Originally posted by stymye
thanks for the link solrules..I downloaded the manual and driver at the bottom.
ebay still has one left(new) for $15 buy it now price if anyone else is looking for one.
I suspect I'll need a controller to get around the 30 sec off mode?
I'm not sure a controller would work in your case. The controller would have to sense liftoff, then complete a circut to the power switch, then with a suitable power-on delay, it would have to activate the video start switch (if it even has one). I would be willing to bet that your rocket would already be coasting by the time the video actually started because of the time lag from the camera's firmware.
I think your best bet would be to make an external switch that would turn the power on. Then you could activate another switch (screw terminal, pull-pin, etc.) to start the recording. Make sure to launch this at your home, or alert the RSO/LCO that they need to launch the rocket IMMIDEATLY. After you run back to a safe distance with ~90 seconds of video recording time left, have them press the launch button.
Make sure that you get the software as well as the link cable to the computer. If you don't, you will not be able to retrive the data!
Also, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE FULL BATTERIES!!! I can't stress this enough. These pencams run off of volitale memory, so if the batteries run out or get disconnected from the G-force, all your data will be lost. You also have to find your rocket fast so the batteries do not run too low. Don't wait 'till the next day to download the video!
I learned the battery problem the hard way....I frogot to replace my batteries on my second flight of my starvid at LDRS 23. The batteries ran out halfway up, and rendered the video unretrieavable. I used an Aiptek 1.3MP pencam SD with a 128mb SD card. Recording on the SD card makes life much better, as the data is non-volatile, so the batteries can run out after the video was done recording without losing any data (plus, I get around 13 minutes of recording time! Almost as long as the batteries will last!). Unfortunatley, this does not help the fact that the camera will die if you have near dead batteries.......