ORIGINAL: PastorJim08
Okay guys, I'm getting ready to take the big plunge. I have reached the point that all addicts eventually end up at. I am going to start pushing, I mean I am going to attempt to build my own camera. I won an S600 the other night on ebay so I'll be starting this build pretty soon. Now I'll be honest with you all, I'm not the worlds handiest guy but I've been studying the different websites on this topic and think I can do this. My question to all you homebrewers is; are there any differences in the boards, as far as one being better than the others, did you make your own case or did you buy an otter or pelican or something else? For those of you who actually built your cams, are there any pitfalls I should watch out for? If there is any other tidbits you'd like to share with me, I''ll listen because I'm sure I don't even know enough about this to know what questions to ask.
Blessings.....Pastorjim
Jim,
Buy it in kit form as the holes in the case are drilled for you and comes with everything you will need for the build unless you want to upgrade a few parts. I built my first two Homebrews with SSS boards. No complaints with the performance. My first two cams were Sony p41 and hacked them myself. Now the S600 is a much harder hack from everything I read. Very small points to solder and you need a magnifying glass to do it. The S600's that I just bought are being sent to a professional for the hack as I don't want to screw it up and I am terrible at soldering.
I would buy a Pelican or Otter case probably in a kit form. As far as boards Ive never heard anything bad about any of them. The SSS has an LCD screen and a toggle switch to activate the board and runs on a 9v battery were as the XLP board has little dip switches to set the board and runs on 2 coin cell batteries.
The S600 doesn't have as fast of a trigger time as the p41 so you want to go with a wide angle setup for the fresnel lense to catch movemeny sooner so it can trigger the camera in time for the picture.
I'm going to build these S600 with AR glass over the flash instead of a flash enhancer. The S600 has such a great flash the enhancer is not needed and from all the pics I've seen takes better pics with AR glass.
Get rechargeble batteries to save money in the long run. You can build a camera with external batteries hooked to it for longer field life. Good luck and do alot of reading and ask questions.