Plastic Crash Frame

[Patricia]

We're trying out a new idea after our metal crash frame leaked last
year, and switching to a plastic frame we made in house. Has anyone
else give this a try? We haven't tried to trim it yet, the
polypropylene is almost neutrally buoyant, but it looks slick...
Check out the picture I posted on the group page.


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[Horn, Lance]

We also made our own crash frame for our Phantom S2. We made it out of 1-1/4" round aluminum tubing for the sides and 1" square aluminum tubing for the cross members. The material is much stronger than the thin stainless steel used by DOE, actually adds to the payload capacity of the vehicle, and the square cross members are great for mounting equipment since they don't slide around a round tube. We put additional skid plates on the front, bottom curved sections since this is where the wear is concentrated. Photo attached.

Lance W. Horn
Operations Director, Undersea Vehicles Program
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane
Wilmington, NC 28409
910-962-2443
910-512-0193 cell
910-962-2410 fax

[Patricia]

Looks good! I was suprised that our DOE crash frame laster 10 years
before it sprung a leak--- and with the way our pilot drives! :)

By the way, is that the Kongsburg still camera that you have on your
tilt tray? We are looking at purchasing one in the future, but we
don't know much about it. How do you like the image quality? I've
built a remotely controlled still camera out of an Sony Handycam and I
managed even get an external flash to work (I put it in our old DOE
camera housing), and can download video and stills without opening the
endcap--- but it hasn't been tested in the water yet. Hopefully
soon! The cost savings are good, but I'm not sure how it measures
up. I'll let everyone know once I have some field testing behind it.

Is anyone else using a digital still camera? How is backscatter?
Also, we want to upgrade to full high definition video and could use a
recommendation on that as well. I heard good things about Kongsberg
there as well.

-Patricia

[Horn, Lance]

Hello Patricia,
I'm surprised it lasted that long too!!! That's why we went to the aluminum tubing, we could beat the hell out of it and it really stood up for many years.

No, not a Kongsburg still camera. It is an Insite Pacific Scorpio digital still and strobe. It really sounds like you're on the right track building your own. The guts of the Scorpio are a simple Nikon 995 3.2 mpixel camera and image quality is fantastic, it's really all you need. Backscatter is somewhat of a problem considering the limited space we have on the tilt bar for separating them out. We still get excellent pictures and the science crews that we support love it, no complaints.

We are looking at a new vehicle with fiber capability so we are also in the market for HD video. We are looking at the Insite Pacific Mini Zeus. Pretty much the same specs as the Kongsberg, but the Insite has water corrected optics that give it a significant wider field of view. Yes, it is more expensive, but I've heard some folks that have the Kongsberg have had problems with the camera and the guys at Insite are exceptional in customer support. So there's my two cents.

Cheers,

Lance W. Horn
Operations Director, Undersea Vehicles Program
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
5600 Marvin K. Moss Lane
Wilmington, NC 28409
910-962-2443
910-512-0193 cell
910-962-2410 fax

-----Original Message-----
From: phantom-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:phantom-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patricia
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 7:01 PM
To: Phantom ROV Forum

Subject: Digital Stills Camera

-Patricia

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