[aprssig] SSTV camera from Argent

[Stephen H. Smith]

On 5/23/2011 3:13 PM, Mark Conner wrote:
> I purchased one of these cameras late last year and hope to have it 
> integrated into an APRS-equipped balloon payload for a flight later this year. 

This immediately occurred to me as a most-likely use for this device with no 
viewfinder.



> The main thing I'm working on is to add a PICAXE chip to send the module a 
> serial string to incorporate my callsign into the image for ID.  When it's 
> powered up it always uses a default string from the firmware and needs to be 
> overridden each time.

Judging from the sample pic on Scott's website, the text overlay is at such a 
small point size that it would be nearly illegible in the Robot mode.  I assume 
you would will implement the switches or jumpers to force the unit in the 
Scottie 1 mode, which has far superior resolution.

When you put the thing in the auto mode that sends a pic every xx seconds, does 
the text string need to be reloaded each time, or does it retain the text until 
it is powered down?



How well does the gadget deal with daylight light levels?

The VC-H1's internal camera head is awful. It overloads and blows out the image 
in any light level greater than bright interior lighting or a heavily overcast 
day outside.        I normally use my VC-H1s (I have two) with the NTSC monitor 
output of an external digital point-and-shoot camera which yields VASTLY 
superior images.  (If you remove the OEM camera head from the VC-H1, the 
resulting 3.5mm  mini-jack can be used as an input for any standard 1.4V pp 
NTSC composite signal source.)

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