Mini Wireless Color Camera with Microphone

I picked this unit after much research, for a home-made robot (class project). Here's the scoop:

For the price, it's fantastic!

Performance: Our best results, with a fresh battery, camera unit transmitted ~200' of open parking lot AND ~75' of industrial building w/ lots of flouro/wifi etc. with minimal interference. However, signal strength fell off with batt pwr. Unfortunately, we used a variety of 9Vs at various stages of use or I'd have a lifespan for you. Best guesstimate is minimum 30 minutes full strength from fresh batt.

We also played around with it indoors, with the AC adapters on both units.

Either way, you'll occasionally have to tweak the RX tuner for best reception if the camera is mobile, or the environment changes (body blocking the antenna of the Tx etc.) See that little knob by the Rx unit's antenna? That's the tuning knob.

How does it work?
Camera unit powered by AC adapter, or 9V battery (short life as expected) sends audio & video to receiver unit.

Receiver unit->RCA cables->TV/VCR/whatever (I used an old portable TV/VCR combo from a junk sale). No "Wifi" here.

If this thing had night-vision AND digital tuning it'd have 6 out of 5 stars. Speaking of IR, this camera will detect IR like most digi-cameras. The only test I managed to do before it's demise* was to point a TV remote at it in a sealed darkroom, and it did register the IR LED.

*The TX unit was smoke-checked by an idiot miswiring an improvised AC adapter after we lost the first one, but I'm definitely getting another.

For the money, this is a great little system. Easy, out of the box setup, nothing to it. Video was surprisingly good. I checked it out on two different TV's. One is an older 36" CRT Panasonic, the other a 32" LCD Sharp. No interference from the interior of the home was detected. (You know, it transmits through walls, ect..) Got this to keep an eye on the teenagers still living at home. Man, they are going to think I have a 6th sense! The audio works great too. Wish I would have bought a larger multi-camera system. In fact I am considering that now for other projects. For under $40 bucks, I don't think you can go wrong. Don't expect Hi Def, but it really is quite good.

I bought this setup for birding. Installation was a breeze. One bit of confusion was the manual which stated the power adapters for the camera and transmitter should not be interchanged and could damage the equipment if hooked up wrong; however, the adapters were identical. I installed everything and had it working in less than 10 minutes. There is some interference as others have pointed out, i.e., occasional lines and jitters, but all in all a very good color picture for the price. I do not see a problem with low light conditions - I have a robin who built a nest under my deck, and was hoping to watch the babies hatch. Today they did within half an hour of my installation of the camera. The camera is tucked up underneath the joists and there is no direct sunlight, yet the picture is clear and bright. This may not hold true for dusk, but for use in normal daylight, I'd highly recommend this system if you're on a tight budget. I couldn't ask for more considering cost/performance ratio.

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