Technology

The basics of this modification are derived from the great work of Steve Chambers and his colleagues at QCUIAG

COPYRIGHT NOTICE! The inventor and author of the basic idea of this modification is Steve Chambers. The author is asking that the information about modification is not used by others for personal gain. Any individuals or companies wishing to produce commercial products based on the modifications shown on his website please contact him directly.

This is the first publishing of the modification applied to the Logitech QC Pro 3000 cam. Please do not copy for other purposes than personal reference or publish information shown on this web site without asking the author (me). 

You may find the reading here useful for the basics in low exposure exploration. 

Here is an animation which may help to understand how such a modification will allow long exposure imaging (it is a large animated GIF file 114kB size - allow some to for the download)

Basic work has  been done by modifying a Vesta WebCam and the one used is controlled by a Phillips SAA8115HL through a NEC uPD16510 vertical CCD driver.

Going through the specs of the SAA 8116HL and the Sony driver chip CXD1267AN I assumed that it should be possible to apply this modification in a similar way to the Pro 3000 Cam.

The next step was to establish the pin-out and the required interfacing for the CXD1267AN chip. I took the approach of JP. Bourgeay who uses bipolar switches to control the shutter and exposure control lines. After the first run I decided to use two interface lines to control the shutter and the gate independently of each other. (While the original layout uses an MC4066 I had only an MC4016 at hand - same pin-out but somewhat more 'ON' resistance - it worked out to be OK). You will find my final layout here. The design is made, that the cam is working in regular mode if the parallel plug is not connected to the PC - but avoiding the switch which was used for this purpose in the original design.

Where and what to do

After this rather theoretical journey I had to find the location of the chips and pins.

NO WARRANTY LEFT AFTER OPENING THE HOUSING 

Here is some information about opening the cam.

Prepare your working area! Use ESD equipment. Fasten the cam to something.

Handle the cam with care and always leave the lens within the CCD mounting it prevents dust on the surface.

The highlighted spot is the area where the mod must be applied. Two connections must be broken up and the wiring to the Bi-Switch IC established.

You may follow the pictures to the right where the progress is shown.

Phew - some sweat and shaky hands after this one.

But there is more fun coming up! Take the solder iron and prepare it for 1/10mm work - I had to file at it to make a small tip; about 1.5 mm wide worked well.

There are a lot of very useful tips how to solder and what to do if something breaks on other pages - I do not repeat it here.

Just one link I found very informative (quite formal but a lot of technique explained)

Also for this step the progress is shown in the picture line to the right.

Soldering the wires to the IC socket and the parallel plug is easy after doing all the work on the cams tiny PCB and chips.

Again make sure that the all wires are fastened with glue or tape so they do not break off when a cable is handled or moved around.

If you reach this step, the cam is ready to test.

If it still works - Congratulations !!!

My circuit layout

Working area

Another working area picture

The Shutter pin lifted

The V-Gate connection

The 4 soldering points

Almost done

Connecting power