gjhaycraft

Absolutely right. FCOv1's had no such film. In addition, there's no indication I could find that the film is present. Nothing in the micro instructions. There was no tab at the edge. The film wasn't thick and heavy. In fact, mine was thin and stretchy. The matte finish blended in perfectly. I hesitated to say something, but some of the posted pics looked like my first batch, with the film in place. I'm using a Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB card. It seems to work fine with my Mac. The USB cable works, but it's only USB 1.1. Removing the card and using a card reader for downloads gets me USB 2.0. I upgraded Quick Time to QTPro for a few dollars. It allows one click flipping horizontally and vertically, and 90º rotations. It also does brightness, contrast, tint, and saturation easily. Now, I just need to get my RCdisc built to put it in.

DaveS

It is too cold and snowy here to fly my FCO2, but I did take it on a driving test today, and it looks much better without that plastic film over the lens. It is still not quite as sharply focused as I would like, but it is much sharper and the color accuracy is also better. I am also using a Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB card, and it seems to work fine. I have read on the flycamone2 web forums that some people are having problems shooting videos at very cold temperatures, and they are suspecting that the battery voltage may be too low at very cold temperatures. I don't have any experience in that area yet, but it seems to be working pretty well otherwise, especially for such a small light camera. I use AVI Demux on WinXP to post process the video, and do the 180 degree rotation to get it right side up again after shooting with the lens rotated up. AVI Demux is a nice tool for those of us on the WinXP side of things.

Thank you very much for pointing out the lens protection film!
--Dave

FPVpilot

Help,
Mine came yesterday and it's not working. Plugged it in to charge it and the WC is on the display comes on (webcam) but when I remove it from charging I get nothing when turning it on. I flip the switch and press the 2 (shutter) button but still nothing 0n the display telling me it's on. could I be doing something wrong, tried everything.

DaveS

Your problem description sounds like the internal battery is disconnected or not taking a charge. It should show "PY" about 1 second after pressing the shutter button with the power slide switch in the up position.

--Dave

wecky

I think the display has to say "pc" for it to take the charge.

English Electric

I've just noticed my one has the protective film on the lens!!!

It's really hard to see!

This should help things....

Paul.

English Electric

Flew today minus the lens protector!

Was better!

I've come to the conclusion, the people saying you need a fast card are right.

I noticed when I first used the cam, the audio was slightly out. Today it was way out.

The trouble is the video cuts out when you play it on your pc, when the sound stops. Which was way before I landed!

Paul.

salat

how good it is comparing to FS1 and eDVR?
Thank you,
Kostya

DaveS

ACME just put up their second new firmware update for the FCO2. The main change listed in the readme is that it now can record video in 320x240 format.
It is too dark here to try it outdoors, but it does work as advertized in doors, except for one little detail. The readme says that a new menu item "LE" has been added for low resolution recording, but the actual menu item that I see is "LP". With the quarter size video recording comes a corresponding quarter size video bit rate, so it should give much longer recording time on smaller SD cards as well as probably working with some slower cards. Here is the GOM Reader analysis of the AVI file produced by my first low resolution trial.
================================================== =================
Basic File Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------
File Name : PICT0001.AVI
File Format : AVI format
File Size on Disk : 2,137,788 Byte (2.0 MB)
Data Size : 2,129,360 Byte (2.0 MB)
Playback Time : 00:00:13 (13 Sec)
Average Bit Rate : 1.22 MBits/Sec

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Video Stream
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Codec Type : Microsoft - Motion JPEG DIB Format (MJPG)
Image Size : 320 x 240 ( 1.33 : 1 )
Average Bit Rate : 1.15 MBits/Sec
Frames/sec : 26.54 Frames/Sec
Total # of frames : 371

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Audio Stream
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Codec Type : PCM AUDIO (0x0001)
Bit Rate : 64.00 KBits/Sec
Sample ratio : 8,000 Hz
Channel count : 1 Channels (MONO)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Key Frame
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Index Status : The index of the file is valid.
Total Key Frames : 371
Average Interval : 0.038 Sec
Maximum Interval : 0.038 Sec
Minimum Interval : 0.038 Sec
Standard Deviation : 0.000 Sec
=========================[ By GomReader ]==========================

salat

Anybody already know of any chineese source of it? Like with FC1?
What chip is in it? ST Labs?
What FPS it gives in 640x480 mode?
Thank you,
Kostya

DaveS

No.
Possibly, but not likely. The FCO2 uses a standard recording format, not like the eDVR with the ST Labs chip and it's proprietary recording format. I suppose that it may be possible to program the ST Labs chip to use a standard format too, but none of the chip markings that I can see in the FCO2 say "ST Labs"
The same as it does in 320x240. It's the standard frame rate for PAL television, and it was designed in a PAL TV standard country, so it seems like the most obvious frame rate to use?

