FPV Project: Almost like driving a real train!

And now presenting the guinea pig.

A Williams Trash-8 *cough*... I mean Dash-8 #8666.

Plenty of cab space for a 1" square camera as it is a dummy unit.

So apparently my shipment of "drone" equipment was intercepted by Customs and Border Patrol.

While I work with CBP people day-in/day-out at our facility, I hold no grudge against them. They're following instructions. This just means a potential delay of up to 3 days. I was hoping to work on this over the weekend.

Best laid plans often something, something, something...

If we can immerse ourselves to feel like birds, why not a train? Maybe even a car... oh wait, we already do that.

I had the (dis)pleasure of taking a First Person View of a racing drone through a parking garage when it was empty. Exhilarating and also vomit inducing at a full bore 50-70mph chicane around support pillars. Pulling turns in excess of 1.5G's

This is where I got the idea after attending a race. The pilot has been doing it for a while, so he pointed me to a few places to get components.

Yeah, you will get some interesting perspectives from the loco camera. But to make it look good, you may have to re-scenic your layout accordingly!

There are various youtube videos of layouts as seen from loco cameras. I remember one (English layout?) which must have been carefully set up to minimize the appearance of anything extraneous to the layout itself.

One of the ideas in a magazine some years ago was to build a layout specifically for good loco camera views with many parallel tracks isolated in their own "scenic corridors" for maximum mileage in the space.

I remember a loco cam view on a small Lionel layout at the CSRM where the camera did a lot of "horizontal pans" because of the sharp curves. You didn't actually see so much of the track or layout!

The purpose of this project is to make kids feel like they're driving the train, rather than running something in a circle/oval all day.

While I belong to the Carpet Layout Club, this is more for our Kids Run Trains group. Granted, I will be changing the goggles out for an LCD Computer display.

I thought about it after looking at the inside of the unit. There is a nice plate I could glue a post to put the cam on. This way, the cam would pan with the lead truck as it turned. Good point!

Is this analog video from the camera or is it converted to an IP/Digital stream.  I am sure the frames per second are good if you are flying at a high rate of speed in a parking structure.  In many systems the processing delay to convert from analog to digital video gives a noticeable delay in the video.  I want to use a tablet with the video on one side and the engine controls on the other.

Dan

Dan, this is an analog transmitter. Digital transmitters are in the 200-400$ range and most folks stay away from them as they'd rather deal with the snow and static rather than missing an instant from camera stutter. Timing is critical and if you see even the slightest trouble in front of you, you can avoid. This is also why I hate HD Over-The-Air streams.

Since the receiver outputs in various formats like NTSC and PAL, I could potentially see this ability happening down the road.

The cameras use security cam outputs, so its just a simple composite signal. The number of TV Lines varies per brand and model. Some newer cameras are hitting 900 TV lines making it a very good picture. You will need a decoder to pull these images from these cameras to even view on a normal television.

The speed at which packages travel around this world continues to amaze me.

I pull the Dash-8 out of the box yesterday afternoon and a few bits of metal had come out of the box.

A quick check didnt reveal anything easily noticeable, but the engine was wobbly. I take the trucks off to find out the broken bits are parts of the trucks.

With this, I made some great repairs until I can get a hold of Williams again for more parts. Keep that filler out of the wheels! I spent more time cleaning that stuff out of the bearings than I did fixing the poor thing.

In the evening, I received my packages from UPS (a bit late). Because of the batteries, there was a nice label on the side of the package that had the delivery guy a bit cautious. Rightfully so as Lithium Polymer batteries are dangerous if they get mashed!

So now, we open up and make sure everything survived their half-world journey.

Everything good, we tear into the rest of the boxes and read the instructions. Most were decent documentation, but still lacked some finer points. Like what does switch position 8 do on the transmitter.

The wiring took a moment to identify which connector was what and where to apply the power. That was easy. Plugging the harness in was a little difficult on the transmitter. Power was simple enough and was really the only part that required soldering.

After connecting everything wrong (Twice! Upside down plug), the resilient electronics sprang to life rewarding me with a stretched view of myself.

After a hard day prototyping and test fitting the camera and verifying electronics, its now 3AM and my shift ends in an hour. Time to clean up this mess, recharge the LiPo cell and put it in a safe place.

Tomorrow begins the actual outfitting and fabrication of the camera mount that will hold the camera in place.

Next day starts off me getting mad and punching out a window. I then replace it with a power switch to disconnect the battery while it is not in use.

Electronics mounted and ready for a spin around the test track at work!

Silliness aside, I make a battery holder out of one of the unused dowel sections, and mount it inside the shell. As you can see, the shell adds a bit of masking. Yes I realize the headlights are shining through.

The camera tracks through the turns, but it does not see out the window well enough to see the track. I am going to see how fixed to the roof of the cab looks.

Other notes:

The RF signal is not as stable as I had been promised. Even at 200mWatts, there should be next to no interference at such close range. My own body seemed to distress the signal at some points.

Here is an excellent "hobo ride" video from the Fresno club.

Hobo Ride

Speedy Cab ride video from Youngstown club.

I look forward to your next update.   About 10 years ago I installed a micro security camera in a loco that broadcast in real-time  to a TV receiver.   It was low resolution, but color and sound and worked fine.   I suppose it was not high-res enough to be at all "immersive".   I haven't used this in years.  

I hope that MTH and Lionel are both considering adding the camera in cab capability to the mobile device apps - that might be an excellent MRR cab interface and experience.

Two rail O! Very nicely done!

I typically (along with others) have used a various mix of cameras attached to cars and so on. This was more for the sake of "Live" feed fed into a pair of goggles.

I must say that with the goggles, you really keep trying to turn your head thinking it will make the view turn. Sometimes you spot something that you want to see and try to look at it but the camera doesnt budge. What a mind game!