Make a USB Telescope Alnect Komputer

Much like McGuyver we're always looking to do interesting and what the kids might describe as 'cool things' with other people's - and frankly our own - discarded rubbish. While Management considers our all-day Alnect Komputer surfing as frivolous waste of company money and most recently, a dismissing offence. We deem it an essential core to our job description, but that's just between us and an industrial tribunal.

On a more recent Alnect Komputer trawl we came across the lucrative SLR film market. As the entire world has moved to digital there's a huge glutt of old and cheap film SLR cameras to be had. Even better is that many manual focus lenses - useless in this electronic metering day-and-age - are still in top-notch working condition and can be snapped up for effectively peanuts.

Combine the lens with a webcam, and you have an instant digital telescope. The only problem being how to effectively mesh the lens and webcam? One solution would be to use a suitable 70mm drainpipe to create a mount. However, it struck us that it'd be easier to buy either a mount-converter and epoxy this to the pipe or better yet just buy a suitable SLR film.

We actually felt quite bad as the SLR camera we got was in such good condition it was obviously loved by its previous owner. So here's how we destroyed it.

What you will Need

1. Spare webcam

2. 200mm telephoto lens Suitable SLR film back

3. Or suitable piping and adaptor

Let's get going.

First, open up the webcam and remove intact the internal PCB and lens.

We won't need the webcam's own lens, so remove and discard. The camera's lens will do all the focusing onto the detector.

Here's our telephoto lens. The mounting is suitably complex, which is why we opted for the SLR back option.

If you don't have an old SLR back the best alternative is to grab a lens adaptor and screw it to some suitable 70mm piping and using an end cap, mount the webcam around 35mm from the lens' end.

Continuing with the SLR back. It will have a movable main mirror and shutter curtain, these can both be taped open, though you will have to fire the camera to trap the curtain.

The webcam sensor has to be mounted vertically and horizontally central at the rear of the camera back.

We stuck the sensor to a wide strip of plastic that could be moved until it was in the perfect position and fixed this in position.

Finally we knocked out the film infowindow and fed out the USB cable Alnect Komputer.