP DC 60 for video capture. What is idea, with sense-up activated up to x512, camera will internally stack up to 512 frames and capture will not take more than few seconds. About any equatorial mount with motor drive must be able to pull few seconds of decent tracking without significant errors. Naturally those cameras are not mach for DSLR camera. They are able to produce 752 × 582 on PAL and with sense-up activated noise ratio is not nominal 50dB. So how pictures actually look like? For example South African amateur astronomer Lucas Ferreira did quite few captures with Samsung SCB-4000 through 10" Newtonian Reflector and his pictures are here http://www.lucastronomy.co.za/Gallery/categories.php?cat_id=17. Looking at picture description we see that complete capture takes about 12 seconds with sense-up x512. While quality is very far from Hubble to get any kind of picture in 12 seconds with any normal camera one needs about two meters of aperture. So, I guess you agree with me CCTV camera can pull maximum out of small 5" Newtonian and even utilize his for proper astrophotography wobbly motor drive.
After giving advice I decided to put together CCTV camera and capture device and plug all that into PC. It is not horribly complicated and may be interesting. So, I ordered EasyCAP D60+ on local website and it arrived in couple of days. I plugged it in USB port and executed lsusb and it says ID 1c88:0007 Somagic, Inc. SMI Grabber (EasyCAP DC60+ clone) [SMI-2021CBE]. Before I ordered I did read up and I was aware that there are four EasyCAP clones, two good ones, one so-so and one bad. Whole introductory story about EasyCAP on Linux is available on Linux TV, here http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Easycap. That was so-so case. Following instructions from Linux TV I am on easycap-somagic-linux website and now following their instructions. It says install Wine - I hate Wine, but OK. Try to install driver from CD under Wine it reports error. After few attempts, start Windows Server 2003 inside VM, install driver and copy over SmiUsbGrabber3C.sys to extract firmware. Everything goes well and device is initialised, it says now ID is 1c88:003c and time to plug in DVD player and try it. There is no sound but I do not really need it. Here is screen capture of MPlayer:
Not very promising. Try different settings, different capture parameters and most important eject DVD. The last one brings color:
While I got video and even color, it is not usable for what I need it. Attempted capture in Windows inside VM, nothing it is black screen for duration of capture. Give it to my son to install driver to his gaming box - doesn’t want to install, Windows 7 doesn’t like driver and doesn’t want to use it. Try booting into Windows XP, the same story. Maybe it works on Mac? Sorry do not have Mac to try it. Time to put aside Somagic, no magic today, and give to guys from easycap-somagic-linux time to finish driver, it produces some results already.
Ordering more EasyCAP devices with probability of 50% to get usable one or going for more expensive one which works? Think that will go for slightly more expensive device and wait to see it working before I recommend it to anybody.
If anybody managed to use Somagic EasyCAP DC60+ on any operating system, I would like to hear about it, so please leave comment.
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