"Short of actual water droplet fog, most loss of contrast is due to UV screwing with sensors. Slap a UV filter in front of it and see if it knocks out some of the haze.
"I've coveted this technology for a long time, ever since I read Transmetropolitan with their "Makers". Lets just hope they don't get whacked out on illicit AI drugs and start making our prototypes with obscene appendages."
"Sounds like fun, Even though I am based in Portsmouth and I'd need my passport and vaccinations to come "that far north" if its in Leamington again :)"
"You can get a low end IR capable system by removing the IR filter on most cameras. It is however, no where near the efficiency of the true FLIR systems.
Googling* for Webcam IR Mod will net you a stack of tutorials and example photos.
"Looking at it you might be able to swap out the existing antenna for a higher gain one on the TX unit. It uses a RP-SMA connector for its antenna sockets so slapping on a high gain omni shouldn't be that stressful.…"
"Something that popped up on my radar recently is http://www.xduino.com/ a full 32bit ARM Cortex 3 chip and a stack of rom/ram. The only thing it appears to really lack is a suitable number of PWM IO for driving servos/ecs/etc as it had 2 12-bit…"
"It can either be mixed into the video feed and then transmitted by the video downlink, or transmit the data from the gyros/gps/etc to the ground station and mix it after it comes out of the video receiver.