DMX Controlled camera

[dunk]

...evening all!

 

I am after a camera that I can adjust pan, tilt, zoom, etc from the LX desk over DMX. Does such a thing exist? I have a DL.1 without a camera kit but will consider getting the camera kit for it if there is no other option, (providing it does full colour, rather than just night vision- can anyone answer that too?)

 

Thanks

 

Dunc

[tinygiant]

Hi,

my first post, yay me! :(

anyway...

 

have you thought of taking an old moving head light, maybe an old one off of ebay, and taking out all the inards (spelling!?) so your left with the pan and tilt controls. and depending on the quality of the fixture (and size) you could use the colour and focus with the camera to give more control and cool effects.

 

I dunno if it would work, but still...

no reason y u cant try!

 

alex

[dunk]

Hey Alex,

 

Firstly, welcome to the blue room! I have thought about ripping apart one of my small led moving head fixtures I have knocking around but thought better of it as it is to be used for high end corporate gigs and I am reluctant to supply anything on my gigs that looks like it has been knocked up in my shed! More importantly than aesthetics and ego, however, is the need to have DMX control over the zoom and focus.

 

Cheers,

Dunc

[tinygiant]

well im afraid I cant think of anything else. have u thought about the possability of finding a moving head big enough that the insides could be strpped out and the camera placed inside and screw it all back up so from the otside you cant see a difference.

 

the other thing would be costly, time consuming a difficult! it would be to get a DMX to 0-10v converter then find someway of making the signals so that the camera can interperet them?

I have no clue of how to do this.

I too have thought about doing this as just a pan.tilt head that has decent enough control would cost near to £1000

sorry I cant be of more help..

[pritch]

There is always something like the Apollo Rightarm, but again, no way of controlling zoom or focus. Is there an option for a wired/wireless remote for the camera, rather than controlling absolutely everything via DMX?

[dunk]

I have had a look at the apollo right arm but I think it is unecessarily massive for a camera. I want a solution that is DMX based so I can program focus palettes, position palettes, etc. Is this a gap in the market I see before me?

[Wol]

I'm guessing that youre meaning a video camera, rather than stills but I have no idea of what quality of picture youre looking for / what application youll be using it for so this is just one possibility that I've managed to use in an install I've done a couple of years ago.

 

Theres definately not any direct standalone DMX controllable cameras that I know of, but theres definitely serial controlled cameras which I've used before; ones made by Sony (google will help you) and controlled over their VISCA protocol which gives you control of pan/tilt/zoom/focus/iris/and a multitude of other parameters, which you might be able to connect up to a computer which takes in ArtNet or similar and spits out the required RS232 to control the cameras.

 

Making the program is quite simple, but would require you to have a desk which either has a serial port on it and you can run programs on, or can spit out artnet to a computer closer to where the camera will be which does have a serial port on it!

 

Well thats one idea anyway!

 

hth.

[billy bobinski]

Hi there, Dunc.

 

All CCtv pan tilt zoom cameras (Dome type) use RS485 as their data transmission standard, but this is also in the form of at least half a dozen different protocols and baud rates., making it extremely difficult for you to even take out the camera module, mount it in to an old moving head and get control of the zoom/focus.

 

Depending on you're budget, you would be far better off buying a CCTV dome camera off the shelf and a small controller and have it as a totally seperate system. If you look around, you will get a full colour switchable to mono/night vision with say a 36x optical zoom for around the £400 mark and the controller for around £50 to £80.

All you need then is a PSU for the camera and some composite data/ coax/ power cable to run it. The other thing is that, as most of them either use JVC or Sony modules these days, you will get not far off broadcast quality out of it.

 

Hope this helps a bit.

 

I think that the Mods will probably move this to the AV section now!

[Sully]

I have a Sony EVI-D31 camera knocking round at work somewhere that uses a serial protocol called VISCA that is/used to be common on video-conferencing units for PTZ and focus control of external cameras and they do work rather well.

 

You can get seperate little control panels and software utilities for controlling VISCA cameras and you can also get CCTV type serial control units as well I believe.

 

I think finding some way of converting DMX to something like this or even RS485 might be ambitious to say the least.

 

David.

[dunk]

Visca keeps popping up through my hunt for DMX controllable cams. Anyone had such luck as coming across a DMX to Visca convertor?

 

Cheers,

 

Dunc

[timsabre]

Visca keeps popping up through my hunt for DMX controllable cams. Anyone had such luck as coming across a DMX to Visca convertor?

 

Cheers,

 

Dunc

 

We could make you one as a custom job but it'll cost ... I think that's the only way you are going to get such a thing. PM me if interested.

Visca is RS232, the normal PTZ protocol used in CCTV is the Pelco one which is RS485.

 

Tim

[peternewman]

If you're considering doing live moves/tracking shots with the camera, then I'd have a read up on the various topics about followspotting with moving lights, which will be very relevant. Most broadcast stuff still uses people, or very expensive, high precision remote head systems for a reason.

 

However that being said, as other have suggested, the VISCA one should be fairly easy to implement. I've not dealt with it directly, someone had already effectively wrapped it up in an API, but using the API was easy enough. As Wol suggested, doing it with a PC and a high level language ought to be fairly trivial, although doing it in a PIC or similar should be perfectly possible too, if you've got a friendly geek around.

 

I'd have thought you ought to be able to do it on a PC in VVVV or similar, it can do the DMX in bit, and I'm pretty certain it does DMX out too, so you've just got to link the two together. This would have the added benefit you could possibly optionally add in all sorts of clever inertia stuff if you wanted to do it live, or map 16bit channels to VISCA if it supports better resolution, driving to a certain spot. Certainly the VVVV stuff is all very nice and graphical and easy to master, compared to traditional programming.

 

If you're feeling adventurous and fancy going down the VVVV route, I'd recommend Serial Buttons from David Duffy of this parish as a first step, as you can quickly and easily read the spec/manual and program some commands into some buttons to ensure they behave as expected, then you've just got to stick the VVVV bits together.

 

Come to think of it, given the video base of VVVV, there might well be a VISCA plugin for it already, then you'd just have to deal with the data processing to link DMX to VISCA as you want.