Anyone have any suggestions for an method of connecting a 9v wireless camera to a roller pickup on a track? I found a unit but it only works with DC power, (HO or G-Scale), would like to modify a searchlight car and mount the camera on it. Or if necessary will have to use a 9v battery, but those cameras eat up a lot of batteries.
Thanks for any ideas.
Bob Nelson will be good at this. Bridge rectifier??? Since you run Command, constant AC voltage is there.
Until Bob Nelson gets here, the Roger’s Corners Foundation Savers stand ready to assist in watching Don burn down the house.
They haven’t lost a foundation, yet!
This might work for you: http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=117621& You would have to run in command mode (full 18-20 VAC) for this to function properly. Depending on how experienced you are with building circuits, you can find quite a few by googling 9 V power supply. A power supply that would output 9 VDC from 4-6 VAC up to 20 VAC would be quite a bit more complicated. Pete
Since you run command, this may be easier than you think. I would certainly go with a bridge rectifyer and resistors to knock the power down to 9v. I think that by using batteries, you would never have consistant picture as the batteries get low quickly. Another thought would be to add a capacitor so you don’t lose image while traversing switches, etc. I am sure Bob will elaborate on the specifics.
Dennis
PS: Please post progress pictures when doing this so we can all learn.
I was hoping someone would do a project like this. I too would be interested in a regular progress report/summary.
Question:
If you mount the camera on a passenger train (instead of on a searchlight car), would you see the residents of Lionelville and Plasticville as they travel around the layout?
Look at an old MTH engine PS1. take the battery charging board from it and use a BRC or if PS2 with a rechargeable battery.
Here I am. You could indeed make a simple power supply with a rectifier. And a filter capacitor would keep it running past gaps in the track. However, with 18 volts on the track, the capacitor would charge to about 24 volts. It is possible that the camera is specified for voltage that high, in which case we’re home free. In any case, we need to know how much current the thing draws before we can make a decision on the capacitor size and possible voltage-dropping circuitry.
Don,
We know you make the big bucks, maybe not as big as a certain un-named politician that hangs out around here, so check out www.choochoocam.com . [:-^] [swg]
I am a novice, but I thought of the 317 variable voltage regulator and found this.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bill_Bowden/page12.htm
With R1 being 100 ohms and R2 being 620 ohms you get 9 volts.
I am thinking of using this to substitute a 1.5 volt battey in the F-3. O f course I would adjust for a 1.5 volt output.
I have made a camera car for our layout based on a wireless security camera made by Swan (which I got on sale at Canadian Tire a few months ago). The camera runs on 12VDC normally provided by a wall-wart type of power supply. I mounted the camera on a home-made aluminum car with pick-up rollers (similar to the searchlight car) and made a power supply to run it from track voltage. I am running in conventional mode so the track voltage varies.
The power supply is very simply a bridge rectifier, 4700 Mfd filter capacitor, 7812 voltage regulator with a heat sink and a small 0.1 Mfd filter capacitor on the output leads.
The regulator will reduce any input track voltage that is too high consequently always presenting a constant 12 VDC to the camera and the regulator will run wide open if the track voltage goes too low. The camera seems to work ok down to about 9VAC track voltage. The large filter capacitor seems to hold up the power supply when the car goes over track joints but I may experiment with more capacitance to see if that makes any noticeable improvement.
The camera draws about 80 ma under normal conditions but has an IR light which kicks in when the car goes into a dark tunnel and draws a bit more current at that time.
The picture quality is pretty good, not HDTV by any means but adequate.
Hope this helps.
Neil
Hi Don, If this is the camera that you bought at York, the same people make a power supply for it.
http://www.wirelessmicrocolorcam.com/estore/product_info.php?cPath=3&products_id=47
I havn’t been able to get back out there to work on this project lately. But will get back to it this weekend.
I will keep everyone posted on progress.
A number of good ideas here!! Forgot about the ready made unit! Actually I have two, 1 that is video only I got at York, the other is a Audio/Video I picked up at the computer show. Need to find what the power requirements are so I can verify compatibility.
You can use a LM7809 voltage reg. to get 9 volts at up to 1 amp with small heat sink. Here’s a link to data sheet’s and simple circuits.
Joe J
