Camera
The flight in 2006 broke the tip of the nosecone off on landing so I took this chance to update the electronics bay.
Also with the chance of breaking 90,000 and seeing the images that Gene got
of space I wanted to add a camera.
As you could imagine there wasn't much
room in there for much.
I found a keychain camera at Brookstone link
Camera
It's small uses non-volitile flash memory and stores 250 images at 640x480.
Inside camera
I was happy when I opened the camera and found it was a single board with the
lens screwed to the circuit board.
It has a LiPo battery that charges
through the USB connector.
In checking the signals I determined I could easily tweak a PICO-TM1 to
control the camera.
I even found that due to the shutter button having a
pull-up resistor I can use this to check if the camera is on or has gone to
sleep.
I tweaked the timer code so it checks the camera to see if it's on
before taking a photo.
If it's off it activates the MODE button for 3sec to
turn it on, then takes the photo.
It will take the first 100 photos with an
interval of 3sec then switch to a 10sec interval for the remaining 150
photos.
This gives me almost 1/2hour of coverage.
Upon further checking I realized I can easily integrate a PICO-LO4 to log the altitude of each photo, limited by the max altitude of 40K for the pressure sensor.
I glued half of the case to the inside of the NC with the lens flush with the OD of the sholder.
Mounted
The timer is on the left of the camera with the terminal block on it. It's wrapped in black electrical tape.
The cable coming off the timer connects to the PICO-LO4 so it can log the altitude of each photo.
I held the camera in place with tie wraps and glued the battery above the camera to the wall.
I also re-arranged the electronics so I could get a 12V battery to fit so I can have a full 1W transmit power for the telemetry.