Re: ATM Logitech response on Quickcam Web

["Arjan te Marvelde (ELN)" <Arjan.te.Marvelde@eln.ericsson.se>]

Dominic, Brian, e.a.

> responce, the game that was afoot was to buy a Color/ColorII
> webcam and change the imaging chip from a tc236 to a tc237
> then you would have a low noise, blue sensitive b/w web
> cam that was 640x480, when the word got out on this the

I recently saw on the TI website that they now have a new chip which is similar to the TC237: the TC253. Although it is not exactly pin compatible, it requires similar logic to operate. 
The biggest improvement is the built-in charge amplifier that yields an acclaimed 90dB dynamic range (i.e. 15 bits). I don't know exactly how to interprete this, because the well depth has certainly not become that much larger (40k vs. 30k). I believe the improvement is mainly due to the suppressed readout noise (1e instead of 20e).
Pricing info is not yet given, hopefully it's less than 26dB above the $75 of the TC237...

 ... Arjan te Marvelde 

PS: anyone who is interested in finishing a tc237 based camera design, you can download the files from my website ( http://home.hetnet.nl/~artm/atm/resource.html).