By the way, I did remove the web cam from the laptop lid, wired it to a USB cable, and turned it into and external peripheral. I wired the two microphones that I found next to the web cam and turned them into external peripherals. I dremeled the batteries open and wired them into a 3 million candle power flashlight made from spare parts I had. I have a lithium ion battery charger, so it worked great.



I didn't like the first stand I made. I included some pictures of it above.



Since I was asked about the web cam, I though Should add it to the instructable. There is a nice instructable here at this site showing how to convert a web cam from an LCD screen: http://rntmns.com/2011/02/rebirth-of-a-webcam/



But be careful the guy that did the mod, reversed the power cables.



The USB cable has 4 Wires.



Pin 1 on USB 1. Red- VCC +5V

Pin 2 on USB 2. White- Data+

Pin 3 on USB 3. Green- Data-

Pin 4 on USB 4. Black- Ground



Note, I sourced the web cam from the LCD screen which was a dead HP DV 9000 laptop, working on Windows Vista, originally.



I'm not sure if the web cam wire colors change for different models. However, for the DV 9000 here is the color schematic.



1. Red wire from web cam goes to Pin 1 on USB, Red USB Wire.

2. Light Blue wire from web cam goes to Pin 2 on USB, White USB Wire

3. Black Wire from Web cam goes to pin 3 on USB, Green USB Wire

4. White or faded yellow looking wire goes to pin 4 on USB, Black USB Wire.



The web cam is now wired for plug and play. However, it only works on another computer running Windows Vista. There are no drivers for windows 7, yet. Since I don't have Windows XP, I don't know if it would work on it. Once you have wired it, open Skype on Vista and click on change profile pic. It will show two web cams in the drop down menu. If your web cam starts getting hot then you have revered the power cables.



I have attached some images of the web cam, it's slightly longer than the shift key on the laptop but about half as wide.



There you have it.



Mine works great on my Vista laptop. If you want to use it for checking plumbing pipes, I suppose you can put a small prism on the web cam aperture so you can insert the web cam in a pipe and view images directly ahead--this would be good for archaeology where you need to investigate tight spaces.