S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount the cornerstone of a basic surveillance package..

S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount

S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount the cornerstone of a basic surveillance package.By: Sal PalmaFOG HORN2014Twobirds Flying PublicationS4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount the cornerstone of a basic surveillance package..2014

Copyright 2014, Towbirds Flying Publication. All Rights Reserved.Copyright 2014, Twobirds Flying Publication, All Rights Reserved

S4 Gear is a fairly young company rooted in their love of the great outdoors and a keen interest in archery. Theyve developed a number of products designed to assist bow hunters with mounting a smart device to their bows so they can capture hunts on video. Theyve recently introduced a new product, the Zoom SVS, a mount that allows attaching a smartphone to a spotting scope or binoculars. Im not as interested in photographing the mating ritual of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker but I think their mount also makes an excellent starting point on which to build a moderately priced but fun surveillance system with some fairly cool capabilities. So, in this article Im going to brief you on S4 Gears Zoom SVS, and suggest one approach to enhancing your personal ISR capabilities.The Zoom SVS is a polymer mount used to align a smartphone camera lens with the ocular lens of a magnified optic. It will work with your basic spotting scope, binoculars, image intensified optic or thermal imager with an ocular tube. The Zoom SVS needs about .75 1.0 inches of ocular tube in order to attach to the optic. Anatomically youll find two major subassemblies, the mounting head, which attaches to the host optic and the cradle, which secures the phone.The mounting head attaches to the cradle with a wing nut that can be tightened or loosened to establish a coarse alignment between the phone's camera lens and the ocular lens on the magnified optic.

To make the coarse alignment less of a trial and error process S4 included indexing marks corresponding to the host optics ocular diameter and the mounting head center line. Once youve secured your smartphone to the Zoom SVS, determine the diameter of the ocular tube on your host optic and adjust the vertical and horizontal position of your phones camera lens so that it aligns with the indexing marks located on the mounting head. You are now ready to mount the phone and Zoom SVS to your host optic.

The mounting head uses Velcro attachment to secure the phone and Zoom SVS to the optics ocular tube and here is its only observable weakness. Although Velcro does support the phone and mount on the ocular tube, it is inadequate in isolating the phone from vibrations associated with touching of the phones screen and equally ineffective against wind, all of which results in deleterious vibrations transmitted to the smartphone. A rigid clamping device would have been an infinitely better approach in your humble scribes opinion. Zoom SVS was designed around a smartphone and it will accommodate a phone with case from just about any manufacturer. In writing this review, I used an iPhone, LG and Samsung devices all of which work extremely well.

As you can see in the photo, the clamping arms are under spring tension, so to insert your phone in the cradle simply pull out on the tabs and allow your phone to fall into place; then adjust the phone so that it rests against the bottom tab. S4 used heavy springs so theres no concern over your phone falling out. The clamping mechanism is very well implemented, as are the vertical and horizontal adjustment controls. Once the phone and Zoom SVS are mounted on the host optic, youll use the horizontal and vertical adjustment controls to center and fine tune the image on your screen.

Youre now ready to start shooting pictures or video with your smart device!As you look at your phones touchscreen, it is normal to see a black vignette around the image. You can eliminate that by adjusting your camera Apps zoom; however, depending on the host optic magnification, and your phones ability to zoom, it may not be possible to completely eliminate the vignette. Once again, these artifacts are normal and nothing to be concerned about.Alright, we now find ourselves at a juncture where the smartphone is attached to our host optic and wed like to start taking pictures. There are two routes you can take.The most basic approach requires you standing there pressing on your phones touchscreen to operate the shutter. Fortunately there are better options, and the more interesting approach is to have an app snap the pictures, or video, for you on some trigger or at specified time interval, say every 10 seconds. What can you use to help you accomplish this goal?As it turns out there are a number of Apps available for the Android platform. The most interesting, and highly rated, is SECuRET, consisting of three separate Apps - SECuRET SpyCam, SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream and SECuRET Remote Control. When used in conjunction, theyll provide you with excellent functionality and hours of fun[endnoteRef:1]. I suggest you buy all three modules, at a total cost of $6.97. [1: Fun is a highly subjective concept; what is for me may not be fun for you.]

SECuRET SpyCam allows you to take motion triggered photos and videos. Any motion detected in its field of view will trigger a single picture or a user selectable burst. You can also shoot a video of specified duration. Once the capture is complete, the App can e-mail the photo capture, or video capture, to a specified e-mail address. It will also upload the image capture or video to Dropbox. SpyCam can act standalone or it can be paired with a WEB cam or with another smart device running SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream.SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream streams video and audio via Wi-Fi to any other device connected to the same network. Without getting into a lot of detail, you can plant this device and it will stream live video and audio to either a remote tablet running SpyCam, for example, or to a web browser. The web browser establishes a connection to the smartphone via a non-routable IP address. SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream does not appear to support a secure socket (SSL), but for most applications its not that big of a deal. The one real limitation is that all of the devices must be connected to the same network.SECuRET Remote Control allows you to use SMS messages to control the smart device. For example, you can command the device running SECuRET Remote Control, via the following SMS message PHOTO SD&EMAIL, to take a picture, store it in device memory and e-mail a copy to whatever e-mail address you wish.Once you have an opportunity to familiarize yourself with these Apps you may want to reconsider tossing your smartphone every other year. Hang on to it and put them to work.

In its present state of development none of the SECuRET apps will zoom the image and the live stream is done in the open; meaning, it does not support secure socket layer (SSL). Not a huge distractor, instead falling into the nice to have column.

This has genuinely been a fun project for me

In closing, Im not presenting this combination of technologies as a professional grade arrangement. But, look at it this way. Most of us have two smart devices, a phone and a tablet, and if you shoot you probably already have an inexpensive spotting scope or binoculars the gentlemen among us may even own Leica or Swarovski glass. So, why not have a little fun with it and do some experimentation! Your cost to play is limited to approximately $7 for software and $65 for the S4 Gear Zoom SVS.After youve exhausted your search for a brick of .22LR, and you just dont feel like pushing $100 or $200 worth of copper jacketed lead down range, grab your wife and kids head for the outdoors and see if you can capture the mating ritual of the Great American Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.

-SP

S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount the cornerstone of a basic surveillance package..2014

For Additional Information Visit: S4 Gear http://www.s4gear.com/pages/products/zoom-svs-digiscoping-mount.php SECuRET http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dooblou.SECuRETSpyCam&hl=en