i remember lionel making engines years ago with micro cams that sent their signal through the rails. this was in the 80's if i remember right. does anyone make anything like this or does anyone one know where to get a camera that small? will this type of setup work with a dcc system? is anyone working on anything similar? just thought it would be neat to see a drivers eye view of layouts smaller than O or those that run on gauge 1 track
I believe Lionel did produce such a device in both 027 and HO in the 80s but it was expensive and only transmitted in black & white.
Joe Staten Island West
Tommy:
You can get a micro camera unit that sends pictures via a wireless link back to a TV set from MicroMark and I am sure that there are others. Mr. Beasley has posted about his using this setup on his subway.
Joe
We have one of those Lionel HO scale video cameras. Other than the fact that it was only a black and white image, the picture was transmitted through the rail, which caused all kinds of glitches in the picture if your track and wheels were not immaculately clean. On a layout that was divided into blocks, the receiver had to be connected to the block that the train was in and you lost the picture when the train crossed into the next block. The camera was powered by a 9 Volt battery and it ate batteries at a very high rate -- maybe 10 minutes max for a Duracell.
There are several diferent systems today that are much better, are in color, and are wireless. Even some of the new cell phones with video recording ability are small enough to put onto a flatcar.
There are a number of companies selling small video cameras these days. I bought mine from SJT Enterprises at www.wirelessmicrocolorcam.com. They also sell the DCC power supply adapter that I used for this installation in an HO scale subway car:
The camera gets power from the rails, so I don't need to refresh the batteries. It sends a wireless signal to a separate receiver module, which can be plugged into a TV or a video recorder. Since mine is a subway, I added extra lighting both to the tunnels and to the front of the train. This short clip was distilled from about a half-hour of recorded video, and it took several hours of editing to generate the final product.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5OvZtI-QU
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Mr. Beasley,
I just bought a camera similar to your SJT Enterprises model. My camera is named "Generic" and I found it on Amazon. My problem is, how do I hook it up to a 26 year old Zenith TV? I re-programmed the D/A converter box after plugging the RCA cables into the box hoping it would pick up the camera as a new TV station. Didn't work...
I then bypassed the converter box and connected the RCA plugs directly to a splitter/coupler which I then plugged into a cable adapter wired to the TV attenna screws. I scrolled slowly through all channels and I did get a blurry black & white fuzzy picture of my layout on channel 14. Got nothing on channel 2 or 3.
I plugged it directly into our new Samsung TV just to be sure that it works, and it works very well. Great picture!
Do you have any suggestions (or is my TV too obsolete)?
My video camera's receiver box has a single output cable. (Mine doesn't have sound. Some do, and that would probably have two cables.) It's an RCA jack. The output is a video signal, and needs to go into the video input of a TV. It can't be put into the antenna inputs. It sounds like that's what you're trying to do.
A TV of that vintage might have had video inputs, or it might not. If all you've got is antenna inputs, either twin-lead (two screws, most likely) or coax (a fat screw-on with a thin wire in the center) then you need something to get the signal up to a radio-frequency (RF) frequency. You may have an old VCR sitting around, or an old camcorder, that will do that for you. Some game devices might also provide this feature. A DVR box can probably do it, too. They usually put the signal on channel 3 or 4.
Oddly, I have a heck of a time getting my train cam to work with our HD TV. That TV just blanks out when it doesn't like the signal, so it's very hard to tune the train cam receiver box. I have an old analog set I use to tune the receiver, and then I plug it into the HD TV.
Thanks for your help. I might end up buying a cheap monitor at Best Buy or Costco. The camera cost only $32 with free shipping on Amazon. It looks suspiciously like other models costing much more. My wife and I enjoyed looking at your NYC subway, by the way. It looks great pulling into a station while another train is travelling through.
I purchased an LCD TV yesterday for $99.95 and bingo! I now have the camera mounted on a flat car. It's amazing how a slow (near crawling) speed looks like an approximate 25-30 mph on the tracks. N scale is now large and alive and the buildings and parked trains on my layout look full-size.