I got a mini video camera for my layout and I trying to figure out what kind of car I should mount it on. Anyone here have any suggestions. Anyone have one of the mini video cameras. What kind of car did you mount it to if you have one.
Donald
I put mine in the front of a subway car, with the lens pointing right out the porthole in the front door. It did take some minor surgery, and removal of one of the interior lights for the subway car. I also replaced the front mini-lights with LEDs, because I need to provide my own light in the tunnels.
This is the car (a Life-Like Proto 1000 R-17) and the original camera and DCC power supply:
Jerry at www.wirelessmicrocolorcam.com where I got the camera offers a very reasonable service of modifying the camera and supply to help fit it into the car. Here, I had him replace the heavy camera cable with thin wires, remove the plug and jack on the power connector, and move the large blue capacitor off-board:
I had to remove part of the car’s lighting board, and modify the truck mount, to get everything into the car. The power supply is in the large gray box in the center. That’s where the motor would be in a powered car.
This is the almost-finished product. The lens can be seen in the door porthole. The holes at the bottom are for the LEDs.
The camera, which is a CCD, needs to be kept at a reasonable temperature. That’s why I removed the front incandescent interior lighting bulb. I also removed a couple of side windows to give additional ventilation.
The cameras come with battery clips for a 9-volt battery. A battery will last a few hours. I used the DCC supply because I wanted a permanent installation where I didn’t have to take it apart to replace a battery.
don I also got one of these a while back, I basically just taped it to a flat car because I wasnt worried about appearance, , a box car is a good spacious car and commonly used, as is a caboose if you are running that era. It depends if you want to hide it or not I would guess, personally it wasnt important to me I just liked watchin the screen with a HO perspective of riding on my layout, as always , personal preference is paramount.
Have fun & be safe,
Karl.
I got an identical mini video camera outfit that looks exactly the same as the one offered by the quoted link ($99.98), paid a lot less - see
http://store.shentech.com/mitiwicospvi.html $38.88 for everything. I got mine a few months ago and it was a few bucks cheaper then. Might be worth a look.
Bob Boudreau
bob
this thing looks big did you install it into a train.
The camera itself is pretty small - it’s on the far right in the website photo, and it’s the same one as the original posters’. It’s about 3/4" square, with a stiff wire antenna sticking out of the top, and the power wire out the back.
As a test I installed it in an HO 40’ container, with a hole on one end. I placed the container on a flat car because I don’t want to do anything permanent at this time. If you’ve seen an HO scale container, then you can figure out how big it is. The 9 volt battery will fit inside the container too. I’ve only played with it on my HO scale modules, and it seems to work right - color and sound!
Bob Boudreau
thanks bob.
have any problems ordering it. How much did the shiping cost.
What is the depth of field on these things? I would like to place two in my North Philadelphia tower so my towerman can operate like the real thing with his view being a monitor with an east and west camera.
It wasn’t cheap, around US $20.00 I think; most of these firms have similar minimum charge. With the GST and fee collected by the Post Office I think the whole thing cost me around $65.00 Canadian (keep in mind my set cost about $5.00 less too).
You can check out the shipping yourself on the Shenteck website, just proceed as if you are ordering it and go through the checkout up to where they want your credit card number. Then proceed or cancel. Just make sure they will send it by US mail and not by UPS or FedEx, as they will charge you $35.00 or more to collect the few dollars in GST.
Bob Boudreau
thanks bob
Hi do you have a sample of the quality? I’m nervous about the 380-lines resolution
It says 150-foot range (no obstacles) according to the web page.
Should’nt post these things on my payday! hahaha
I just put my order in. Best price I could find!!!
Does anyone have any video samples to share? I would realy like to see these in action. Thanks
You can get them real cheap on the bay but the real bad part about these ridiculous sellers is they are all charging $16-25 for shipping which actually only cost $4-5. I actually hate any electronics that sell on the bay
Cell phone sellers charge $15-22
Ipods sellers charge $15-25
Digital camera sellers WHO Charge as much as $28!
I bought my train camera on the bay for $14.50 plus $9 shipping
Check out www.gadgettom.com he sells the same camera installed in a High Box. He has lots of video on his website.
Terry[8D]
Are there any where you can store the video on a memory card or take still pictures?
That’s neat! And not cheap either - $149.95 & $179.95!
Bob Boudreau
This is a short video I made a while back. I did this before I installed the LEDs in the front of the car. Overall, this is much darker than the video shows up now. (Hey, what do you expect from a subway?) A reasonable amount of light really does help. I think I made this in the evening, also, so even the above-ground shots are darker than they have to be. I was still experimenting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=dOV9NSqrQlc
The dropouts are from the wireless transmission, not track power. You would see the same thing with battery power. I have the receiver mounted by the TV set about 10-15 feet from the layout. I think the better thing to do would be to mount the receiver right below (or above) the layout and run a longer video cable to the TV set.
I also thought about a tower-cam. What I would like to do with something like that is put it on a spindle so I could rotate it around inside the tower, controlled either by a small motor or a simple mechanical linkage. The camera does have a small focal adjustment on the lens. I set mine for about a foot, which gives me a pretty clear picture out to infinity, but it fuzzes up a lot when something comes close.
These cameras have no memory or still capability, but you can capture the image with a computer video card, or record it with a VCR or Camcorder. You aren’t going to get photo-quality pictures out of one of these, but it’s a lot of fun to see things from the engineer’s point of view.