Sky High

I met with a SWAT member this evening to demonstrate the SAVS and of course he loved it. He also had a hand held FLIR camera system so we decided to see how well it could detect the DF in the night sky. Well, it lit up like a beacon in total darkness!! I was able to view it in the viewfinder and was blown away. You can clearly see the motors as white hot and the frame is just black. He couldn't figure out why the carbon fiber frame showed up but I think I have the answer but I'm not sure. The wires in the rotor arms would heat up but they should show white because he has it set up to show the target as white hot. But as I said the frame showed up black. Anyway it was very cool and this means that you could successfully fly the SAVS with stealth in total darkness with no nav lights by viewing it with a FLIR camera! We are going to record this FLIR video next week and I will post it here.

Hooch

Sounds awesome, can't wait to see it. Wish the DF had a nightvision camera!

Sky High

Well here are the latest developments with FLIR.

www.flir.com/imaging


Here is a video of FLIR being used on a larger RC helo.

www.airfoilhelicams.com/newvideos6-16/meth.wmv

TheHindmost

Ditto! I'm looking forward to seeing it!

Will

Sky High

Well, I met with the SWAT member again this evening to shoot the FLIR video of the DF flying in total darkness and dammit, the video signal would not resolve through my converter to my camera to record. [:@] It's just an RCA out from the FLIR camera and it worked fine with my portable LCD monitor. [sm=confused.gif] So, we're going to meet again but with a recording device that is known to record from the damn thing! [:@]

Here is a [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4093438]similar issue[/link]....

Phodel

Use a laptop with an external video capture card and you will not have any trouble. I use the ADS Video Xpress USB external video capture device. It has RCA and S-Video inputs and works perfectly for exactly what you need it for.....the good thing is that it will capture to any format you wish!

TheHindmost

Chalk another one up for ADS! (See my [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_4087636/tm.htm]crash video[/link] thread...)

Will

targit

I you want a poormans night vision camera, the Sony exview can work down to .001 lux (nearly dark) and requires very little light to work. I have one ( board camera - standard 1v ptp output b/w ) and the DF would carry it and a Tx unit easily. But I'm not really into flying in the dark, so I haven't tried it I have put it on an RC car and can drive in total darkness with the aid of an IR illuminator - this still gives way better performance than most cheapo b/w cameras that need a few lux to operate.

Sky High

Yes, there's plenty of affordable cameras out there that can see in the dark with a projected IR beam but the problem with that is that if you fly high that beam is useless beyond 10 ft or so. Thanks for the info though. That is a great idea for ground R/C devices.

targit

the Sony Exview is in a different league to all the other b/w board cameras.

Phodel

Do you capture directly to your laptop as well or are you capturing to the camera then transfering it to your computer via the ADS Express?

TheHindmost

I've only had one camera flight so far...I've had such bad weather here recently that I haven't been able to do much flying. In this case, the video was recorded on a POS combo TV/VHS recorder, because it was all I had available at that moment, and I really wanted to try the camera. And the tape was bad, too (used).

I couldn't capture it using the on-board Hauppage card in my HP Media Center PC, but the ADSTech DVDExpress captured it just fine to the same computer (USB interface).

(Obviously, I need a better recording solution...My plan at this point is to use that same ADSTech device with a laptop...)

Will

Sky High

I can't capture directly to my laptop anymore because my internal drive is dropping frames. I had to get a few external drives which would be a real pain in the field.