spumoni

BTW if you google RM-AV2 10 pin lanc you will see links to people trying to reverse engineer this new 10 pin A/V connector. Probably by picking up the Sony RM-AV2 controller (on Amazon for $50) you can easily figure out the pin assignments and voltage levels with an o-scope.

The current LANC protocol enables you to control almost everything in the camcorders (and still cameras) and it is just a matter of sending the right commands and monitoring the status. It is just a 9600 baud serial signal which can be read on a seiral port on a PC. You can use a "lanc sniffer" to find out new or unique commands in new models by monitoring the signal on this port. Here's an link detailing the amount of stuff that can be controlled and monitored. http://www.boehmel.de/lanc.htm As well as controlling the basic functions of the camcorder (stop,rec,rw,ff,etc, I've played around sending zoom commands and reading tape time values in the play mode using a microcontroller. Fun stuff if you have the patience!

Did some googling last nite and found that this thing may be still LANC. It uses the LANC protocol but just on a different connector. Actually, it is combining the LANC jack and A/V in/out jacks together in the D connector. People have found a spare D cable, hacked it and put a 3/32" jack on the LANC signal wires and then plug in their old LANC controller. The problem is that the cable is not very common and that not all cables have wires connected to the LANC signal pins.

Tunnelfly, I come from the sportbike world where getting data to help me improve my lap times is more important that the video quality. When I started my data logging project, I was going to just save to memory and analyze it later like everyone else, but I thought with would be more interesting and FUN to see where I was on the track when things are happening. During practice track days, after riding a 20 min session, I could go back to the pit and rewind and review and see where I screwed up and what changes I should make before the next session. This really helps because after 3 or 4 sessions, things begin to get fuzzy. Costyn, those videos were awesome! How did you merge the info? How do you time align the gps data with the video stream? How accurate is the matchup? Chrisky, I wrote in software the commands to change the data rate of the Antaris chip. I haven't used the u-center app but that does not appear to be the correct options for rate changes. In u-center, see if you can find UBX Binary Protocol input message CFG-RATE, That's the one I'm using. I'm not familiar with the WSG-1000 but it seems like your are not getting enough sats for a good track. I am using a separate active antenna which is more sensitive than passive ones. In software I also enabled WAAS and do obtain differential lock often. BTW, Ublox also has a new generation of GPSs with 1sec locks - vs 30-40 secs of Antaris 4.

I am using a UBLOX OEM receiver using the Antaris 4 chipset (Supersense version) and it seems to perform very well. I think I mentioned that I obtained GPS lock while sitting on the aisle seat (767) next to a window with the antenna on the food tray. Several weeks ago, after the unit had obtained lock, I threw in the trunk of my car to pickup something from the grocery store and when I returned, it still had lock! I'm not aware of many loggers that use this chipset. What brand is the one you purchased? After looking at some of the helmet/camera configurations that you guys fly with, I am simply amazed that your necks survive the chute opening jolt and the impact on landing. I couldn't imagine having all that on my head while riding at the track at 120+ mph!

I think that unless you are wanting to have extremely high quality video footage, then the bullet cam with mini DV camcorder along with a LANC controller works quite well. If you are sharing on youtube, then this will definately work since it gets compressed down (320x240) to 1/4 the res of the DV once you upload it, anyway. (sometimes, the video can get really crappy, depending on color/contrast,etc of your videos) I am currently using a 520 line, sony based bullet cam from Chase Cam and it works fine. They also make a Lanc controlled SD memory based video recorder for motor sports racing which is an option to the mini DV cam. It records directly to MP4 on an SD card, I think, so no need for DV video editing apps. Try visiting their web site and seeing some of the posted videos. http://www.chasecam.com/main/videos.html Finally, not sure, but I think the motorcycle, snowboarders and other extreme types, would find it very uncomfortable having so much weight and wind resistance on their head for the long duration. I'm sure it would take a toll on their neck, especially after a bad wipeout!

Been looking at how GPS is being used by jumpers and specifically ground tracks (track map) and L/D glide ratio. So, I dug into the documentation on my GPS unit and managed to modify the code to incorporate in realtime, the ground track map and L/D info. On the video side, the following link shows the capability of this unit (sorry, its from a bike, but I did ride how hilly streets to display some reasonable L/D numbers). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQLmsbwpjE As seen in the video, the system has a simple menu to allow you to configure different settings and adjust the origin and scaling of the ground track map. On the data side, while doing this video realtime, it can also write a Google Earth KML format file, or data text files in either Latitude & Longitude or Universal Transverse Mercator units for later post processing. Attached are files for each of these. Well, that's it for now. Later, when time permits, I'll try to get a local wing suiter to try it out or maybe try a tandem myself. Aloha all!

Video comes from the bullet cam and goes into a video card. This video card can be written to by the microcontroller to create the text overlay. The microcontroller is continuously reading the GPS unit, doing some simple calcs and then writing the results to the video card. The output of the video card is standard NTSC video which plugs into the A/V port of the SONY camcorder. This is the usual way to do things with bullets and all the camcorder is really being used for is a recording deck. So it really doesn't matter the kind of lens or image stabilization, etc the camcorder has, it is being bypassed. Being that you are wanting the highest quality video using HD camcorder, then this may not be what you want. From reading some of the posts, is it common to have the risers get tangled onto the helmet mounted cameras?

With the exception of the LANC controller, everything is OEM, off-the-shelf breadboard stuff which is interfaced together. That is why it is so big. The LANC controller I designed is a custom PCB and has a bit more functionality that a normal one. It has 12v power input which is switched on/off whenever the SONY cam is put in record/stop. It is used to power the bullet cam and mic only when needed to conserve battery life. This whole setup could be made smaller with a custom mother board into which all the other modules plug into. It is possible to scrunch this to about 1/4 the current size plus the battery pack. Everything is realtime - no need to post process anything. Here's the sequence of what happens: Insert SD card on side, turn on system, configure for display type, log rate, plot scale factor, plot origin, log file type, etc. It will retain configuration after powering off. Wait for GPS lock LED to blink, press Plt button (if desired) - its LED starts blinking, press Log (if desired) button - its LED starting blinking. Press the Record button on the LANC controller and bullet cameras & mic powers up and SONY camcorder goes into record mode. Use toggle switch on remote to switch between bullet cameras. When done, stop camcorder, stop Logging, stop Plotting. Remove camcorder from backpack, remove video and LANC connections, turn on camcorder rewind tape and play it back and find that 1) the camera was pointing in the wrong direction, 2) you have a tic you never knew about and you now have Blair Witch Project #2 or 3) you accidentally pressed the stop switch on the LANC near the start of the session! ARRGH! Transfer DV to computer, edit, add music and write out Mpeg4 file. Upload to YouTube and send all your friends the link! Pop the SD card out, insert into your PC and double click the file and you get the track plotted in Google Earth. Double-click the track & see fly the path. Aside from the GE format, you can select a plain text format which contains time, lat, long, speed, altitude which you can open with Notepad or input to other applications. That's it!

OK, here's a final video displaying real time plotting on the display. I am going south (downwards on the screen) and then loop back north. In the setup menu I selected a plotting scale factor of about 1.5 miles and a starting origin in the middle of the screen. An SD Google Earth file is being recorded at the same time. Here is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do3M4j_TPrs with the ground plot and the Google Earth file is attached. Later, I'll try to get a local to test this out for me but in the meantime I'll be trying to integrate a baro sensor to get more accurate altitude data than what GPS provides. Until then, Aloha All.

Hi, tried to upload pics but file size too big for that. So here is another video on what this contraption looks like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMwg6Hz65nk Initially I was planning to do a custom circuit board for this to get it down to 2"x1.5"x4.5" but got sidetracked into doing some autonomous robotics stuff. I don't think this box will feel too good stuck to your helmet! I did try zip-lining with the camelback on my chest and that worked pretty good.

I am using a high res bullet cam - 520 line Sony chip, and it does look quite good when played back from the original DV tape. I'm inputting the .avi file into Quicktime Pro to encode (h.264) it to 320x240 .mov or mp4 file and then uploading it to youtube. I've found that even video directly from the camcorder sometimes is pretty crappy. I think that you are right about the luminance & gamma, tho', that appears to affect the end result. Overcast and hazy days are really bad. What editting software are you people using?

This is a custom built box using the following components: u-blox OEM GPS (just a circuit board with a sensitive GPS chip on it) w/ a remote antenna, a PIC 18F452 microcontroller, a SD card writer/reader, a video card, a LANC controller, a massive 4400mah li-ion battery all stuffed into a 1.25" x 8.5" x 7.5" box. It allows input from 2 bullet cameras and 1 microphone. The wired remote allows you to select either camera, start/stop data logging and start/stop plotting and of course LANC record/stop control of the Sony camcorder. This all fits nicely into a camelback pack along with the camcorder. Using the camcorder display the menu system allows you to select log rate (1 or 4hz), two display formats, two log files (kml or plain txt (time,lat,long,alt,speed) as well as set some other configuration options. It can also plot out your ground track on the video in realtime. The data log files are written to a 2GB SD card which when inserted into a USB adaptor on your PC can be seen in GE or printed out or input to other processing apps. I'll try to get a youtube video online showing what this setup looks like. Anyone know what the secret is to get good quality videos on youtube? Here's a lame skiing video with the GPS info http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geS-L4eS0BA Here you can see the time updating every .25 seconds. Now, if I can only convince myself why I should jump out of a perfectly good airplane!

Attached is a sample of a Google Earth (GE) file recorded to the SD card showing the path at altitude with the vertical lines representing the a data point at 1/4 sec interval. If you have GE installed, after copying the file to your machine, you should be able to double-click it and view it in GE. The GPS unit I'm using is an OEM unit made by u-blox and is quite sensitive. I managed to lock on to 5 sats while sitting a seat away from the window on a 767 on a return trip from Canada as saw 509mph at 29,800 ft. It locks with no problem when placed in the passenger seat of my car or from my camel back when on my sportbike.

Check this link. Not sure if this is what you are looking for. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3167372#3167372