# Cheap Rolling Camera Car



## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

On this last weekend, a Buddy of mine had an open house so I took the videos. In one shot we needed a way to follow the track with our camera and I forgot to bring my gondola camera car. 
One of the SVGRS club member had something similar to what I put together tonight that would follow the curve of the tracks, but still able to show some of the scene around the tracks. 
I saw how he made his up so by shortening up the wheel base it seemed to work the best for us. Put on a cowcatcher to keep from derailing the camera and it works great.

This is photo of what it looks like but not finished yet... Notice our camera is an off set mount. 










With camera w/ quick mounted.










We left a pad for a Kadee coupler pocket if needed.. Our USA coulper will adj. up and down.

Our next thing to do in a few days ..........maybe do some outside LED lighting tests for some of our night runs. We notice so far it's going to take at least 4 White LED's in a bar under the camera lens mounted on the truck to get enough light to show up around 10 foot out....... we hope. It looks ok wth the camera here in the room with 4 of them.

We like the white LED's for night runs due to it makes it look like the moon is out in the distance, has a slight blue tint to the video.

Because we are track power, we will use brass wire wipers for less wheel drag on the Frt.truck for the LED"s. 
Also, at a lower voltage to keep the LED's bright, we may have to use a voltage reguator instead of just resistors in line to each LED. Resistors would take more voltage to get them full bright.
More to come later..


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## Dick Friedman (Aug 19, 2008)

Good job, Noel. SVGRS member Rod Hopkinson worked out the original one; many club members have them now. Will be interesting to see if having lights will work on it as well. I like the idea of the cow catcher!


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Dick Friedman on 18 May 2011 12:31 AM 
Good job, Noel. SVGRS member Rod Hopkinson worked out the original one; many club members have them now. Will be interesting to see if having lights will work on it as well. I like the idea of the cow catcher!








Hi Dick F. Ya that where I got the Idea from but my camera has to have an off set for the mounting. So had to make an easy way to get camera on and off and also set it up for lower Bachmann and USA coupler besides the higher Kadee coulpers. So it revarseable. Also you know how we run night run here with your trains to so need some kind of lighting for the dark spaces... lol..
I tried with a spring frt. truck and it bounched all over the place with lighting on it. So had to find a old USA truck and utillize the short wheel base so it won't derail. 
Good to see ya both at the open show.


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## tj-lee (Jan 2, 2008)

Great idea! 

Best, 
TJ


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Tk's TJ..........

Sorry Mike R.











Darn link is messed up and not working here.

Just have to copy and paste it... Now sure what wrong with posting on here.. Need more inform go to the other train link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PA3UQZuS0w
Try it again.

_(There ya go Noel, SteveC)_


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

That plugin does not work here...zip happens.


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Maybe have to start a new post??
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PA3UQZuS0w
 
You-tube short cut not working when inserting the HTML ?  May be a size problem.   I see on U-tube I can size the frames..   
I notice it's been a problem for a week or so.............only on here.
Anyway this will show how it works.. Will do more on it later when the weather get better to get the light fig. out.


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Steve C. Guess I'll have to set down with you sometime and see what setting I maybe have wrong somewhere, either in IE-8 & Firefox to work in MLS.com.. 
Videos work ok on other sites but not here using the You-tube short cut in tools. 
Remember we had problems with FTP but in DOS it worked.. Never got that program to work either....Tk's again for the help.. Noel


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Noel

No problem, take a look at question 11 in the MLS FAQ's. Currently I'm having a problem with FireFox myself, I upgraded from v4.0 to v4.0.1 and now can no longer login to MLS. Yet I have no problem logging in with MS/IE-8 or Opera v11.11 (Build 2109).


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## Jerry Barnes (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks Noel, 
Was looking at your elevated part. You use plastic pipe for that? They set in concrete? What does the top look like, underneath?


