I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS: putting a mirror on the outside of a rocket IS another option, but it ends up cutting into the camera's field of view really hard, so I'm not a fan. To get the same FOV as having the sensor outside, you'd need a larger mirror which would add to overall drag more than the sensor itself. Anyway - lots of ways to solve the camera problem!
Thermal paste is designed to be applied very thin to fill in the microscopic surfaces in the materials, it isn't actually that good at conducting heat. Covering things like caps and resistors will just make them hotter as you're containing all the heat around them with all that paste.
Yes thermal paste isn't a very good thermal conductor. Heat transfer is a complicated thing and it's hard to know if it hurt or helped without doing some calculations. If I remember my heat transfer equations correctly, the ideal size for wire insulation for cooling is k/h, but obtaining the value of h is not trivial. Thermal pads are frequently used to cover gaps on the order of maybe 1-2 mm to a heatsink in electronics
I was thinking K5 PRO would be a better fit here, since it's intended as a thermal pad replacement. Obviously, either way, his application worked out just fine for him.
@DaimyoD0 if I was going to all this effort to make a 4k cam I could move between rockets/my future projects I would use a metal housing filled with a dielectric liquid oil to exchange heat to the case and then heat sink the case. I would mount the lense flat on one of the sides of the metal case, mount the case completely internal to the rocket and use an angled mirror like a periscope on the outside to get the angle/shot I want. I do get that weight and size are a factor, but that's what I'd do.
I spent some time trying to come up with a clever way to have a camera on my land speed car that doesn't add much drag. I was considering drilling a lens-sized hole in the side and sticking half of a 360 camera up against the inside. So I'd have a 180° lens just slightly poking out the side, which would give me front, back, and side views with basically no drag penalty.
I liked your solution on the top of the fin. I wonder if you could use the 360 degree cameras in little fins like that in other places. I don't know the convergence point of the two 180 degree lenses, but presumably it's at least a few inches, so you could have a pretty good streamlined fin hidden inside the convergence zone that the camera wouldn't see. It would add a few weird little fins to the car, but probably wouldn't have a terrible drag penalty on something that size.
To me that would be the obvious solution here too. Stick one lens out one side, the other lens out the other and stabilise the image in edit. That would solve the roll issue he was having too.
An ultrasonic knife would make cutting open the case much easier. It doesn't wear out like a wheel, it doesn't spray particles around, and the knife can't cut most of the things inside (while the dremel will cut through anything).
@@T-Ball-o NO, do not fuck with xylene. Are you mad ? Are you hoping that people will follow your advice and you're chuckling about it because you know what Xylene is and the hazards it brings forth ? Or are you dumb ?
Thermal paste like that is not designed for those thicknesses. Part of the reason the stock unit used thermal pads. You're looking for thermal putty like K5 Pro. Also, thermal mass buys you time but little actual dissipation. Remember, a heat sink works to dissipate more heat than the equivalent non-ribbed mass of the same material thanks to not only surface area for airflow but also radiation. Lastly, spreading your thermal paste onto non-heat-generating components might induce a failure by conducting heat to to those SMD components which wouldn't normally be heated (though, probably not a serious concern).
Seeing people slather thermal paste makes me cringe. I bet these people who load their shit up would probably freak out that I don't use enough but yet I never have heating issues and get excellent performance.
I think part of the reason he didn’t use a heatsink is because the options are put it inside the rocket or put it outside the rocket. Inside the rocket doesn’t do much good because it’s a tight, sealed space with no airflow. Outside a rocket would be very difficult to do without impacting aerodynamics. Adding thermal mass might not be the best solution, but it is a good enough solution, and knowing when to call something good enough and walk away is really important in engineering.
honestly, companys should sell naked versions of their products more often. I understand why they don't; certification, import rules, and a long, long list of other problems come to mind. but damm would it be useful and interesting.
