Subject:
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Mars Exploration/Camera
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 10 Mar 2000 20:04:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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1381 times
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Yesterday I got the Mars Explorer CD Rom installed along with the camera
I bought for it, a Logitek QuickCam Pro. I was able to find a 10 foot
USB extension cable as well that the camera does not seem to mind. I
installed the camera first as instructed and then the Mars CD rom. It
all went rather well. On the main Mission screen there is a video window
and sure enough, after some configurations, the real time video from the
camera appeared. As advertized it also found my Pinnacle DC10 video capture
card. Interestingly it found the QuickCam listed as "not working" but there
was a Microsoft application which was listed as working and that turned out
to be connected to the QuickCam. It had been assimilated.
The USB speed does not really support VGA resolution. It is like the Ham
Radio Slow Scan TV in some ways. But it does do full motion video at the
lower resolution settings that the QuickCam Pro supports, so it may be
worthwhile to get one of the cheaper $50 versions of the camera that only
supports the less than 640x480 resolution if this is your only interest.
The QuickCam software has lots of nice features, including a motion
detector mode where it waits for something to change and records only
video that has movement in it, a bit like a frog's eye.
The QuickCam Pro is a golfball camera. It is held into its mounting by
pressure on two suction like cups on the swivel bracket. It can pop right
out. On the bottom of the golfball is a standard 1/4 inch tripod socket
that will make it easy to mount on a Lego brick type base. I am planning
on gluing up one that will be about 4x4 studs. The golfball is rather
larger than a real golfball. I am also going to check out the local
camera stores to see what might be available in a cheap table tripod with
a ball mount on top that can be canabalized.
Unfortunately the CD rom seems to have a start at the beginning bias, so
I was unable to jump into the higher challenges that support the camera,
so I started at the beginning with the Mars Yard. At least the camera
works, is recognized by the Lego software and produces images in at least
one of the control screens. But no info yet on what the CD eventually
does with the camera other than show the video in the remote control
screen which is much like one of the RCX command tools like found in
RCXcc. This screen can do all the things the Lego remote control can do
and then some.
The USB cables are stiff and not the best for umbilicals. I worked out
a support for the more flexible cable that came with the tiny B&W camera
I already had that should work however.
BTW, the planetary society pages come back error 404. I hope it did not
go poof! I was able to find the British chapter pages still working but
none of the links to the main pages, including those supplied with the
CD rom, appear to work.
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