Noticed some inspection cameras in Lidl the other day (Sunday). Not on the Sunday offer list, and no price, but probably still there today.
Has anyone got one? If so, how useful are they?
I am about to start delving into the wiring loom of our Ducato based motor home and access isn't that good. I was wondering if one of these would be good to inspect nooks and corners.
Cheers
Dave R
I haven't tried the Lidl device, but it looks very similar to one which I bought from Maplin a years ago. I've been rather disappointed with mine. The picture quality isn't very good, and when you've bent the probe to get it into an awkward place it's very difficult to work out which way up things are! I usually find a powerful torch and a small mirror a lot more useful.
Thanks (although you burst a bubble of tool lust).
Roger Mills formulated on Tuesday :
Put some sort of mark on the lens, at the top, then mark a line down the cable to correspond to the top. Its not an entire solution, but it helps a bit.
Yes they work, but it is difficult to make out what you are looking at.
Yes - my intended use was to look inside car box sections etc to make sure wax had covered them all. And it really didn't show this - although spraying wax over steel is obvious to the naked eye in good light.
Leftover from 15th June - £40
Yes
Came in handy the day after I bought it when water dripping from kitchen downlighter. Was able to insert it and locate which direction the water was coming from. (45 year-old fibre washer failure in bath ubend/overflow joint)
As others have said, visual orientation is not easy - but mirror and torch can be just as fiddly and the camera lets you illuminate and see further along a narrow tube.
Thanks - tool lust mildly re-kindled.
Save yourself £30 by using your laptop as the display and get one of these from Ebay
/Save yourself £30 by using your laptop as the display and get one of these from Ebay
And work around the flimsy droopy cable that you can't point, whilst findin g a position where you can try to control the camera whilst still being abl e to see the screen...
I bought a lidl one, for 40 I've no serious complaints
Jim K
I bought one of these from Lidl a couple of years ago when they were rather more than forty quid. It was exactly what I needed to carry out a double bass repair: spending about seventy quid (that's what it was at the time) enabled me to charge four hundred or thereabouts for a repair that wouldn't have been possible without it and that alone justified buying that extra piece of kit so on that level, I'm completely satisfied.
On another level, it has limitations. The resolution isn't that great
- ideal for finding something you know is there, not so easy to identify something you didn't know was there. The screen, like most cheap screens, needs ideal lighting conditions to view easily and there's no easy way of recording what you are viewing. (No SD card slot; not even provision on the pcb for an SD card slot to be included in the "deluxe" model) The LED lights work well enough in a tight spot but if you have the opportunity to flood the target area in light from an alternative source, it will work much better that way. I've probably only used it a couple more times since I bought it.
On the other hand, if like me you are willing to write off the cost of it as the price of achieving a specific outcome, it should do what you want.
Nick
As already posted by another, that isn't a particularly usable solution.
In my case I would be trying to handle a bulky laptop by an engine bay with greasy hands as well as poking the webcam into tight corners.
Could work better with two people but I prefer the integrated solution, subject to testing.
Cheers
Dave R
The one I have has a long 1 mtr flexi and a further 1.5 mtr USB lead from the controls to the laptop. Rather have a decent sized screen than a mobile phone sized one. Problem is the low res (640/480 pixels) camera. I'd guess HD ones will be around now.
I suppose it depends on whether you already have a suitable sized laptop. The one I use for this has an approx 10" screen.
Camera modules have moved on an awful lot in the last few years. Raspberry Pi camera 30fps Full HD £20 but that's with inteface electronics the bare camear module will be peanuts.
That must be solve able. I'm not sure a mark on the lense would work very. Bit of wire sticking forward ito the field of view? If there isa ring of LEDs mabe blank one out to produce a dark section, proably too sublte though.
But you are then limited to what you can see from the hole and probably by light reflected from the mirror you are looking in.
At least with a camera ona stick you can shove it further in, ideally it needs a proper remotely steerable endoscope head so you can see round a corner some distance from the access point. Recording or at least a frame hold would be useful.
Has that got the tool lust going again?
I've got one similar to this to tinker with
mine's 1280x960, it's a linux SoC with ethernet and camera onboard, supply your own MTV mount lens, picked up and configured by free ONVIF software, so far I've noticed VLC doesn't entirely like the RTSP stream if you enable a high-res and low-res substream at the same time.
What about the ones they stick down your gullet (or up the other end)? Are they particularly hi tec?
Yes they are. Some endoscopes such as those used to inspect the "exhaust" end have devices that can take samples and snip out polyps that can and do cause cancer.
Very informative website here and of real interest to those over 55 where bowel cancer runs in the family etc..
And where it doesn't. I had some rectal bleeding once and it was inspected and a 22 mm diameter pre cancerous polyp was discovered snipped out and fine ever since.
Not a particularly pleasant procedure but neither is having half your guts removed once you have developed it!.
Enjoy..
And don't try this at home !...
The one that does the top end also takes biopsies. I didn't find the procedure too awful, but happy pills were on offer, which resulted in some embarrassing behaviour from some of the male patients. Poor nurses. "Oh, we're used to it", they said.
One and the same I should imagine, just give it quick wipe over between patients...
I have two rather similar CDs - one is from an endoscopy and the other from a drain-clearing company. The latter found a brick obstructing the drain about 10 metres from the house (in the garden). The former showed no obstruction or polyps, TG.
I'm using this to replace an analogue 'board' camera, so I swapped the lens mount and lens from the old one to the new one, the analogue board had some sort of 'sapphire' filter in front of the sensor which did a good job of reducing IR in daylight, and letting it see by background illumination at night (I don't use IR illumination).
The new IP board gave very false daylight colours (white grass etc) so I ordered a switchable IRCUT filter which arrived from .hk today, and is very effective.
The populated micro-JST headers on the board are for ethernet, power, ircut. I think I've located unpopulated TX/RX pins for a serial port (I'll hook up my 3V/5V USB serial dongle and check that out).
I gather "unofficially" from the manufacturer the unpopulated 8 pin header has a USB port and audio in/out, but they seem reluctant to provide pinout, I'd like to connect a mic, what's a safe way to discover the right pin for GND/MIC on this connector?
I assume one pin will be +5V for the USB, I should be able to find that and another couple ought to have continuity with the power GND connector for USB and audio grounds, not fussed about the USB D+/D-, presumably I won't do much harm just prodding a mic onto the pins in turn until I hear something via RTSP, I can tell there's audio in the stream as there' some hiss ...
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.