The old Foscam webcam at the Mt. John Observatory AAVSOnet telescope, OC61, is failing. Its IR illuminator barely shows the telescope. I'd like to replace it. Of course, 10 years later, there are hundreds of webcams, and I'm getting tired of trying to get the necessary information from hard-to-find manuals. Perhaps someone has gone through this exercise recently and can give some recommendations?
- HD quality or above
- IR illumination to 100ft or more
- IR illumination must be switchable so can turn off during observing
- tip/pan/tilt nice, but adjustment to one pointing probably good enough
- probably exterior designated use, since dome is not heated
- wifi and/or ethernet
- must work with Win10 PC, not just an iPhone app
- price under $100
Arne
Hi Arne,
I cannot help in your search but one point of concern is that Adobe has stopped support of their Flash Player on which many of the webcams run.
BTW. Did you continue of testing the QHY600. Your last comments are from middle of 2020.
Regards,
Josch
Hi Josch,
Yes, I should have specifically said no flash, but that was the meaning of the "must work on Win10, not just an iphone app" comment. One of the hard things to "ferret" out of the manuals is whether the IR illuminator on cameras can be turned on/off, and not just come on automatically in the dark. The Foscam was nice to provide this settable feature. Having an observatory webcam is essential for the AAVSOnet robotic telescopes, as it is hard to tell from a distance whether things are working correctly.
I have two more posts for the QHY600 that will be appearing shortly. I've also tested the STC-428-P and the ZWO ASI294mm-pro, and those reviews will be upcoming shortly as well.
Arne
Hi Arne,
just bought a HIKAM Q8 (about 45 USD) webcam for my observatory. It took a bit of time to get connected. Needed to be close to the router but now it works.
You can put the IR led's auto, always on or always off. The PC program works on my WIn10 desktop and there is an Android app for the smartphone.
It seems not to use Adobe Flash player for the display of the webcam.
Regards,
Josch