In-flight video camera's

[akarmy]

Lowell, that is the coolest camera setup I've ever seen. Nicely done!

[Paul Z]

NFLIGHTCAM+ The Latest Aviation POV Camera at Aircraft Spruce $499, at Sporty's $599, the $100 Dollars will pay for an extra Battery, & Sim Card.

[HighWing]

[quote=Esser;20585]Wow HighWing. You put some serious effort into that mount. I am curious though, why didn't you do all servo controlled instead of the cable? the cable to me just seems much harder to do.

Yes the cable is challenging, but bieng a more mechanical type guy doable. But after the system was up and running, I thought about putting hard points on various parts of the airplane and being able to move the camera around for different perspectives. Servos and wiring ports would do the trick perfectly in that respect, so I started doing some experimenting with RC servos because these were what I was most familiar with. This is what I learned. RC servos come with three and five pole servo motors. The three pole motor will move a third of a revolution with each movement incriment. A five pole motor will move one fifth of a revolution. Even with a five pole motor with an additional 5:1 reduction gear mounted externally, I could easily see the motor step pulses during a slow pan shot. Then there was the design of a joy stick control that was not self centering like on a RC radio control transmitter. I just gave up on the idea as I am somewhat comfortable with electronics, but far from expert, and it sounded overwhelming to get what I needed.

Stepper motors are where the solution will be found, but that is another ballgame. I did some experimenting with that as well, but bulk and cost factored into giving up on that, given the need for stepper motor controllers with joy stick input and my relative ignorance of the whole CNC thing. I suspect there is someone on the forum who could interface a laptop with stepper motors, but that guy is not me. The cable system worked fine especially after I did a rework and put ball bearings in all moving systems and it required very little maintenance but did require straight runs of cable. And as John Pitkin has remarked, some special tools in the shop.

My new system will be mechanical as well, but different. I have done a bit of experimenting on that as well, but it needs to wait until I am a bored between flights Kitfox flyer rather than a never bored wanna fly builder.

Risking boring some even more. There is a protocol called LanC. It was developed by Sony and is on some high end camcorders and professional video camers. It allows for a remote controller to be plugged into the camera using a 3.5 mm stereo type jack. The controller will have functions for proportional zoom (slow to fast), record on/off, and manual/auto focus - some have manual/auto iris controll as well. It is really simple to hook up and use. I had that on my first camera. Then with a camera upgrade LanC was not on the new camera and I opted to do what is in the photos, I hard wired into the cordless remote and removed the IR LED from the remote and hardwired that to a positon in front fo the camera. It worked fine with the exception of the proportional zoom. Zoom was one speed only. A note on bugs. Most of the significant videos I took were on long cross country flights in groups of four or more airplanes. Once when departing Hayfork, in Northern California, a bug hit almost squarely in the center of the lens. It essintially rendered useless all footage of that flight segment.
Lowell

[Paul Z]

After looking at your design, the only question is which Defense Contractor do you work for? That is one intricate design! I have seen similar gimbaled FLIR Systems! Great Job!

In response to Esser. I don't know what mount they had on the Beaver, but I tried researching the professional mounts and they were way beyond my budget by many thousands of dollars - the mounts used on the evening news with giro stabilization like half a million - so I made my own. It evolved over sevaral years into a very complex cable controlled system with a joy stick in the cockpit to control all functions. I haven't yet asked the admins to post my albums as they are still a work in progress, but to see detailed photos Click here. http://www.teamkitfox.com/Forums/album.php?albumid=220

What I thought I needed (and now know I want) was pan and tilt to follow subjects, zoom, manual/autofucus, manual/auto aperture and something to keep bugs off the lens, that was before HD, so now HD is on the needs list as well.

To see some 90 second clips click here. http://highwingllc.com/videoarchive.html

My new project has hard points on the left lift strut for a new system, but that is later, I need to finish and get flying first.
Lowell

[Av8r3400]

I've posted a couple of videos from my new Drift HD170 on YouTube.

I haven't figured out the companion editing software (Magix MovieEditPro MX) so these are direct from the camera...

Link 1

Link 2

I've become a huge fan of this little camera!

[HighWing]

Thanks Paul,

(Quote) which Defense Contractor do you work for?

I wish I did. I was discouraged from Engineering by a high school math teacher. Spent my life in health care, but just can't seem to get the tinker out of the tinkerer. Just spent three days making a lock of sorts for the cockpit door.
Lowell

[chefwarthog]

Could a security HD cam with pan tilt and zoom like this one http://spyville.com/dome-camera.html, can do the job under the wing of a Kitfox???

[Esser]

Im sure you could make it work but the resolution would be low. On that camera it has only 480 lines of tv resolution. It would be interesting to see if some one could use that for parts to make.one for a true HD camera

[HighWing]

There are two reasons to have the tilt and pan. One is to be able to move the camera to different angle to add variety to the video and the other is to follow an object that appears to be moving during flight. I am pretty sure the former would work fine if you could adapt a HD camera, but you would want to decide if the latter is important to you then experiment to see if it would work. I don't think I would take the sellers word for that.
Lowell

[chefwarthog]

More and more we can purchase Cam that are inexpensive, some security cam now are HD, with pan tilt and zoom but the casing are little bit to long, would it be wise to inset the top of the casing in to the wing and let just the dome come off underneath, from a ring like an inpection hole?