Camera Snake Progress

     Today I received the spool of cable I intend to use as the video and power snake for the webcast camera, it's 16/4 bundled with Cat5e. Only available from two manufacturers that I know of, so when I ordered it I didn't really know what to expect, but when I opened up the box I was very pleasantly surprised. 

     It was difficult enough to find any cable that suited my application (this one is designed for home automation use) so naturally when I finally found one I was excited, but there was still plenty to be weary for. This cable is meant for in wall installation, so even though its cheap and bears no fire ratings I was worried it would be far to stiff and prone to kinking. I also had to consider how a cable jacket meant to be run in wall would stand up to the stresses of use as a portable cable. While I can't speak to how the cable will stand up to long term portable use, I was very pleasantly surprised by the flexibility of the cable. The jacket and conductors are very flexible and soft, so much so that I'm not to sure I would want to run this in the walls of my home, but the cable seems very well suited to my application.

I also got some short firewire cables, this one is just wrapped around the transceiver, not yet custom cut to length and jacketed with the power cable, but this will work nicely for now.

Today was also the last day of classes! WooHoo Seniors!!

An old DV/ENG camera for live broadcasts?

yes.

That's an old JVC ENG shoulder camera, which I use for live webcasts, its well suited to this task because; it looks professional, is shoulder mount (steady shots,) puts outs out clean enough video over firewire, and can be had for cheap because its a little older.

But whats that sticking off the back where there should be battery you ask? 

Find out after the break!

Data Radio Modems

This is a Data Radio T-96SR radio modem, they're really pretty cool. Their original application was for data collection and monitoring in oil and gas fields, and I picked two up at my local EPO.

They support a TON of features, including addressable master/slave networking and the use of serial flow control for transparent half-duplex operation. They operate in the 900mhz band, which is a pretty serious band to mess around in without a license, but there are some bytes of the band allocated for amateur radio and low power license-free radio, so experimentation with these should be A-OK as long as we're careful. With a couple of watts at 900mhz and the right antenna, they should be able to hit a couple miles range.

I've built the serial from the diagram in the PDF manual, but haven't gotten it to communicate with the programing software yet. I keep getting errors, Once the summer spins up I look forward to getting these things talking to each other. I have no particular application for them per-se, but I sure do like messing around with radio gear.

Updates on these Data Radio modems will come!