Here's what the setup at a show looks like.
To give visitors a close-up look at our railroad, I installed a spy cam in a train going around the layout. It gives a live look at our world as if from a hobo looking out the door of a box car. To start the project, I took an HO box car and built a styrene box to hold a 9v battery.
After fitting in the components, we tried it out at our last show but were plagued by interference. A few seconds at a time of uninterrupted reception was all that we could get. With many radio-control throttles from ours and other layouts in the hall as well as DCC in the rails below the car we figured that adding a Faraday box around the video camera/transmitter would help.
Here’s the revised set-up showing the Faraday cage made of brass shim stock that will be grounded to the battery.
It took a lot of shoehorning to get it all to fit.
With the addition of an old rabbit ears antenna connected to the receiver, we tried it out at the Great Train Expo on March 21-22, 2009 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California. The antenna and Faraday cage reduced interference enough that the image was watchable. Visitors had a great time trying to figure out which car had the camera. The view was particularly good on Dave McCanne’s module because it has a high backdrop on it that blocked out views of the convention hall and club members in the background.
Charley
1 Comment
March 19, 2009 at 12:57 am
Genius….