I’ve tried several times over the last few years to get a camera to work in the plane. None have really done it much justice, that is until now. I just got a new POV camera that is working pretty well. It stays on (which is good cause it was not cheep), and holds up to the G’s pretty good. The camera I bought is a Drift innovation HD170. This is an HD 1080P camera, but in 720P it will do 170degree of view. Here is a video I’ve uploaded to YouTube. I don’t have any pictures of it on the plane yet, but I will add them to this post. This camera has a remote to start and stop which worked fine while it was running.
I’m using a 16G memory card which can hold about 4 hours of video. It is attached to the plane with Ram Mount mounts. I have secured the tightening bold with some electrical tape to stop it from un-screwing. I also had to add a large washer between the ball mount and the camera itself. There was a space between the camera and the base of the ball. I felt the G’s might give the camera enough room to move to break the bolt, and we would have been back to losing it.
The camera lens can be spun around so you can level up the picture even if the camera is not straight. It also has a VERY small LCD screen to help see what it is seeing. I found this very hard to use and ended up hooking up a small flat screen TV. The camera only comes with RGB component video out, so you must have a TV that has component in, or some sort of converter. The Microphone is built-in, so I turned it off. An external one can be bought, but it’s a mic, not a jack for a mic, so it would take some work to get plugged into the intercom system.
Once the video is all done, you now have to edit it. I used the Windows Live Movie Maker. This is free (which I like), and well is made by my employer. The camera records in Quicktime format, but Movie Maker imports it fine and processes it. This can take some time. My laptop did this in about 30 minutes, and my desktop did it in around 10. Once it’s all imported you can then add titles and split the video in order to chop out parts that are boring or you don’t want to show. You can also add music if you like, I didn’t do a lot of editing on my first one, but will do more the next time.
Here is the URL to the video in case the link does not work.
Thanks,
Eric
