cctv

[greenkarson]

my cctv has a 12v rca stye power input. I know all you electronic guys a cringing reading this. But can i just wire it right to my 12v motorcycle battery? or are the battery fluctuations to much? 13.5v to 11v. And if not any ideas what i can do? i will have two motorcycle batteries onboard with a cctv camera with bnc output using baluns to convert to cat5 cable tether.

[SoakedinVancouver]

These cameras appears to have an internal voltage regulator, which means they can run quite a while on a slowly discharging battery. The problem you might end up having is high frequency noise from the spinning motors, going from their connections to the batteries, and then propagating to your camera video section, and then coming back up to your display.

Anybody with a functioning ROV want to add to this? What problem did you guys had to deal with, video wise?

[soulreaper]

You shouldnt have any problems, with interference. I run my camera wires along side of my thruster motor wires and I dont have any problems.

[thegadgetguy]

I originally had my 12 volt camera hooked up to the same 12 volt battery as my thrusters. This seemed to, for some reason, cause the qualitiy to go down, as compared to when I hooked the camera up to a 12 wall power supply (I think the call them wall warts?) I can't figure out why this is. It wasn't dependent on whether the thrusters were on or not. I'll be doing another dive tommorrow, so we'll see how it goes. In response to your original questions, greenkarson, I personaly would try it and see how it works.

[SoakedinVancouver]

not all cameras were created equal. Or were sold for the same profit percentage, which will depend on how many parts, including filtering parts, the manufacturer stuff into them... By the way, you can fiddle with external filtering, up to a certain extant.

[thegadgetguy]

I was able to do another dive yesterday, with the camera powered by the same 12 volt battery as the thrusters, and overall the quality was pretty good. There was a little bit of distortion of the picture whenever a thruster was turned on or off, but overall not too bad. It is defentily an option. I think part of the degradation of the picture quality that I mentioned before was condensation on the inside of our camera housing. The 12 volt battery isn't a perfect option, but it'll work fine, from what I can see from my ROV.

[greenkarson]

I ordered and received my cctv camera from Hong Kong to Ontario Canada in less then 5 days. Ordered my BNC to cat5 baluns from a place about 90kms away. Been a week and a half still nothing. Now Canada post is gone on strike so who knows when they will show up.

Im not overly conserned about image quality. As long as the image is clear enough for steering the ROV. I will have 2 onboard cameras one, the cctv for navigation and another for HD video.

Another question. Are BNC to cat5 baluns as simple as they look? Just plug in BNC and strip and clamp 2 cat5 wires under the screws?

thanks karson

[thegadgetguy]

I'm not sure what type of baluns you have, but most require that you put a cat5 jack on the end. Terminating them is pretty easy, and if you havn't done it before there are lot of great tutorials. I've never seen one that only required two wires, but that'd be nice as you could have more than one on the same cat5 wire.

[greenkarson]

here is a pic of the baluns i ordered i beleive they take only two wires. Correct me if im wrong

[SoakedinVancouver]

Twisted pair baluns, cool!