I have been doing lots of longer range shooting in the last couple of years, and normally shoot on steel. Recently I got on a range that goes to 700 yards but does not allow steel targets.  After the very first day shooting this range, I knew there had to be a better way.  We must have walked 10 miles in all back and forth to check our targets.  The mirage was terrible, and even with a 60x spotting scope we couldnt really see any bullet holes past 200 yards reliably.

The property owner offered to rent us his target cam system for $20 the next time we were out there, and we gladly took him up on the offer.  Not money well spent.  His was a low-res 900mhz RF model with cheese grade 7 inch VGA monitor.  When we actually did get enough signal, and the wind was blowing just right, we could make out our targets in all their blurry detail.  When we left that day, the property owner asked me how I liked the camera setup, and wanted to know if I would like to purchase one.  I was cordial and told him that it saved us from walking, and I appreciated it.  Thats when he told me I could have my very own for $1050 OTD..  Thats right....Over 1k for a hack job cam system.  Again, I told myself that there had to be a better, cheaper way.

Watching Youtube videos, I ran across Bullseye target cam systems.  To me, it looked very straight forward and used all off the shelf parts.  Im pretty handy, and had a few drinks in me, so I headed to Amazon.com and ordered a bunch of shit, knowing that I would have regrets the next day.

Total Amazon order was $189.31 Almost every single part that you need for under $200 bucks.

Now, to be honest, I was really skeptical that it was going to actually work. Also, I really didnt have any place to test it other than the range, and I didnt want to waste a range trip testing it, so I located a road close to home via google maps that was 455 yards according to my GPS.  IT  WORKED.

I was stoked, and immediately called a couple of skeptical shooting buddies and told them the news.  Again, they were skeptical and doubted that it would actually work as well as a commercial system.  Over and over I explained that what I had built was almost identical to the commercial system selling for $700 dollars, even down to the same battery pack.  Both of them said "We will see this weekend'.  Yeah, we would.

Honestly, I was worried too, but here are the results.

This was the setup at 500 yards. Everything stayed in the homer box but the antenna on my custom bed slat mount.


This was the Range from the firing line, AKA bed of my truck. The barely visible blue arrow is pointing to the antenna.


Strong signal back at the laptop


And a live view from the camera in real time.


And this is a screen snip from the laptop of what you actually see.


This is a Youtube video of me shooting with the target cam cropped and zoomed in.  The targets are still very very clear after editing, cropping and zooming.  The only thing I noticed was there seemed to be a delay sometimes back at the laptop.  I will revisit this later in the writeup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u865qlw-mPo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDeJWAd9BTI

And my buddy Russ with his GAP.  Notice even on the small targets cropped and zoomed bullet holes are still easily visible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1p37IRRGB0

So, How do you do it you ask?  Well, you might do something different, but I will tell you what I did.

Start out with buying these.  I snipped these today, so the prices should be accurate.

The antenna.  We will re-visit this one


Extended antenna cable.


Camera.  The commercial version uses the VGA version.  The HD version was 10 bucks more, so I went for it instead.


The router.  You need the detachable antenna version


This is your high gain wifi adapter for computer.  I will revisit this as well.  Lets just say that you have a few options here, including a repeater.


Big ass battery pack with 4 outputs.  Not needed really, as most of you have several laying around.  I actually used 3 different ones prior to purchasing this one.  More on that later.


And this little jewel.  You could use 1 or 2 and I will tell you why later.

"Im pretty handy, and had a few drinks in me, so I headed to Amazon.com
and ordered a bunch of shit, knowing that I would have regrets the next
day.
"



Lol, this is the most important part!

Here is the setup.

The camera is a 12v DC input.  This was what I fought with forever.  Originally, I spliced a usb cable into the provided round connector. Basically red to red and black to black.  The other 2 wires in the usb cable are not used.  I did the same thing with the router cable.

