CCD with controllable clocks

I'm working on a new scheme to do high-cadence photometry using CCDs by
shifting the image during exposure.

(Shift the image, pause for a millisecond or so, shift the image,
pause, repeat..., and while you are doing that you are continuously
reading the shifted rows. The basic idea is similar to what the
Taiwan-America Occultation Survey is doing
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003BaltA..12..568C )

For what I want to do, I need a CCD camera with

1) High speed readout and transfer ( 1Mpixel/s, even at the expense of
noise)

2) Interline or frame transfer CCD. (Full frame might be usable if it
is a 4-phase device that supports shifting the image in both
directions.)

3) Computer-programmable control of the clock lines, so that my program
can control (e.g. running on a desktop computer using standard APIs, or
a microcontroller attached to interface lines) can shift the image,
shift the frame transfer area, transfer to the interline registers,
etc.
Most cameras nowadays have everything controlled by an onboard
microcontroller that doesn't give the flexibility I need.

The CCD doesn't have to be large format for trying out my ideas. (Plan
B is to adapt a Cookbook245 camera (circa 1995 homebuilt CCD camera
with TV resolution))

Does anybody know of a good camera with these characteristics?

Thanks.

--
David M. Palmer (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)

On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 05:17:20 GMT, "David M. Palmer"
wrote:

I'm working on a new scheme to do high-cadence photometry using CCDs by
shifting the image during exposure...

Does anybody know of a good camera with these characteristics?

Nearly all of the SBIG cameras support drift-scan operation. Some
software, such as Maxim, allows you to set the shift rate to anything
you want, which sound like what you want to do.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

David,

Take a look at this. It may be useful. I haven't tried it, but it looks
interesting.

http://www.driftscan.com/

Eric.

David M. Palmer wrote:
I'm working on a new scheme to do high-cadence photometry using CCDs by
shifting the image during exposure.

(Shift the image, pause for a millisecond or so, shift the image,
pause, repeat..., and while you are doing that you are continuously
reading the shifted rows. The basic idea is similar to what the
Taiwan-America Occultation Survey is doing
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003BaltA..12..568C )

For what I want to do, I need a CCD camera with

1) High speed readout and transfer ( 1Mpixel/s, even at the expense of
noise)

2) Interline or frame transfer CCD. (Full frame might be usable if it
is a 4-phase device that supports shifting the image in both
directions.)

3) Computer-programmable control of the clock lines, so that my program
can control (e.g. running on a desktop computer using standard APIs, or
a microcontroller attached to interface lines) can shift the image,
shift the frame transfer area, transfer to the interline registers,
etc.
Most cameras nowadays have everything controlled by an onboard
microcontroller that doesn't give the flexibility I need.

The CCD doesn't have to be large format for trying out my ideas. (Plan
B is to adapt a Cookbook245 camera (circa 1995 homebuilt CCD camera
with TV resolution))

Does anybody know of a good camera with these characteristics?

Thanks.