has anyone seen or used any of tme mini spy cams with sound ? how good is the reception?
If have seen one that connects to a 9 volt battery in a car or locomotive and transmits wirelessly. The reception is good enough to get details off of it and the sound is fair. Wired cameras should have a bit better quality.
This is a video from my camera. It is admittedly of poor quality, because it’s dark in those subway tunnels. Mine does not have sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=dOV9NSqrQlc
It is a wireless camera, but without sound. I think it operates in the 1.8 GHz band. They also make a 2-channel version (2 cameras, one receiver, switchable) that operates, I believe, in the 2.4 GHz band.
The dropouts are entirely due to transmission/reception issues. I have since mounted this camera permanently in the the car with a track power supply, but for the video I used a battery, so I know there wasn’t a power issue back then. For this video, I had the receiver right next to the layout, so the maximum distance was no more than 15 feet. Usually I mount the receiver by the big TV screen, which adds another 10-12 feet. If you’re going to do this big-time, I would mount the receiver on the ceiling above the layout and run a longer cable to the TV.
Fantastic video, being new to the hobby, for the most part, I never even thought how realistic it could be. You showed me that. Thanks, Joe
I have one, but no layout. I tested it on a section of my HO scale modules, just ran it near the roundhouse and back out a bit. It has sound but there wasn’t anything to record. Here’s a 28 second test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Q6x6nF46E
The camera has a fixed focus that can be adjusted, but it will only focus at the set distance. Mine could have been set a bit closer. The receiver was about 8 feet away from the camera when I recorded this test.
I have a color & sound mini cam in a box car that can run on my or the club layout. Its great for modeling as a track level view to see if I need to do more detailing on some part of the layout. The cam also picks up mini sounds that you would not normally hear of the wheels going over track joints.
This is a web page I made about my car cam.
http://www.geocities.com/oldlahistory/tvcam.html
The big thing I’ve noticed with these cameras is that they require a lot of light to get a good picture off of.
Many of them are very susceptible to electrical interference from layout devices and loss of signal from obstructions due to their high frequency. They are most definitely line-of-sight between the camera and receiver.