[aprssig] ATV on APRS

[Stephen H. Smith]

K7FTP wrote:
>
>
> Kenwood at one time had a very neat little camera that would easily 
> interface to the TH-D7A, but they long ago stopped that.  There isn't 
> much out there unless you home build it, and far too few are 
> interested in that.
>

The VC-H1 was a unique one-of-a-kind device. It was not just "a camera" 
but an entire SSTV system that included camera, LCD color monitor and 
scan converter in a single hand-held package.  And it wouldn't just 
interface with the TH-D7.  It would interface to any radio like an 
external speaker/mic.  Kenwood really fumbled the marketing of this 
device by not making clear it would work with ANY voice radio.  [SSTV 
only requires voice-band audio into the mic jack on TX, voice-band audio 
off the speaker on RX and PTT; i.e. same hookup as a TNC or sound card.]

However, it was really done in by:

1)   Exceptionally mediocre CCD imager - a low-quality low-res device 
similar to an X-10 spy cam that would overload and wash out in outdoors 
daylight.  I.e. just where you would take a SSTV device liberated from 
big boxes in the shack.


2)   One of the worst support software packages ever offered with a 
piece of hardware.  The Win95/98 program had a Win 3.1 user interface 
with incorrectly labeled buttons, misspellings on others & mangled 
Japanese English help screens.   The biggest problem though was that 
this package absolutely positively wouldn't work on NT-based Windows; 
i.e. Windows 2000 or XP.     When XP became the dominant home OS, 
Kenwood killed this slow-selling product, rather than redo this turkey 
of a program.   


[I have a Win98SE Virtual Machine running in my Win XP systems 
exclusively to continue to be able to run the Kenwood support program.]


I have two of the VC-H1's.  A little-known capability of the device is 
that you can remove the camera head, exposing a 3.5mm stereo min-jack, 
and then plug in ANY NTSC video source.      I connect the NTSC monitor 
OUTPUT of a Canon Powershot digital still camera to my VC-H1s.  Not only 
can you frame-grab (for SSTV transmisson) recently shot pics stored in 
the Canon, you can frame-grab live scenes when the Canon is in shooting 
mode (where the video out becomes a live viewfinder).   The resulting 
image quality is about 1000% better than the VC-H1's own camera.  


I have this setup permanently mounted on the dash of my car as the 
"WA8LMF Mobile SSTV LiveCAM".   Which IS announced in the comment fields 
of my D700 beacons.......


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