@@owensparks5013yes a company called framework sells their laptop this way, you can buy a complete laptop or a bare bone laptop and buy l Displays, motherboard, io battery etc and assemble it yourself... Many people just bought a motherboard and made a compact/mini pc with it.
while you do that im going get these small cams in ur backyard to watch you make that rocket project.. thank u imagine all the other things people can do and place them
"you cannot daisy chain them together, that does not work" I haven't dealt with these specific Flat Flex Cables but I have put a truely frustrating number of hours and dollars into getting longer cables for an Arducam. The key thing I eventually understood was causing a great deal of my frustration is that FFCs have a special property, the chirality of the cable is determined by whether the ends of the cable are on the same side or opposite sides. Critically, the two arducam products I bought expect to have a crossover cable, where the connectors are facing opposite directions, so the pins are reversed between a pair of sockets that have the same Up (nothing can be consistent). This adds a multiplication step. Crossover connectors are times -1, an even number of them daisychained balanced out into a straight-thru cable, while an odd number is the same as a longer crossover cable. Straight-thru cables are times 1, they do not modify the situation no matter how many you have. But you may require the situation to be modified. So you can do extensions with 3 crossovers or 1 crossover and 1 straight-thru, but one straight-thru on it's own or two crossovers will cause a chip on the sensor board to get very hot, potentially destroying it, I got lucky. This is specifically in regards to the SD extender, if you can find a combination of extenders that are built different, you may be able to daisychain them. By all appearances the control board to sensor FFC is straight-thru, the lever arm style sockets have the cable's contacts facing the PCB and the lever pushes the cable down into the socket's contacts; while the sockets with a black U shaped piece you push in have the cable's contacts facing away from the PCB and the U piece is a wedge that shoves the cable up into the socket's contacts. btw, based on how your screwdriver isn't mating well with those two phillips screws, I suspect they're actually JIS #0 or #1, which have a shorter tip and a steeper angle on the flutes. When you put a similar size phillips bit into a JIS, the flutes only barely touch at the inside corners of the cross, making them strip easily. Again with the laptops, HP used JIS for a minute in the early 2010s, and Lenovo does whatever they want, as hard as they want, at all times. This just means Gopro was beating you at the weird use of a cross-head screw game.
I agree, since metal actually doesn't have very good thermal mass, you would want to use something a lot more "dense" like wax or mineral oil. Another idea would be to use a heat sink and use the thermal mass of the air in the body tube (more weight efficient), however I have no idea how effective that would be in practice.
@@BPSspace If you have the mass budget, you can just hot glue a "floor" to one end of the camera section and pour molten paraffin in to make the camera section solid with a bit less mass imbalance. Sealing the other end is optional, but probably worth it to keep the mass in a predictable place once it starts melting and to keep the liquid available as a thermal conductor. edit: my experience is not with rockets, and the overheating electronics have never been cameras for me. But a plug/bath of paraffin is a useful hack for a lot of projects with sealed electronics packages where you are too lazy to plumb proper cooling.
EGO actually uses this method on their power tool batteries to extend their runtime. The battery is set to go into thermal shutdown a few degrees higher than the wax melting point, so you get the entire phase change period of the wax for "free".
Honestly you should totally get the goggles for the O3 unit as using those units in the future will be cheaper than continuously buying GoPros. Also, seeing the video feed live through the goggles is an amazing experience.
11:26 Made me realize just how close "Mic Hole" is to "My Goal". Also the settings in the QR code able to be scanned in the extra barebones model is so cool, I wish it was added to other brands as well, like DJI and Insta360.
have you considered using a normal camera inside the rocket, pointing at a mirror protruding frome the airframe, like some kind of periscope? and if yes, what has motivated your choice?
the pinned comment explains this, but in case you didn't see it: the FOV of the footage will be limited to the size of the mirror, so if you have a 2 inch size mirror (which will be about the same amount sticking outside the airframe with his setup), your fov will be severely limited compared to the wide(r) angle lens the GoPro gives you with the same amount of drag.
Yeah this. There's even the potting epoxies meant for potting electronics for enhanced environmental resistance and many of those are thermally conductive.
