Hey all ... I'm looking at placing a mini cam on our CS8 boom 1 for the pilots use and then a switch on the Pilots LCD to switch between the gimbals camera feed and the pilots camera feed. Any suggestions on what to get, where to get it, pros & cons? Mounting suggestions ... Etc. Would be great to see what others are using!
Would these help? (I use them): FPV Cameras: http://hobbywireless.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=687 Two channel video switch: http://www.dpcav.com/xcart/R-C-Controlled-Dual-Video-Switch-2-Way.html Andy
Thanks Andy. Just the kind of camera I was thinking of. How have you got it mounted? Booms often make an unwanted appearance in the filming process from the gimbal camera ... How do you avoid the pilots camera from repeating this appearance?
Check with QC and see if they can supply the FF FPV Mount. I can't see it on the QC web page. The only thing I do is to limit the amount of tilt up on the gimbal camera and also accelerate the copter slowly when flying forwards to prevent boom #1 dipping down into the FOV. Andy.
Andy ... This what you were referring to? Could not seem to find at Quadrocopter but Kopterworx have it. It's what I had in mind. Thanks.
That's the one. Not sure why QC don't carry it though. It may not be up on their web store yet. Let me know if you find a good way of stabilizing the camera in the little U-bracket. Those tiny screw don't hold it. Right now I have some aluminum (aka aluminium) wire wrapped around the lens barrel and formed into a hook that goes into the slot on one side of the machine screen that attaches the U-bracket to the carbon fiber (aka fibre). Andy.
If you put double side foam tape on the side of the camera you can get rid of the screws. Holds it very well and is adjustable.
Thanks guys. Much appreciated. For the camera, I've got an old gopro 1 that I might dust off and dismantle to relieve some excess weight.
I use a board camera from hobbyking. Withe a gimbal from them as well that I can control through the MK FC for tilt. It ma seem like a nonesense idea but I have found that the ability to contol tilt on my camera comes in handy. Its cheap as hell works great. Its only 17 buks for the camera and another 15 bucks for the cheap gimbal. I even have it stabvalized in fact it does a better job then the radians some times through the MK gimbal control. I am using 9g servo.
Thanks Shaun for the input. Great to see what others are doing. What field of view does your camera have? Are you running a separate lipo?
Its not super wide I believe its 120 degree FOV I'll have to check. Yeah I have got it on a separate battery. I am using a HK 900 Mhz Vidoe Tx does pretty good job. and does not interfere with the gimbal's 1.3 Tx. Of course you will have to make sure you are using a frequency that is legal in South Africa. The video TX and the camera are on the same 3S lipo I typically use a 1000 to 1300 mAh lipos for it. The one I use is NTSC only, but HK sells a PAL version of it also. 1000 mAh 3S gives you about an hour of continuous time. Of course this is dependent on what the power draw of the video TX is. I like to keep this system off of the main aircraft power, less things to drain the main lipo.
Shaun ... We use 5.4Mhz for our video TX on the gimbal. Was thinking of getting the same TX for the pilot camera. The current setup has 8 channels. So I could set the pilot TX to a different channel and switch between the 2 on the RX connected to the pilots LCD.
I spoke to the Ira and Iftron some months ago and he recommended two or more channel separation to avoid intermodulation -- and, as you know, intermodulation is a nasty condition that should indeed be avoided. Andy.