--Dave

Frodo

My camera has a small switch on the side to turn the battery off (this is so the battery does not go flat when not in use). My camera will not charge if the switch is set to "off".

Agent K

My camera won't stop recording about 70% of the time. I put it in the "UR" mode, hit the start button, fly around a bit, hit the button to stop and it just keeps recording. I have to turn it off to stop it, which deletes the video.
It only does this while on the helicopter.

Edit:
I just tested the cam and it will do this when not attached to the heli. I'm going to try to exchange it.

salat

Hello Dave!
Can you please post close picture of circuit board? Or write down chip names?
Thank you,
Kostya

Crash9

I got mine out of the box today. It seems to work fine and I removed the lens protector first . It doesn't like the indoors at all, I tested it outdoors and it seems pretty good for a little camera.

I noticed in PIC mode you can choose a picture to be taken every 3 seconds. Anyone use this mode yet.

If the wind dies down I'll try it tomorrow .

Agent K

I tried the pic mode, I got a bunch of blurry pictures.

Hemi

Well I was thinking about buying one but after reading the post here I've decided against it. Doesn't sound like you guys are having much luck here.

DaveS

The circuit board pictures are posted in the forum on:
http://www.flycamone2.com

--Dave

Crash9

Pretty cool camera, I used it on my RC truck and I thought the video was pretty good. I like how easy you can add a servo with the supplied horn for tilt and then you could put the camera on another servo and have pan.

weathervane

I love mine. It seems to work great. I took it out side and did a sample video, it loaded very easyly in to my laptop. The quality of the video was great for what the thing cost. I can not wait to get onto my plane.
-Andrew

Crash9

This little camera is pretty good outdoors. I attach it to my Trex 450 which is a vibration nightmare do to a bent main shaft, dented tail boom and a few other minor things but a good test platform and I was surprised once again on how well this little cameras quality is. I'm not sure about stills though better to use it for video only. The pictures above my house are lifted from the video so don't expect much quality but you get an idea how good the colors come through.

I got a nice clear video with it being late afternoon .

autorail1

By getting the update I will still be able to chose 640 format still. Are there any advantages that you see in upgrading the firmware if you plane on using 640x480.

Thanks,

Jeff

DaveS

The first firmware update fixed the external "shutter button" input on pins one and three, the second firmware update was reported to have broken that fix, and the third one (today) says it fixed it again. But now, instead of connecting 1-3 momentarily to start the video and then connecting 1-3 momentarily to stop the video, the camera records continuously only while 1-3 are connected together. The only other documented change was to extend the low resolution mode to the "spycam" mode. One advantage of the low resolution mode is that it records one quarter of the amount of data per frame, so you can get longer videos on smaller SD cards, and that may also allow slower SD cards to work. Otherwise, no other apparent major improvements with today's new release. They have been promising improvements in the low light capabilities of the camera, but that did not show up in today's firmware release.

--Dave

quailbird

What program does everyone use to tell everything about a picture or video? Like autorail1 put up. I saw one post for a Gspot program. How does it work?

DaveS

Gspot is intended primarily to analyze codec installations on Windows PCs. You need to put the file you want to analyse on your PC on connect the SD card to the PC via USB and then tell Gspot to run it's analysis. It produces a huge amount of information to a log file, or you can just look at the stuff of interest in the GUI. It will tell you if you have codecs installed to play the file and give you information concerning the file itself, like encoding format, frame rate, bit rate, and audio information as well. It does not tell very much about the proprietary M$ formats, but it gives a good deal of information for the more open file formats.
It is free, so if you want to try it you can get it here:
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

--Dave