Point of View Cam w Wireless Transmission?

[Kevin Dooley]

I need to rig up a Point of View camera for a live event coming up soon - the preference would be to send the image wirelessly from the camera to a nearby receiver that would then send the signal into our video system to be incorporated into the switched feed.

Is there anything that is small and not overly-complex so that the person emceeing the event could slip on said camera, do the bit with it, and then take it back off? Or is there something small enough he could just leave it on?

Wireless isn't crucial if there is something small and low profile that can be taken on and off quickly and easily that could just send a composite and/or SDI signal to our stage plate...

Does anyone have any ideas for this?

[Chris Medico]

Can you get a coax over to the camera and do SDI all the way? That is by far the simplest and easiest thing to do.

Depending on the quality you need it could be as cheap as a few hundred $$ to buy an AM based SD transceiver set (do a search for wireless security transceivers on your favorite search engine).

If you want wireless HD then expect to rent some microwave gear for about $500/day or buy it for about $7k.

What cameras and switching gear are you using?

[Kevin Dooley]

Standard Definition is fine - we could do SDI all the way, do you know of any tiny cameras that have a live video out we could use for this? All the ones I'm turning up record internally...

[Chris Medico]

Your small consumer cameras will have HDMI out instead of SDI out. HDMI doesn't like to run long distances. A small camera with a native SDI output is expensive.

What you can do though is to use a small inexpensive consumer cam with HDMI out and convert it to SDI.

Here is a link to some converters that should work for your application:
Analog & Digital Converters

[Kevin Dooley]

What I'm needing though is something like a couple of cables running to a pair of glasses or a headband of some kind with the camera built in. If he's just holding a camcorder he can't use his hands and the bit won't work.

[Chris Medico]

Ah, Ok. Sorry for misunderstanding the exact application.

Is this a covert thing or if they are wearing a lipstick sized camera on some kind of headband would that be OK?

[Kevin Dooley]

Either would be fine - covert would look better, but whichever is easiest to get on and off live would be the best.

[Wayne Reimer]

what about simple and cheap; a gopro on a head band, and this?

link removed -- not the link intended -- see below

it would seem to do what you want, all in under $700

[Chris Hurd]

Wayne, you've posted a link to "Lifehacker Faceoff: H&R Block vs. TurboTax Online Tax Prep."

Please tell me that you just made a simple mistake with cut & paste. What link did you intend to post?

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Kevin Dooley

Either would be fine - covert would look better, but whichever is easiest to get on and off live would be the best.

The images from the ones built into glasses and such leaves a bit to be desired depending on your quality standards. They tend to be pretty low resolution and won't look good if you are cutting it against HD material.

One of the few reasonable POV style HD cameras that you can get a signal out of in real time is the Sony MC1.

Beyond that I'm scratching my head on what to recommend.

[Wayne Reimer]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Wayne, you've posted a link to "Lifehacker Faceoff: H&R Block vs. TurboTax Online Tax Prep."

Please tell me that you just made a simple mistake with cut & paste. What link did you intend to post?

Gawd yes! Sorry, that was a mistake! I meant to post a link to the eyeofmine site which shows some of their wireless video offerings
GoPro HD Hero live video - EyeOfMine Multimedia

[Kevin Spahr]

I believe ContourHD is going to release a POV that transmits video to your iPhone using a free app.
Don't know if it is shipping or if it works...
It is a cool idea.

[Wayne Reimer]

that would be a cool idea...I wonder if it has any sort of range though, or if it's confined to a couple of feet? Wireless transmission isn't really that difficult ( they've been doing it at fairly low cost in the R.C. airplane world for years), but there is a power issue...to output the signal and have any sort of range it needs to be amplified significantly..that's where the separate transmitter/recievers come in.

would be nice to have though within the current form factor

[Dean Sensui]

If this is "live" you might want to see what the RC modeler folks have available.

The cameras and transmitters are small and lightweight out of necessity, and they're all SD.

The technology is called "FPV" or First Person View. There are a number of systems that transmit in the 900 MHz frequency, and range is at least several hundred feet.

I haven't kept up with it in the last few months so it might have changed a bit. There are cameras that you can manually set exposure, white balance, etc. The transmitters can be as small as a box of matches and the cameras are about an inch square. Voltage requirements vary but they're generally 12 volts.

[Kevin Dooley]

I tried this setup and with the transmitter sitting next to the receiver I got absolutely zero reception on any combination of channels... clearly something ain't right here. Sending it back, seeing if a second unit will work. I may just go with a tether on the Contour camera... I've got their chest harness, but it just seems like there should be lower profile way to mount the camera without putting it in the waterproof case (which will have to be destroyed to run the video out anyway...

Originally Posted by Wayne Reimer

Gawd yes! Sorry, that was a mistake! I meant to post a link to the eyeofmine site which shows some of their wireless video offerings
GoPro HD Hero live video - EyeOfMine Multimedia