Well tonight I saw Karen and Martin come round as we tried to sort this camera out.and in a lot of ways, we did sort the camera out, except for the capturing of in focus video :( Once more it seems auto-focus is my enemy, oh how I hate it! Still all is not lost, the MacGuyver'd webcam from hell works, looks through scope, captures pics, is all good apart form the one little focussing issue .. which I will solve if it kills me. The circuit board for the camera is mounted on the (green) lid of an old 35mm film canister, which was then snapped back onto the canister, and gaffer taped to the super-plossl metal body, with eyepiece removed. It actually worked, apart form the afore-mentioned auto focus.
Many many thanks to Martin for his amazing gaffer-tape engineering skills and Karen for being the Lady of the Light and also being awesomely enthusiastic and patient at us guys rigging stuff. Highlight of the evening was rigging up a rockband powered usb hub to boost the camera signal through about 4 or 5 usb extensions ...
Addendum
Ok, I think I may have a solution .. I taped the camera onto the eyepiece, and although I had to guess focus (no laptop - all donations welcome!) it seemed to work a lot better ... I now have some video of Jupiter moving across my FOV .. with 4 moons visible right now it's 668 million kms away too!
... So all is not lost I say, and now, bed
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