I finally managed to track down a used Conectix B/W wecam on E-bay and after a few weeks I was testing and tweaking to my hearts content. I quickly realized I was going to need some sort of box to put this thing in so it would attach to the scope more easily.

After rummaging around some old computer equipment at the office I came across an old IBM PS/2 mouse. Hey, the dimentions were right... Its really light, the hole at the bottom seemed the right size... Well why the heck not??

As it turns out the hole on the bottom where the mouse ball goes in is the exact size of a 35mm film canister. I had to break off and sand down the plastic that held the ball cover in place. Not too much as I was going for a tight fit. If fact the fit turned out to be so good that I didn't even bother to glue the canister in place.

I had a real hoot when I discovered that the IBM mouse's guts were made by Logitech. How ironic... ;o)

On the inside of the mouse the Conecix PCB fits perfectly and the cable is about the same size as the old mouse cable so I could use the plastic guider and retainer that was already part of the mouse houseing.

To hold the PCB in place first I made an outline with an alcohol marker of where I wanted it to stay, and eyeballed more or less the best places for the screws to go and marked them as well. Then I took one of the thicker type paper clips and heated up with a lighter and melted guide holes through the marks I had made. I used the a couple of old serial cables. The type that go from the mother board and end in a 9 or 25 pin D connector on the computer box where you plug in your mouse or modem or whatever. I removed the hex nut with the screw and the little bolt on the inner side of the 9 pin connector and used the hex nut on the inside of the mouse and the bolt on the under side to tighten it in place.

The Conecix PCB is held in place by a strip of plastic I cut out of an old QIC-80 tape box. It was easy enough to cut with scissors without breaking. I made melted a whole on either end with a paper clip and threaded two more hex nuts. This was then screwed on top of the pcb into the hex nuts already in the mouse body. (as seen in the picture below) Nice tight fit. and all ready to close up and pop it on the scope.

And heres a bottom view of the finished product. It is very easy to align the ccd to center as the fit is tight enough to hold the pcb in place from an ocasional bump, but not tight enough to keep you from putting it back into place with your fingers if the alignment goes off. Eventually I'm going to try to setup a computer fan on the other side of the mouse so I can cool my RatCam... One great thing I discoved is that since the ccd chip is much closer to the eyepiece than in the regular ball houseing the camera is now very close to parfocal with my Meade 9mm illuminated reticle eyepiece.

Hey! Whats that on your OTA?!? If nothing else a mouse hanging off the back of your telescope does attract a lot of attention. My father and I had a real laugh at how ridiculous the thing looks on the LX50. But, hey... Its works! Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I'll have a few pictures posted.