Now, initially, everything worked fine running off of 5dc@1amp. The cam acted a little wonky, like not turning on the IR lights, or completely shutting off and then later coming back on.  I temporarily solved this by splicing 2 USB cables in series to the factory power connector for the cam.  Connected this way to 2 SEPARATE BATTERY PACKS gave me 10vdc @ 1Amp.  Worked perfectly fine this way, but I wasnt happy with the crazy wiring and multiple battery packs, hence the purchase of the 4 output battery pack.

Now, dont get your hopes up of using the dual USB cable with a single 5vdc battery pack. IT WILL NOT WORK. Those battery packs have solid state controllers and voltage limiters and it will only, ever put out 5vdc.  Enter the boost controller purchased on Ebay for under 10 bucks shipped.



This little SOB has an adjustable output pot that will go from 6vdc to over 12vdc, and comes with the correct power wire for both the camera and the router.  I adjusted the pot to 12vdc using the tiny phillips screw, and using the provided cable attached it to the camera.  Viola!  Worked like a charm.  Now that thats out of the way that brings me to the router.

The router is advertised as 9vdc @ 1amp input, and the power supply reflects that as well.  BUT, it seems perfectly happy running on 5vdc directly connected to the battery pack.  Now, I did order a second boost controller to bump it to 9vdc, but have not received it as of yet.  My tests this weekend were at 5vdc.

So, let me explain how this whole thing works.

Power up your router, plug in your IP cam WITH THE ETHERNET CABLE.. I know its a wireless cam, but I have not tested it via wireless.

You will need to download the foscam software to your target computer, tab, phone, etc.  Yes, it will work on multiple devices at the same time.


More coming shortly. Be patient

This project is relevant to my interests.

Awesome. Thanks for posting this!

Thanks, I corrected it

Dammit, OP, there you go, posting something useful in GD!

Thanks, this looks like a great project.

Tagged.

I might be needing this.

I use two iPhones and do FaceTime, works well.

You can skip the voltage regulator or the tandem battery pack usage if you use a 5v USB powered router and 5v camera.  They'll run longer too, I let my system broadcast for 9 hours before I turned it off and went to sleep and my batteries were still at ~30%.  The camera won't be "HD," but it's enough to work.  The cameras all seem to use the same plug at 5v and under 1A.  Sapido RB1602 and all similar models of router work; they must have an external antenna and must run off 5v USB.

You need an in-line wifi booster to run on 5v, but luckily they seem pretty tolerant.  Mine states 6v@2A, but it will run on a 5v 1A USB source.

These setups are super simple and relatively cheap to make.  It's insulting how much profit the target cam companies make.  Entirely off the shelf 5v hardware, USB plugs and some minor thought is all it takes!



Edited to add photos of my setup.  The antenna is bolted to the case; set it up at the target and point the case to the shooting line.

Back on track now I think.

Ok. so, connect the camera (Via provided ethernet cable) to the wireless router.  Remove the factory router antenna by unscrewing it.  Connect the extension cable to the back of the router,  and the other end to your panel antenna.  I am not sure about the gain on this particular panel antenna, and will probably pick up a Yagi to test out later.  The reason I say this is, without the high gain usb adapter connected to the laptop, I only got 2 bars of signal, and 1 bar on my tablet and phone.  With the high gain USB adapter connected to the laptop I got full signal out to 500 yards as you can see in the pictures.  Now, there may be another reason that I will test when I get the second voltage booster.  I am thinking that having the correct voltage to the router may correct the lack of gain from the panel antenna.  I will test this theory before ordering a yagi.

There is a way to use the "commercial" target cam software.  I actually have it and tested it and it did work, although I preferred the factory Foscam software over it. The commercial software is a little harder to setup as they have it locked down via I.P address.  For those that are tech savvy it will be a cakewalk.  For the layman, just use the foscam software. Its easier, theres no tweaking the router, and its essentially plug and play due to DHCP over static.

The battery that I used at the range is advertised at 15000mah@ 5vdc.  Running the voltage booster at 12vdc and the router at 5vdc for 4 hours, the battery showed 3 bars as opposed to a fully charged 4 bars. I would see this thing going 10 hours easy in this configuration.