A thin film of non-electrically-conductive material followed by a conductive epoxy with higher heat conduction would probably be ideal. That said, the thermal paste is a really simple solution. There's a LOT of value in just doing something that works, even if it is a wild abuse of thermal paste.
Agreed an its not even that hard to self make a thermal epoxy, look for the channel Tech Ingredients and his adventure into making a thermal epoxy that outperformed some of the best thermal pastes with Linus Tech Tips
Dude, these have gotten good, like I’m not watching bc rockets, I’m watching bc of the engineering jokes and that it validates the wacky design decisions we all make. Keep it up!
15:13 - I believe the base in most thermal compounds is a silicone oil. This is per derbauer who works at thermal grizzly, a thermal paste manufacturer for PC components.
I'll 2nd that, it's what I've heard too. I think those little single-use packets of white thermal compound U get with CPUs are sometimes even labelled: "Silicone thermal grease", silicone oil being the base ingredient. Silicone oil is also used as a... Um... "Nosecone" high quality lubricant that doesn't slowly dry out during intended use (unlike more commonly used water-based lubricants). Tho it should NOT be used if your nosecone is also made of silicone rubber, since they will cross-react & slowly degrade the silicone rubber. Just incase anyone wanted to know where to easily get off-the-shelf silicone oil 😁
u have no idea how much this video helped me, i was trying to build a camera into glasses so i can film stuff on the street incognito and i gave up 2 days ago because i ripped the ribbon cable and i was already at my 2nd gopro hero 12 ruined for this project and i could not afford going further like this, but your video helped me finish this, so i swear, one day, i'll get back to you if this project finally works, thanks again man, you have no idea how much this helped me
Go pro seriously need to think about it and redesign a modular “pleaceable” configurable camera to fit inside this, submarines, rc’s, helmets or anywhere you need, it would make them provide solutions in to a market never thought yet. Meanwhile it happens you can try the new runcam thumb 4K, it seems have great features and quality and affordable price. Your heat aluminum dissipating block could be upgraded by making a CNC cutting diamond or strip pattern, it can add more dissipate surface to the block
For increasing runtime, it may be worth investigating phase change materials, which can absorb heat by melting a solid material. I've seen this used in a firefighting thermal camera to protect the insides from external heat. No idea on sources/types I'm afraid!
The first thermal paste application is not really necessary imo. The factory thermal paste should be 'adequate' under most circumstances, even if you consider the extremes as in your case, THAT much thermal paste does more harm than good. Contrary to it's name thermal paste is not really a good conductor of heat, now don't get me wrong, it's certainly better than air, but it isn't very good. It's job is only to fill in the microscopic air bubbles between heatsink surface and processor package. Usually you want as thin layer of it as possible, so that heat can travel most efficiently. If you put a thick layer of thermal paste, it may actually act as insulator. Instead what I'd recommend is that you repaste the processor (if really necessary, probably run some tests to see if there is any difference) and you should be good. On a side note, I have a question.... Can't you use some kind of air diverter to provide some airflow to the camera. I mean if there is a system which has lower drag losses as compared to adding extra mass to the rocket, it will be better. Edit:- Maybe you could machine the aluminium in shape of heat sink and add a small fan inside? (I mean 2 flat surfaces for the cameras, and instead of solid aluminium it will have fin like structure in between). It will also provide some airflow for other components on the board. I had seen a video on Linus Tech Tips regarding a piezoelectric fan which has high static pressure, maybe that could be used. Edit 2:- you should also clean the surface of aluminium with something like IPA or Acetone so that you have a clean surface for thermal paste to adhere to. And one more thing I forgot to mention, the 'spreading' of thermal paste may introduce some bubbles which may not be fully removed, so it would be better to use zig zag lines of paste and apply pressure to the aluminium block. This will squish it together and reduce the possibility of air bubbles and also result in thinner layer of thermal paste.
Joe, you're quickly becoming my favorite channel. Perfect mix of tech, fab, action, and "humor". I didnt realize until I saw you posted a new vid and it made me really happy.
7:45 we used similar cables to these with Ardupilot/PX4 flight controller. They failed to log about 9/10 times, perhaps they use i2c instead of the full SD bus.
