2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#1

Post by cremno » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:27 PM UTC

2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera
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Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#2

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

That's worthy of the term 'hack'. Very neat :)

There should be some silly way of doing this with just a single photo diode and a speaker to provide one axis of motion and to let the Earth's rotation provide the other axis.

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#3

Post by djhworld » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

Really fun read, thanks

Next step, find the Gameboy Printer and print out your shots!

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#4

Post by tbabb » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

Very cool.

I'd be very curious to see what happens if you do exposure stacking-- in principle, you could get a lot more bit depth!

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#5

Post by throwaway1572 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #4

Very cool. I'd be very curious to see what happens if you do exposure stacking-- in principle, you could get a lot more bit depth!

Came here to say exactly this! In addition, you could stack and them once you have something that's at least 8 bits per pixel use Photoshop to clean things up.

I guess instead of making an HDR image from SDR images you'd be making an SDR image from LDR images. :-)

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#6

Post by Jyaif » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 7:02 PM UTC

I doubt the CMOS is only 2 bits, otherwise we wouldn't have such nice dithering pattern. Somewhere in RAM there's probably at one point a representation of the image with at least 3 bits per pixel.

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#7

Post by anfractuosity » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 7:23 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #2

That's worthy of the term 'hack'. Very neat :) There should be some silly way of doing this with just a single photo diode and a speaker to provide one axis of motion and to let the Earth's rotation provide the other axis.

Heh that'd be very cool! Do it!

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#8

Post by Luc » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

Jyaif wrote: post #6

I doubt the CMOS is only 2 bits, otherwise we wouldn't have such nice dithering pattern. Somewhere in RAM there's probably at one point a representation of the image with at least 3 bits per pixel.

The camera outputs analog values. I don't know for sure but I bet the dithering is applied right after the analog pixel is converted to digital...

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#9

Post by objclxt » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 7:31 PM UTC

Luc wrote: post #8

Jyaif wrote: post #6

I doubt the CMOS is only 2 bits, otherwise we wouldn't have such nice dithering pattern. Somewhere in RAM there's probably at one point a representation of the image with at least 3 bits per pixel.

The camera outputs analog values. I don't know for sure but I bet the dithering is applied right after the analog pixel is converted to digital...

Yep, here's the technical data sheet for the chip:

https://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalPro...

Re: 2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera

#10

Post by rocky1138 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 7:31 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #2

That's worthy of the term 'hack'. Very neat :) There should be some silly way of doing this with just a single photo diode and a speaker to provide one axis of motion and to let the Earth's rotation provide the other axis.

Can you explain what you mean?