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scavenging ccd chips

Has anyone here ever found a reason to scavenge a ccd chip from an old digital camera? I'd be interested in learning about your experiences.

I don't have an old or new digital camera. I'm somewhat interested in the possibility of building a CCD camera, following Richard Berry's CCD Camera Cookbook, but the Willmann-Bell website estimates it will cost between $350 and $500, the more optimistic figure being based on the assumption (false in my case) that one has one's own metal working shop and the skill to make some of the parts. That's way out of reach for me.

I think it would be good to learn to work with ccd chips, even if I don't build a camera. The book mentioned above assumes that one has a TC211 or TC245 chip to build the camera around. I don't know if the book would be of any value if one tried to use a more modern chip and, unfortunately, Texas Instruments stopped issuing them in 2003. It is still possible to get them at high prices from foreign distributors and it is alleged that University Optics still sells them, even though I can't find any trace of a role for University Optics at the University Optics website; it is also alleged that they are cheaper from University Optics.

As long as I am considering such things, however tentatively, it also makes sense to consider scavenging a CCD chip from a camera to learn to use it. The exercise might even turn up a TC211 or TC245 chip.

One thing I'm looking for is a CCD camera that has RAW output. Conceivably, if I find a CCD camera that doesn't have RAW output, but does have a TC211 or TC245 chip, then it might be possible, armed with the CCD Camera Cookbook, to endow the camera with RAW output capability. The reason I want this is so that I can use the CCD camera to figure out the temperature of a filament in a vacuum tube; I'm told that this is possible, but that one needs a camera with RAW output.

Whether I personally can do it is another matter. But I would at least like to think about it.

--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
Reply to
Allan Adler
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But there has to be a really good reason for building a camera, especially if you are thinking about getting the ccd out of an existing camera.

If you want to learn something, and that's debatable, then you'd be better off starting with a camera and studying what's inside. You're going to come out far ahead.

This is no different from when I said when extracting parts from scrap equipment, you can get information from the circuitry that surrounds it. Given that you are talking about building a camera from a camera, there's really no reason to extract the CCD and then wonder about the rest.

If you actually want to learn the basics, then go back 30 years. That's when digital cameras were virtually non-existent, and if one wanted to play they'd find a suitable dynamic ram IC, pull the top off and put it in circuitry to scan the rows and columns. That was what was in "The Cyclops" in Popular Electronics circa 1976. I remember the basic concept was shown elsewhere afterwards. But then you are actually playing with the basics, pull a CCD now and it's so highly integrated there's not much way to put it back together other than the way the manufacture designed it to be put together.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

Old PC scanners might be a source of CCD's to play with.. Most of them I've seen in the scanners are long and skinny,like a wide DIP,with maybe

30pins and a long glass window on top.
Reply to
PhattyMo

I heard from University Optics. They sold the last of their parts for the kits about 5 years ago.

How different is it to work with more recent ccd chips than it was to work with chips such as the TC211 and TC245?

--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
Reply to
Allan Adler

Someone mentioned scavenging ccd chips from an optical scanner. I found a HP Officejet 4110 All-in-One Printer-Fax-Scanyer-Copier on the street, with no cables and have been wondering what to do with it. Maybe I should try to scavenge a CCD chip from it?

--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
Reply to
Allan Adler

Wouldn't it make far more sense to keep it intact, and try to make something of it that way?

If you extract the CCD, you'll then have to put it in a circuit, and you'll have to find data for the device before you can do that. Keep it intact, and you have the scanner to play with. Remote the the actual scanning pickup if needed by extending the wiring (though that may cause problems if the device isn't intended for driving long lines) and then work around that pickup. Can you make something of it? Is it worth it? Learn from it by observing the circuit in operation, bring that scope back that you find waiting for the garbage truck and use it to study the pins of the ICs while in operation (though be very very careful to not short the pins with the probe).

Use the real product and then start research. How do the scannes work? How do digital cameras work? Go to the library, or do a search, and start with a basic definition and then as the work continues you can get to the more complicated.

How do you mount a lense against the pickup? Is there enough definition that there will be some value from it, or is the density of the pickup reduced because of what it's intending to scan and the fact that the pickup can be physically moved over the page? Remember a digital camera has the pickup static so whatever its density it uses it all to take in the picture, using the lense to concentrate the thing to be photographed on that pickup. If you have to have the pickup physically move up and down to scan someone's face (instead of a page) then that will take for quite a while to "take a picture" since physical movement is limited in speed.

Only when you've learned from it can you then decide whether there is any future to it all or not. If there's a future, that's when you think about extracting just what you need.

You may find you've learned all you want out of it, and then drop the whole project. Or you may find buying a digital camera is far more reasonable than trying to build one from scratch. Or, the information and skill you gather from this project will set the stage for something more grandiose.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

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