I think you should try the o3. It’s the same quality video as a GoPro but much less expensive even if you got an entirely new set of goggles for every rocket it’s still cheaper. The o3 is $180 and the cheapest set of goggles from DJI is $230 180x3+230=$770, 770 is less than 900. It’s also smaller, lighter, you would be able to see live video from the rocket, you can move the camera around without needing to take the entire thing apart, and if you do need to it’s just 4 screws.
Sounds good to me too. I'm puzzled why he resists the o3 also. You can pair the goggles to each new set of o3 modules just keep adding them to the goggles. You only have to set it once and you're good. He'll only need 1 set of goggles and you can verify the settings before launch each time. You can even start recording with the same enable function. It's almost like he thinks that the goggles and o3 are an exclusive matched set of something. I don't understand the issue of having to set record settings once for each camera ONCE. Can't you start recording from the flight controller just like the Go Pro?
I wonder if using prisms can be a solution for cameras. The camera is inside the tube, and only the prism sticks out and redirects the view of a camera. Maybe it can be done even with off-the-shelf prisms, or maybe there is a way to make custom prisms at home.
You know, you could have just use a small high quality mirror outside of the rocket so that you wouldn't have to deal with all that. Secure the gopro in the rocket, mount a mirror out of the rocket and with a small opening and you're done. No seriously I'm just curious, have you ever considered that?
Super cool to see you fixing these kinds of issue, cuz a lot of hobbyists are probably in the same boat as far as being dissatisfied with the runtime of the GoPros Because you're going to be exoatmospheric for a little while during the space shot, have you considered trying an evaporative/sublimation cooler? The hardware would be able to dissipate a ridiculous amount of heat pretty quickly - around 2kJ/g if my math is right
Let's be honest. You don't want a GoPro sponsorship; you want a FoxConn sponsorship. You want all of the GoPro parts in a custom frame that's specific to your needs. That's no what GoPro does, that's what Foxconn does.
That thermal paste layer is WAAY too thick to transfer heat to the aluminium block. It's made to brige tiny gaps between heatsinks and chips, not millimeters.
You are probably the only person who is interested in the o3 air unit for recording and not the video transmission. That's why it needs goggles by default.
With regards to SD cards, and knowing you've lost a few of them to some harder-than-optimal landings or McYeeting camera's out of the airframe at some point during flight, have you considered adding some sort of "Black Box" type containers for your SD-cards, or by extension, for your flight data? Now that you're going higher and faster with each launch, the possibility of permanently damaging them without recovery options gets higher and higher. And by black box I mean like actual aircraft flight data recorders, with the memory units inside some container with shock absorbtion and a tough case. Since you're using SD extention cables anyway you might as well put the other end of that extender somewhere safe so that footage and flight data stay protected in case your rocket decides it want to come down as fast as it went up.
An aircraft "Black Box" is located in a known high survivability location. They are well insulated against fire, but not as armored as people think. Four of my rockets have survived impacts with the ground without loss of data or connection to the SD card. These impacts ranged from 600G’s to a little over 900G’s. At these high deceleration loads you want the least amount of mass potentially moving. The SD card and socket have very low mass. Placement of armor around them only increases the potential of damage. Placement of electrical tape on the SD card and socket increases the survivability. Fins and nosecones are areas of high survivability.
RunCam now also offers the Thumb 2. It can record 4K60, it has a similar QR Code feature, stabilization is available for e.g. 4K30 and you can trigger a recording via PWM. We plan to fly it on a next launch, because we had a lot of problems with the Split H. The SD Card reader did not secure the card properly and we bricked a lot of them. Will be interesting to see. But we still need to test how quickly the Thumb 2 will overheat with no airflow 😂
what about a aluminium heat shield that also holds the lens in place and is mounted on the outside of the rocket? Like its inside but its flush with the rocket wall and theres a cutout so the aluminium has direct contact with the outside air. this would work as a nice heatsink and allow you to cool your camera for basically free (energy and space wise).
