On-board Video Systems

[Motocam360]

Hello,

I am new to this site, but we have been providing on-board video recording systems to general aviation for almost 2 years now. We've exhibited at Sun N Fun and Oshkosh last year, where we received tons of interest in our on-board digital video recording systems.

Now we are developing a data acquisition system that works with our on-board video recording product to overlay the information on the video in real time. I'd like some input as to what data various owners would find valuable for each type of aircraft? For example:

• air speed
• Latitude / Longitude
• Altitude

This is just a small example, so please feel free to throw out more suggestions.

Alternately, we offer a multi-camera video recording system that records 4 camera angles at the same time. Is it more valuable to have multiple video angles over 1 or 2 video angles + data?

I am looking for any relevant input to help us develop useful products for the aviation market.

Thanks for your help.

Tim@MotoCam360.com

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Welcome aboard, Tim! Hope you'll stick around and join in the other discussions. This is the best place for aviators on the web.

If it were my money, I would want to be able to do at least 3 cams plus data and aside from what you listed, Vertical speed would be kind of cool too. Not sure why you'd have to throttle back the number of cameras unless you're trying to add the data to all four cams - I would only want the data added to *one* of the pictures, not all of them most likely. Alternatively, if you could simply record a separate video stream with green + transparent for easy overlay onto any or all of the cameras using a video editing program, that'd work too.

Actually, as a relative beginner to acro, what would be really nice is to be able to add CHT/EGT so I could see how the various maneuvers were affecting the engine so I could learn to manage it better - But I realize that's probably not what most of your customers would want.

 

[gismo]

I think the top priority flight data items would be:

1) Airspeed
2) Heading
3) Vertical speed
4) G-load
5) Altitude

and in addition I'd look at providing at some engine data:

1) MP
2) RPM

Other engine related items that might occasionally be useful would be fuel flow and EGT/CHTs.

An alternative to airspeed that would likely be a lot easier to come by is GPS groundspeed. GPS could also give a pretty accurate accounting of heading (actually track) altitude and vertical speed. I don't think I'd bother with lat/lon or any other position data, at least not for an overlay as this wouldn't be easy to interpret. OTOH, it might be nice to record the position in the data record for other purposes than overlaying it on the video. I suspect that glider pilots might want that badly along with altitude (which would be good on the video).

And unless there's already an engine monitor with MP and RPM you won't likely find an easy way to collect that data other than with an extra camera or two pointed at the appropriate instruments. If there's an engine monitor it may have a serial output that can be tapped easily.

 

[gprellwitz]

I think Lance gave a good start on the instruments to be captured. Ideally, I'd want the data recorded in digital form that could be loaded into a computer, graphed, and synchronized with the video. That would require either a glass panel where you can get the appropriate feeds or your own AHRS unit. It would also probably significantly increase the cost Plus you'd still need a way to get the engine data. A major expense here would be for certificated aircraft, in terms of getting an STC for installation if it's integrated with the avionics stack, so it would probably be more feasible to just position cameras to do a visual capture of the instruments. You lose a lot of the potential benefit that way, though, because it means that the user is going to have to manually track the readings for analysis.

There was someone else here who had put a multi-channel recorder in the plane, but I don't recall who it was. Anyone remember?

BTW, welcome to PoA, Tim!