Range setup:

I used a cheap ass homer box from home depot and just put everything inside to carry it to the target.  Everything stays in the box other than the camera and antenna.



Once I had everything powered on at the target, I connected to the router over wifi that I named TGT. Then I opened the foscam software and had a live view of the camera. This allowed me to position the camera in real time for the best possible picture. Total setup time was around 3 minutes.

I then walked back to my shooting position and fired up my laptop.  Connected to the "TGT" router, and then opened the foscam software.  I can take snapshots, record live video, control color, white balance, brightness, night vision, etc, all from my laptop or tablet in real time.

I did run into some strange issues though.  The cam is advertised as 720p @ 30fps.  This is not entirely true.  If you watch the videos I posted, you can clearly see some sync issues.  Running Fraps while watching the playback video I was actually getting between 22 and 26 FPS, which is why I could not get the 2 videos to sync correctly. Regardless, as a target cam it worked great.

I did witness some strange delay a few times.  Like a shot would be fired, then, say, 5 seconds later it would show up on the laptop.  Not sure why that happened, but it did and I wanted to tell you about it. Other than that, I consider this project to be a complete success.  

Things I think I will modify are:

The antenna, if correcting the power to 9vdc does not help with gain.  I will probably try a yagi, or cantenna.

The receiver.  I think I will probably run a repeater at the firing line with a high gain antenna as opposed to the high gain usb adapter. This will allow anyone and everyone there to view the targetcam in real time.

As it currently sits, I can see this to easily be able to reach 1000+ yards.  I had full strength signal with the usb adapter plugged into the laptop at the firing line.  Tablets and phones received only 1 bar, so I think the repeater with high gain antenna is the best option.

If you have any questions I will be on for a bit.

This is probably the better option for the router. Thank you for posting it.

I dont think I will negate the HD cam after looking through an SD cam the week prior.  Its a HUGE difference, and worth the 8 bucks shipped for the voltage booster.

Very clean setup you have. I havent had any time to perfect mine yet, just wanted to get it out there that you dont need to lay out tons of cash for such a simple thing.

Wait, you're getting 500 yards from your setup and you haven't got a booster at the camera end, just a boosted antenna on a laptop at the receiving end?

Yes, that is correct. Just the panel antenna and the USB adapter on my laptop.  Even without the USB adapter on the laptop I still get 2 bars just using the built in wifi card and 1 bar on my phone and tablet.

I think this is due to the larger home-type router you are using, which runs on 9v.  My portable pocket mini router at 5v (with only a 9dB antenna) was broadcasting about 100 yards or so.  That increased twentyfold with the booster.  You could probably get over a mile and a half out of yours with a 2 watt booster at the camera and a 2 watt repeater at the firing position.  Maybe more than 2 miles.

First thing I thought of as well. Probably clearer also

I'll have to get mine out and take some pics.



Using foscam etc requires a computer or at very least an app. I dont like taking a computer into the field.



I used some video signal repeaters for $50 from China, I get a perfect signal 1200yards away. No extra antennas, nothing. Simply the stuff that came with, and I wired mine to operate 100% on AA batteries so I would be able to easily keep it powered.

I thought about that as well.. Its another creative idea.  Im not saying mine is the best, just thought it was cool that it was virtually the exact same thing as the bullseye cam, but with a high def cam, longer range and 1/4 the cost. YMMV

Well, thats even better. Please share your setup as well.  I am all about cheap

I have a range extender left over from my former Phantom vision. It would let me do live wifi video to my iphone at over 100 yards. I wonder if that could be used somehow.

Damn you OP.  

Another project added to my "do it one day" list.

TRG

First off this is fucking great. And for your Feild battery box how about a small battery from a mower or a bike or even a ups back up

Why not just use a jumper pack for the 12 v

You could do that.  Problem is they are heavy and expensive, and do not offer the properties of a LiION or Li polymer battery.  Something I did toss around a bit before committing to my little 8 dollar booster.  Like I posted above, if you were really cheap, you could use 2 battery packs with 2 usb cables in series to the camera connector for 10vdc @ 1amp.  Worked perfect in my tests.  Even 9vdc@ 800 mv worked fine.  I just knew that I had to walk to the 500-700 yard line and didnt want to tote a motorcycle/lawn mower wet cell battery in addition to all the other shit.

