Spinel 2MP Full HD Low Light WDR H264 USB Camera Module IMX290 with 3.6mm Lens FOV 90 Degree, Support 1920x1080@30fps, UVC Compliant, Support Most OS, Focus Adjustable, P/N: UC20MPG_L36

Bought this as a recommendation as a cheap alternative for a guide camera for astrophotography. Notice I said cheap, as in, it's not going to perform like a $600 camera. It does it's job and it does it well. For a little over $50usd after taxes, this camera performed well beyond my expectations.Those that gave this camera a low rating, you're expecting Rolex quality from a timex.... and you look stupid for it.

Camera just works via UVC code. Simple, inexpensive, and fits in with my needs perfectly (monitoring day/night). I see some folks converted it to a guide camera, and I can see how that would be useful as well (I do astrophotography).We'll see how it holds up long term, but for now I'm very happy.----Well, I discovered an issue with the camera today, and it's probably related to the video driver firmware. The automatic white balance on the camera tends to give the scene a slightly greenish tint (almost unnoticeable during the day, but more pronounced in low light). So, I thought I could turn the auto white balance off and use the manual white balance, but no luck. No matter what I set the manual white balance to nothing changes and I get a blue tinted image. I've tried this in linux and windows, programatically and via VLC, same effect. Changing the hue does work but I can never remove the slight green cast that way.So I've taken one star off.I would like to buy more of these cameras as the IMX290 is a wonderful low light chip, but not unless this is fixed.---Well another star gets taken away. I bought two of these, and testing the second camera revealed a stronger green cast on automatic white balance. Also, the second camera lens had a set screw instead of a locking ring. The lens was much blurrier than the first camera (same lens focal length), and after easing out the set screw so I could adjust focus, the threads appear damaged, the lens is very stiff on the threads. Also, I could not achieve the same sharp focus as the other camera. I'm thinking the set screw damaged something when it bit into the lens thread. So now I'll defnitely hold off buying another one until these issues are fixed. Not very happy right now.

Used this as a telescope guide camera. I built a custom housing, took off the lens, and installed it in the 50mm telescope. The low light characteristics are very good. PHD2 recognizes the camera as a WDM device, which worked out of the box in Windows 10. Resolution is good (1080p) and the noise was not a problem with dark library. I wish this did native long exposure more than 500ms, but PHD2 can get great results with its built-in stacking (I usually set the update time at 2 seconds and get crisp, 70+ SNR, guide stars). I recommend this if you’re looking for an inexpensive low light camera. Astrophotography is picky, and this worked very well for me. Glad Spinel is using good sensors like this one and I’m looking forward to trying their other products.

I bought this based on the imx290 sensor and price. Apparently the image processor that's attached to the sensor makes all the difference and this one doesn't work well. Now I know. The image has a lot of noise in low light and just isn't 1080p sharp in normal lighting. Returned item.

It works well, although I haven't checked the amplifier glow with long exposures. The camera is detected in Open PHD Guiding and SharpCap.The board components have a conformal coating, which is good. The Sony controller on the back of the camera gets hot - up to 94F/34.5C but a small heat sink on the chip keeps the board at close to ambient temperatures - see the IR images.

I've been investigating cameras to use for HD FPV, and this is the best I've found so far. The picture is very good, and it's a full 1080p. The latency compares well with other solutions, and the on-board h264 encoding is very good. It's also priced very well, considering that a similar camera shipped from China is going to be a similar price.

It's a camera module that's very sensitive to low light. I removed the front lens, printed a case and I'm using this with a small telescope as an auto-guider. Worked so well that I'm selling the dedicated set I had.In Windows, it's recognized as a webcam and works with no tweaks. In Linux, resolution needs to be set to 1280x720 or less on the INDI driver.