Boosting wireless camera range?

[mindctrl]

Hi,

Just a quick question. I'm planning on installing a wireless pinhole camera into one of my model airplanes and streaming the video to my laptop when I'm flying. Anyway, I was looking on eBay, and I found most cameras with an entire wireless setup (camera/transmitter is powered by 9v battery and receiver is an AC wallwart) for about 30 bucks US. Anyway, seeing as the camera transmitter is probably underpowered, the range is only marked at 150 feet. I'd like to go a little longer then that.

Does anybody have some suggestions on how I can improve the range of my electronics? Should I boost the gain of the receiver, or should I some how make the transmitter more powerful? If so, does anybody have any ideas on how thats done? The wireless band is at 1200mhz. Thanks for any ideas you guys might have!

--mindctrl

 

[moody07747]

150 feet???!!!???

LMAO

sorry try again
i have one of these that i got for an airplane as well and they onlly transmit up to 50 feet at the most
thats on a full battery that will last you 30 minutes and after an hour you will be buying new batteries

but if you can upgrade the range from 50 feet to something like 200-300 feet ill be happy

good luck

 

[mstechca]

If you can make yourself a transmitter that sucks up the least amount of current, you will have a long lasting battery, BUT, the range might not be great. Since your receiver is powered from an AC wall plug, try to make it extra sensitive so that you can make the transmitter signal as weak as you want.

You might want to increase the voltages.

 

[audioguru]

Another guy snooping on the hot teen girls across the street? :lol: :lol:

 

[chiba]

You could make a Cantenna out of a large paint tin or drum for the receiver and point that into the sky.

**broken link removed**

scroll down to the excel file and plug in 1.2 and 203 (that's 1.2GHz and mm for 8") then have a look at the dimensions it gives you. You'd need to use a N-type connector and some rg59 or whatever coax works well at that frequency. I'm not sure what beam width and gain you'd get from that design but it would surely be better than the little whip it has at the moment.

here's dimensions for an 8" tin:
**broken link removed**

You can also ghetto it and stick the end of your whip into the can itself:
**broken link removed**

Also you have to have the Tx antenna using the same polarity as the cantenna, that means if you do any fancy aerobatics you may lose reception, or even gain better reception

 

[stevez]

I understand that quite a few amateur radio operators (in US anyway) do this frequently - also with ballons. Obtaining a license and doing what they do might be one avenue. I'd bet that there's some information on-line. ATV or Amateur TeleVision might be one thing to search on.

 

[evandude]

go to ebay, and do a search for "1500mW"

you'll find dozens of 1500mW transmitters (for reference, the pinhole cameras with internal transmitters tend to be around 200mW)

they're larger, but that's the price you pay. If you want a better compromise, do a search for "800mW" and you'll find some with small, flat transmitters that would fit much better in a plane I think, and still give you about 4x the power of the standard camera transmitters.

one advantage you do have is clear, open air for transmitting since you'll be outside in a field... much better than indoors, so you'll probably get the maximum range out of these things (although probably still less than they claim it can do...)

 

[moody07747]

You could make a Cantenna out of a large paint tin or drum for the receiver and point that into the sky.

**broken link removed**

scroll down to the excel file and plug in 1.2 and 203 (that's 1.2GHz and mm for 8") then have a look at the dimensions it gives you. You'd need to use a N-type connector and some rg59 or whatever coax works well at that frequency. I'm not sure what beam width and gain you'd get from that design but it would surely be better than the little whip it has at the moment.

here's dimensions for an 8" tin:
**broken link removed**

You can also ghetto it and stick the end of your whip into the can itself:
**broken link removed**

Also you have to have the Tx antenna using the same polarity as the cantenna, that means if you do any fancy aerobatics you may lose reception, or even gain better reception

I made one with a Pringles container and use it for my WIFI
its a great project and works really good