ETA: I think the big jumper packs and 12v wet cells are overkill.  These camera devices sip power and run less than 1 amp of power.  By all means use the big batteries, but figure in charging them with a car battery charger and the in-efficiency of running a converter. I would almost guarantee you wouldnt get shit for runtime compared to the lightweight Li-Ion battery packs.

Looking around this wifi antenna can go up to 4miles with a normal range of 1-3

 
On my phone so no hotlink

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00HICV6I8/ref=aw_wl_ov_dp_1_1?colid=MFGQG4SPLY3N&coliid=I2J76IJ55CEDF7

Good point

 

A UPS is a bad idea.

If you mean a UPS with a USB port, the rest of the inverter and monitoring equipment will still be siphoning juice at all times.

If you mean a UPS without a USB port, using DC inverters from the 120v outlets, that's a worse idea since efficiency is terribly low.  You wouldn't get 1 hour out of it.

They're pretty darn heavy too; battery USB chargers are very light in comparison, very cheap in comparison, and provide the perfect voltage for all of the hardware already.

It says it will but it wont.  Thats the exact same antenna I linked. Trust me. 455yards and I got 2 bars on my laptop.

ETA clear line of sight on an airport road

Idk, this is LiON, $40 and will start your Honda if you forget to turn off the lights. I have one.

http://www.farmandfleet.com/products/804242-peak-jump-starter.html

Oh, and it also has a usb outlet too for the lower power stuff

Maybe so. I dont see anywhere that says Li_Ion, but it could be.  Most of those booster packs are heavy ass wet cell or glass mat batteries.  Again, something I thought about but decided against over weight and size.

Fantastic thread!

Tagged

Aye. You're my hero of the day.

made hot

Here's it's bigger brother:
http://www.farmandfleet.com/products/895837-peak-lithium-ion-jump-starter.html
about 4 lbs.

Do you have a link to the adjustable usb power reg I am having a hell of a time finding this thing

Tagged. Like I don't already have a half dozen partially finished projects cluttering the garage. Always room for one more!



First stop: the liquor store!

nice!

where in Texas do you shoot?

No problem

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281550409630?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

That is great! I love my bullseye target cam and recommend them to everyone, but if your budget is tight and/or you like DIY then that is pretty bad-ass.

I will say that target cameras are HIGHLY underrated. People are mixed on their opinion and need of them though. I have found the biggest benefit (not sure if you could get it to work on your system), is superimposing images captured from the camera on top of each other and flashing it on and off. Basically the last shot/shots you take will look like they are flashing on the image. Trying to resolve a grouping of .22 at 200 yards when it is covered with hundreds of other hits is a bitch without it.

Several places.  For 1000+ there is Battlefield just north of Greenville,TX.  For up to 300 meters on steel I go to B-Tactical in Caddo Mills. Ran into several ARFcommers there, including Jacqfrost thats suing Eric Holder.lol.  The one posted above I am at a privately owned club in Terrell,TX.

If your close, hit me up and we can go shoot. I go at least twice a week.

Im sure your cam is great.  I based my build off theirs.  I could have duplicated it exactly, but wanted an HD camera with extended range over their model for less cost.  

Would it be possible for you to post your kit?  I have been scratching my head as to how the hell they are running that cam on 5 volts.  I know the cam I have is the same one but HD which might not work as well at 5Vdc.  I assume they either run a double cable for 10Vdc or they are running their cam on 5Vdc and staying with the SD cam for this exact reason.

Nice!

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

NM found it

 

As stated above, I can, and have run their software with this system.  All you have to do is configure your router for a static IP and input their IP address.  I preferred the Foscam software to theirs. Again, its a preference thing.

Excellent thread, OP.

You rock.

Back up for the day crew.