Greetings all.

This is my first blog post on DIYDrones, I’ve been a member for a little while now and have asked a few questions of the members as the need for info or help on a particular problem has arrived.

First some background info on my project:

I have a Big love for fishing, Specimen Carp Angling to be more precise, but I’m a lazy fisherman… Now to use a RC Boat to take the bait out into the lake is nothing new, but to automate the process… Well let’s just say when I stumbled on the APM Project I knew what my next project would be: DIY Bait Boat with an Autopilot.

I am still busy putting all the parts together and will post a blog or discussion once the project is completed.

In the meantime I would like to share a problem I picked up with the camera I purchased and my solution to it.

The camera is very cheap, around $10. It’s a Covert Pinhole Camera with a 3.6mm lens, 520TVL (PAL), good image quality, problem is when I tested it in the dark last night you can’t see anything but darkness. I don’t know how many of you would be operating your quads, planes, rovers and maybe boats at night, but I will be doing so quite often. I could go and buy another camera (at twice the cost) with Infrared LEDS, but that means more weight different mounting etc. Besides there is no fun in that!

So I decided to build a LED Array to provide light to the video image. I designed two simple printed circuit boards, one capable of accepting 12 5mm LEDS the other 12 5mm LEDS and 12 10mm LEDS. I can use super bright white LEDS or Infrared. Simply calculate the correct resistor value needed according to the supply voltage and your set. Both boards are single sided and relatively small, the small one has a diameter of 62.5mm and the large one a diameter of 95mm. There is a cutout in the centre of both boards for the camera lens with a diameter of 33mm. Cost for 6 Prototype PCB’s of each plus LEDS and resistors is around $10.

I’m attaching a few pictures (Renderings) of the boards. If anyone is interested or has a need for this I will post the Gerber and NC files at a later date.