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Jerry. Are you taking about the track that I ran the Camera on ? If so, I came up with the Idea of just driving 1 -1/2 & 1- 1/4 SCD 80 PVC pipe in the ground until it won't move any more. Joel Harrisons live in Sacramento where he his river bottom ground. You can almost dig it by hand.. Best ground i ever seen. Grow anything. " Not like out here where i live with hard pan and bad clay soil." 
Some of the PVC is 5 to 6 foot in the ground so to get it aboveground in some places it had to be almost 8 foot long and then next size smaller PVC Pipe in side of it for adj. the finial hight. Then we just put on a PVC Tee on and screw it to the 2 X 6 board. Worked out great for his layout.. 
Mine was a difference story... Do to the hard clay i had to go to 1/2 PVC in order to drive it in the ground and use two side by side for each stanchion. So it depends on the soil you have and we don't use Concrete.. May have to move something later on. 
Hope this help Jerry? Noel


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Well..... Got the dog gone thing working today..... HOT DOGGIES AND BUNCH OF HOUSE PUPPLYS.. IT WORKS....... ITWORKS.... IT WORKS.....

I did a test and made a small video of it here in the puter room to see if all of the room lights are out and then test with a small room light to see how bad it was.. The LED's give it a touch of blue to the video in total darkness, but it looks ok.. Most of our night runs we have lots of out door light on anyway so this will just help out in the real dark area to get a good night video.. "I hope, We'll see tonight." 

Here what it looks like turned on..











It is now 9 V Batt powered with 5 White LED"s










It's set up for track power for later use to change the batt is want. ( Just wipers and wires install as yet.) 
Not sure I will need that.. Most videos don't run more that 5 to 10 min's.

That's all I'm going to say for now until more test are done.. 
Note: I did turn the two outside LED' out wards for a little for more side viewing in the camera.
Later ... IT WORKS..


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

His is the night run Video. "We can't get FAQ 11 to work for some reson so we just put in the link." 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPL0aWI6lg



By using the ridged frt. truck, we got rid of the bouncing on the camera. Spring load frt. truck just didn't work with the load it had to carry.

The Batt. is easy to change out and by having it on the back it ballances the Frt. truck. It equals the wt. of the load on the front end.

We came up with on each LED a 91 ohm, 1/8 watt Reisis. in line with them due to that what we had laying around. Its close.

I don't suggest running this Camera car " Due to the short wheel base. " at 100 MPH on your railroad. If you want to go that fast , use a Gondola or wt. Flat car for Jet drives. 

It seems that if you want to hear other noises or people talking on your videos .. put a few cars between the Eng. and your Camera car if you are running sound card in the Eng. Mine Eng. grounded out my voice. 

Anyway........... it done except for some miner painting and polishing up the polish alum. 
DARN.. IT WORKS.


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Hey Noel

That whole new set up looks even better at night, the camera truck with LEDs works great, and the new car barn came out really nice, not too bad for an old geezer.









Anyway there's your video, not sure what you meant by you couldn't get Q11 to work??? Did you mean that when you clicked the link the question didn't expand to show the answer; or did you mean that you followed the instructions in Q11 but were unable to successfully get the video to embed and display; or both???


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Steve. Tk's so much for getting the video to insert.. I was real supprized on how good it came out........Tk's again. 


" Darn.. I'm not sure what is wrong.. Ya. FAQ's work ok and I didn't try the DOS way due to it was to late last night to do much. Got to bed at 1 am..laf.
Get back with you on new MLS test post later on... ok.. Noel "


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Noel

I'm using Win-7 & MS/Internet Explorer v8 and haven't encountered any problems using the MLS editor's YouTube while embedding videos.

Earlier today I tried using the MLS YouTube tool in FireFox v4.0.1 and boy did it mess things up. Yes, I did figure out what got changed in FireFox when I upgraded from v4.0 to v4.0.1 which then let me login to MLS once again. Anyway, I tried both of the alternate methods; i.e. just pasting the YouTube embed HTML into the MLS editor's message content area while in the Normal view mode, and the other where you switch to the HTML view mode, and both ways worked for me.


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