I installed a camera in the front car of a subway train.
A lot of advances have been made in technology since I got this. I always intended it to work the way it does, in real-time with the video image playing on a TV monitor, or recordable on a camcorder via a cable from the receiver box. Today's cameras seem to be mostly writing to memory for later retrieval.
That has a big advantage for picture quality. The RF transmission used by mine is subject to dropouts, and putting the whole thing in tunnels most of the way around the layout does not help any. On the other hand, I never have to even take the subway car apart to get to the picture. The camera and transmitter get DCC power from the track.
I had overheat problems at first, and I had to remove the interior illumination from that end of the car. The second image above shows the camera in the porthole window at the front of the car. The two enlarged holes now contain LEDs to illuminate the tunnels. I've also added lights to the walls of the tunnels, but it's still pretty dark.
I had to do a lot of frame-by-frame editing to make this look decent with all the dropouts.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I encountered the same as what you describe, Mike. I pulled my flat car, with the camera at about a 45 degree angle, looking in at the layout. Not a very clear image of things close, and as you mention, anything past 16" was clear. Since half my continuous run main is hidden, It's not a very interesting video, so I didn't post it. It is on the YouTube link below. The reason I pointed it into the layout, is because the tracks run along the edge, so nothing to see on the other side, except my basement.
I also had problems with the tiny buttons, no matter how many times I've watched videos on how to get into different modes, the indicator light on mine does not always match was the instructions say.
If you got yours for $15, great! I searched and searched, and found lots of place "out of stock", finially found one through Amazon Prime, and along with the mini card, and adaptor, it was about $30.
"Night" vision works, and I have yet to set up a car like yours to inspect the hidden areas.
Mike.
My You Tube
I was going to start a thread on my recently acquired SQ8 minicam/DVR. But after further thought, I figured this might be more useful in using my experience to open a discussion of other solutions that work, preferably in a form-factor that works within the HOn3 loading gauge.
I posted a video I made in 1080P in this week's WPF: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/261321.aspx
It wasn't bad, but it had its limitations. The image picked up the 60 hz pulse from my LED lighting, leading to a bunch of gray bars rolling down the image as it went. The synch between image and audio was way out of bounds. The tiny two-button control system is confusing to an old coot like me. The video played at different speeds on different platforms...I could go on. Let's say that there are some minor irritations you'll put up with for $15.
The SQ8 does have soem usefulness. The ride-along video is OK, once you ignore the issues noted above, as it can be in 1080P, but now thinking that 720P might really look better. The SQ8 did work well inspecting my hidden track, so it's well worth what I paid for that alone.
Some have complained about how hot it gets when charging. One person commented on removing the TF card when charging and I found it was much cooler, since this allowed for more circulation space around the battery.
The night vision LEDs do work at short range
, but unless you need the stealth, adding light as I did with my "tunnel rat" rig worked better.
I'll probably think of more, but let's move on...
Video is cool in such a small package, but I was looking forward to still pics to redeem things in this mixed bag for users. It supposedly will yield "1.2 megapixel" images and maybe that's so. There's a bigger problem for use on the layout, where the hopes in such a tiny unit are that you can drop down to HO eyelevel or maybe a little below and take shots not always possible with larger cameras.
Here's the two best shots from a couple of dozen I took for test purposes.
This one was in the service area of the Crater Lake quarry and as you can see the close focus is not very. This sorta works here.
But it's just never going to be great. This one worked a little better, because it kept the fuzzy close-in as a way to frame the better focused farther away.
So that was somewhat disappointing. You need about 18" or so between the camera and the subject to get a decent pic with the SQ8 on the layout.
Maybe there's a fix to this, like adapting a pinhole lens to the little cube cam?
And there are alternatives out there, including the presumably improved SQ9. Anyone able to tell us more about how useful any of the less expensibe cams that might sub for the SG8 work on the layout?
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL