Flew the keychain camera on my Blade 120SR today at Redwood School. Had severe vibration problems that made for ripples in the video. Seemed to hit resonance at times that were really bad. What a shame, because it was a great flying day. I posted the video anyway, because I thought a lot of the content was pretty cool. You just have to look past the ripples. I've flown this camera many times on everything from Strykers to Slow Sticks and never had this problem. The heli just has a lot of vibration by nature and you can't get away from it. The camera has next to zero mass so it doesn't resist the vibration at all. I'll have to make a little shock mount and add some weight to settle this down, because it was a lot of fun to fly. This is the same problem we see on gyros. A lot of gyros even come with weights to provide a little dampening. That's what we need here. When I got home and watched the video today, I tried flying it again with the camera mounted to the landing gear rather than the paper thing plastic of the fuse. That didn't help at all. Then I tried flying it on my Walkera V400 and it wasn't much better. About the only thing that changed is the frequency of the vibration. You can see that in my second video below. I didn't see any point in even trying it on the 450. I just need to make a mount to absorb the vibration. I hope I can do that without it getting to heavy for the 120SR. We'll see! Had a good time doing this anyway. ...Tiger [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsnOB14oIbc[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQRwTs4TQms[/youtube]
Even with the ripples, those were some great videos! Looking forward to getting up in the air with you for some Camera/FPV flying soon
I had fair luck with either of my cameras using a piece of foam for a cushion, then securing them with a rubber band or hook and loop. You are right though. It is pretty tough on a heli. Just to many moving parts.
Depending on camera type you will have different issues, 30 FPS shutter is a harmonic of 1800 RPM rotor speed, and then there is the frame by frame capture and line by line capture method. I use frame by frame and have no issues at all with FPV. HD video is really difficult to deal with vibration because of the frame rate either 30 or 60 FPS and capture method. But yes, cushion foam, AKA memory foam is the best. Only compress it to 50% of original thickness.
not a pro on cameras but... used to help a family business sell exotic spiders and roaches, we used rubber bands and panty hose to let the object (bugs in tupperware, in this case a keychain camera) be suspended from any moving parts. this idea even supported a 45 foot drop with an egg as the object. Just a suggestion. may post drawings later on in the week
