Performance of new low-cost 1/3" security cameras for meteor surveillance

It's been almost 5 years since the CAMS (Cameras for All-sky Meteor Surveillance) system specifications were designed for video meteor surveillance. CAMS has been based on a relatively expensive black-and-white Watec WAT-902H2 Ultimate camera, which uses a 1/2" sensor. In this paper, we investigate the ability of new, lower cost color cameras based on smaller 1/3" sensors to be able to perform adequately for CAMS. We did not expect them to equal or outperform the sensitivity for the same field of view of the Watec 1/2" camera, but the goal was to see if they could perform within the tolerances of the sensitivity requirements for the CAMS project. Their lower cost brings deployment of meteor surveillance cameras within reach of amateur astronomers and makes it possible to deploy many more cameras to increase yield. The lens focal length is matched to the elevation angle of the camera to maintain an image scale and spatial resolution close to that of the standard CAMS camera and lens combination, crucial for obtaining sufficiently accurate orbital elements. An all-sky array based on 16 such cameras, to be operated from a single computer, was built and the performance of individual cameras was tested.