My Solution:Turn an uncooled camera into a cooled one - Forums

I have a Player One Uranus-C planetary camera. This camera is uncooled.

Player One uses passive cooling, which I wanted to improve. So I chose a smartphone cooler, the Shark FunCooler 3pro. It runs quietly with minimal vibration and features active cooling.

I was able to easily clamp the cooler onto the camera. The cooler can reduce the camera’s temperature by around 10 degrees or more—even below ambient temperature. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to set a fixed target temperature. And there was another issue: when the camera temperature drops below the dew point, a lot of condensation forms on the camera.

I’ve now solved that problem as well. Since I usually power the telescope using household electricity from a wall socket, I bought a Shelly Plug S and connected the cooler through it. I also created a Python script that checks the camera’s temperature every minute, compares it to the approximate ambient temperature and the dew point. The temperatures are read from N.I.N.A. Based on threshold values, the cooler is now automatically switched on and off. As a result, the camera always stays at ambient temperature or just slightly below.

Not comparable to a true cooled camera, but definitely better than nothing—especially in the summer.

Total cost: around €75, including cables.

If anyone is interested in the script, feel free to reach out!

Best regards,

Jochen

I think alot of people try this at some point. I know I did when I was new. You gain very little for the multitude of problems that come with it. The Uranus C has a fan cooler option which is certainly needed on hot nights, but adding a TEC to a system like this turns them into dew factories. Since these cameras are cooled with the case, the thermals get transferred up the camera case to whatever it's attached to, and begins to dew that up as well. Pretty soon your corrector is dewed up, as well as the camera face, and they're all sweating. Any hardware that can, WILL rust or corrode. At one point I was putting dew straps on my correctors to counter this… but it didn't matter. The system produced so much dew that it was impossible to counteract here in the hot southern summers. It was only a week or two till I bought a real camera.

The best bet is to stick with a simple heatsink and fan combo. You should pay attention to the quality of these fans as well, they can induce undesirable vibrations if poorly balanced or bad bearings.

Beyond that, the 585 is pretty stable as long as the chip temp stays under 25C. Once it hits 30C you start to see amp glow. No, that wasn't a typo. The 585 does in fact have amp glow. I didn't test my Uranus C at the time, but the ZWO 585 certainly did it, and I validated it against another ZWO camera.