Camera setup for my future UAV

My UAV build has officially started. In order to make the whole process easier, I am taking one system at a time. First up is the camera setup. Not necessarily a logical starting point but I have the camera and I can always use it on an RC aircraft until the UAV is done. Also, this gives me a chance to practice with it and tweak.

I used a Webbie for the camera. Just remove three screws and carefully pop the back cover off to gain access to the photo and video buttons.



You can see the four wires on the left side of the Webbie (bottom of pic) for the focus and shutter control of still pics. On the right side of the Webbie (top of pic) are two wires for the video control. The "goop" you see is hot glue. I added it to keep things in place and allow the Webbie to function normally if necessary. The hot glue detracts from the surgical soldering job I had to perform in order to add the wires to the small surface mount components. Very tight in there.



I bought the switches I used to control the camera here.



Here I have the camera temporarily mounted to my EZ-400G for testing. I thought testing as many systems as possible on a reliable aircraft was a good idea. This aircraft also happens to have an FMA Copilot on it. It is a very stable platform.



Here is a pic from the first flight test.

Views: 78

Tags: Webbie


Moderator Comment by Sgt Ric on December 9, 2009 at 4:08pm
Is there any concern regarding component cooling affected by the hotmelt glue?
Comment by Morli on December 9, 2009 at 4:53pm
Hi Jason, that is good looking mod I could use some time soon, Good work and thanks for sharing, Is that the webbie just behind the motor attached using blue tape ? Since I can see the batt connector just behind landing gear mount point , I assumed so. If yes then wondering why not swap the batt and webbie mounting locations? This would keep the webbie safe and subject to less vibrations due to prop turbulencet, keep the bat cool behind prop , and probably give you option to do micro tilt function for webbie if you mount it at CG point. Just wondering.
Comment by Jason on December 9, 2009 at 5:56pm
Yes, the Webbie is just behind the motor. It is held on by hook and loop straps. The battery I use is a older, larger 3300 mAh LiPoly (I can fly for an hour with it). It isn't light so it needs to stay under the wing to maintain the CG. When it needs replacing, I may switch the setup around.
Comment by isobot on December 9, 2009 at 7:46pm
Thanks for the great info! I am using a webbie also, haven't flown it yet but it is a great camera, especially for the price! The ability to record in HD and the video out sold me, I was originally going to use two cameras, one high res stills and another for real time video.
Comment by Jason on December 9, 2009 at 8:14pm
I don't know what temp the hot glue melts at but I know it cools fast. So far the Webbie works perfectly.
Comment by Scott James on December 10, 2009 at 2:26am
Nice!

Moderator Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on December 11, 2009 at 5:35pm
Apparently the min reliable 'on demand' shooting interval is 4.5s.
the shutter can go high for as low as 0.1s, then camera shutter makes sound 1.9s later. Then you wait 2.5s.

Moderator Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on December 11, 2009 at 5:37pm
2 cables are enough, to lower pair of the photo button. You can trigger by TTL level high/low.
FLEXIPILOT:
@@@TRIGGER2_SERVOPOS_ACTIVE=1
@@@TRIGGER2_SERVOPOS_INACTIVE=0
@@@TRIGGER2_SERVOPOS_DISABLED=0
@@@TRIGGER2_ACTIVE_TIMEOUT=0.1
@@@TRIGGER2_INACTIVE_TIMEOUT=4.4
@@@TRIGGER2_TRACE_DELAY=1.9
Comment by Rick Steele on December 12, 2009 at 12:43pm
I have been using one of these for a while now and it works great. You can record HD video direct to memory stick which using SD video out as input to an OSD. The only problem is you can't turn off the record counter and of course the SD will be showing the same video as the HD video.

Here is a video of a EasyGlider with two cameras.

One is this camera under the plane pointed at the ground and the other is pointed forward and connected to my full color OSD. I recorded the OSD video the used a video editing program to overlay the SD OSD video onto the HD ground video in a PiP format and synchronized both video.

We need to figure out how to turn off the record counter being displayed on the SD video out even when you turn off display graphics. It also times out and turns off after a short time if it is not recording to the memory stick. It would be great if that feature could be disabled.

Other than these minor issues and you don't want to get it too close to the motor, it is certainly reasonably priced.
Comment by Morli on December 12, 2009 at 2:19pm
Rick , your PiP was impressive, What was the OSD used in it? What was the forward looking video cam and tx ? thanks

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Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The third round was a reliablilty/aerial photography round for both planes and copters, which is now closed. Stay tuned for the next round, beginning soon.

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