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Friday, December 21, 2012

Keycam 808#16 V2 + Lens D

Few year ago, I had a keycam and lost it during the first flight. It detached from it support and falled from altitude on the slope. I never retrieved it. At that time the resolution was VGA, the image format 4/3 and the FOV was too narrow.
Things has changed over the years and we can easily find HD ready and Full HD Keycam. the most interesting things is that now you can find it with a new lens D that provide a FOV of 120°.
I really wanted a cam to mount almost everywhere on a plane, the Go Pro or equivalent cam being too heavy and big for this excercice.

I decided to give a try and bough my Keycam on EBAY. The seller is very serious. I paid via Paypal and the cam has been shipped the next day. I received the user manual in a mail. 10 days later the cam, very well packed, was in my mailbox !



I paid 53$ for the cam and a 8Go Kingston microSD card. The cam comes with some accessories: One USB cable, a pair of adhesiveVelcro, and a pair of Video Output cable (see photo). This video output is interesting for Pilots doing FPV.

Characteristics:

  • 1/4” CMOS WXGA  HD Sensor / H.264/AVC1 DSP / 512M DDR2
  • Rechargeable  LIPO Battery (250mah), with Battery Charger Manage IC
  • Video: 720P HD  H.264/AVC1 video codec, 1280 x 720 30fps .mov
  • Photo: JPG  1280*960 (no degrading by  upsizing to interpolated "5 megapixel" size)
  • microSD card  slot, supports up to 32GB (memory card  not included), suggest using Class 4 or above. 
  • USB2.0, plug  and play, easy connection with computers, no driver needed.
  • Size: 50mm (L) x 32mm (W) x13mm (H)
  • Weight: around 17g


The other strength of this tiny cam is that it is totally configurable thanks to a configuration file that allow you to set lots of video or audio parameters. The procedure is quite easy. you can export the current config file and write it on the micro SD card. Then on the PC, you can edit the parameters (self explained), then apply the load procedure on the cam to read the file an apply it. The file is then removed from the SD card, indicating that it has been taken into account.

I was really curious to see what this cam could give as a result. I built a pod to fix on the wing. It is made of a carbon square tuve fixe in a coroplast (correx) plate with hot glue. The coroplast is then glue with cyano on a very thin (0.5mm) epoxy plate that can be easily tape on a wing. On the other side, another small coroplast plate receive the velcro to fix the cam. One in place, the can is secured with a piece of rubber band hoocked to a horizontal small carbon rod.

The first test has been done on my Needle 100. Here is the result:


The quality is not that bad as you can see. More to come in the coming weeks !

4 comments:

  1. sympa mais effectivement la qualité n'est pas là, ou du moins pas sur cette vidéo !

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have you had a look at the new 1080p cameras on HobbyKing.com? They used to have a reasonable 720p camera and now they have it in 1080p. They are very small, low profile with built in battery etc.
    They don't have a plastic case but are shrink wrapped so you need to be careful about moisture but you save weight.
    The quality of the movies they produce is awesome and the new 1080p one is less than 100 USD.
    My friend has both models and I recommend you have a look. I will probably be getting one for this summer...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Philippe,

    the 1080p cam from Hobbyking weigths 86g according to the spec when the GoPro Hero 3 is only 74g with case.
    In fact, Hobbyking's cam is the RD32II I already tried, without the case. This is a good camera for sure, but the GP Hero3 is superior from my point of view. No the Keycam I use is only 19g, that is to say 29g with the pod I made. For 40 Euros, I still think it is a excellent camera to attach everywhere on the plane.

    Pierre

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very cool!
    Could you pls share a few details about the kamera mount? Materials, weight etc?
    It makes me interested
    Thanks!
    I

    ReplyDelete

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