I was thinking the same thing, and since he is already mounting the cameras in a section of tube, making the tube the heat sink might save some weight. Having the heat sink in the air flow would make it more effective. Maybe even add a few fins. He needs to get JLC3DP as a sponsor and 3d print such a metal camera mount.
I know that sharkbyte has a digital camra like the DJI one I dont think its FHD but its super small and im pretty sure as long as you get their decoder you can use it with anything
Thermal paste is basically made of silicone oil as a liquid base and various additives like metal oxides as a thermal conducting agent. And for your use there is a stuff called "liquid thermal pads" which would be more suitable for this kind of applications.
Really enjoy your videos. Always so impressive to see how much you've learned since the last video and how willingly you share your newfound skill and the problems you experienced along the way. You're a good guy. We are fortunate to have you.
QR code for settings changes sounds extremely convenient! ..And an extremely interesting attack vector :) Change the resolution, fps. It looks like you might even be able to "stop" recording but unclear if thats purely a USB trigger.
It's amazing to see the camera have increasing current usage as it heats up. I think it shows the concept of how components use more current the hotter they get, which i think is tied to how conductors have more resistance the hotter it get.
Having watched the live stream, it made me giggle when you said at the start you'll get to the heat solution.... loved the stream about this teardown btw, it would be fun to see more of those
It is probably worth buying up a few broken gopros off ebay, if you're already going to be doing what is effectively repair work anyway. Especially if you can find some that work except their screens are broken... Thermal pastes are generally made with something thermally-conductive (and sometimes electrically-conductive) suspended in silicone oil, though the really high end ones can use an incredibly high-grade synthetic oil with thickeners to get the viscosity way up, because vibrations can make the two surfaces act like a pump and push thinner oils out. Thermal paste is for filling in microscopic imperfections in two mated surfaces. It is a lousy heat sink itself and not even great at heat transfer; it's just better than air pockets. If the goal is to optimize heat transfer from chips to a heat sink, more thermal paste is exactly the opposite of what you want. Nothing compares to direct contact between the two; if you need something to bridge a gap, a microns-thick layer of paste on either side of a high-conductivity shim is going to do far better than the equivalent thickness of paste. If the two surfaces can already touch, lap them so they touch more. Speaking of silicone, a flexible potting material is far better for high-vibration environments than a rigid epoxy; yes, a rigid epoxy will keep connectors together, but then the flex is simply transferred further up the cable. Coating the cable ends in aquarium glue, though, will dampen the vibrations instead of just moving them around.
Just a little heads up: Thermal paste only does it's job properly if it is applied THIN. If you apply too much of it in a too thick manner, it will not do what it is made to do. Which is transfer the heat as good and as quick as possible onto a metal surface.
I love it when I see someone else also bought the absolute cheapest version of the tool I want on amazon. More than once in a video is just the cherry on top
11:30 - thermal paste isn't that good of a heat conductor for filling gaps, it would be more effective to apply paste and squish a chunk of aluminium or copper to the plate that actually fits *inside* the rim or fill the space with a metal shim. EDIT - OK, seems good enough anyway. 15:09 - usually some sort of silicone oil
2:42 - Many plastic cases are ultrasonically welded If done right no chance of splitting it apart again. Dremel 100% the right tool. 10:30 - Normal thermal paste needs compression to work, you could be doing more harm then good. You need to use a special paste like K5 Pro wich is made to bridge gaps!
Any reason you didn't use small heatsinks (like the ones used for VRAM) on the SOC/CPUs? You might've been able to save a fair bit of weight, if that's relevant.
Heat dissipation wont be good after being smothered in epoxy, a block of aluminium will give more thermal mass for the size. Metal to air thermal transfer efficiency was not the target here 🙂
Never thought of that trick! Joey B: “Yeah, I’ll have one of these as well.” Cashier: “Ooh exciting night ahead, huh?!” Joey B: “Oh yeah, this is going on my meat... Rocket nose cone for a RUclips video.” Cashier: 😮
Hey Joey B, have you given any thought to the idea of having youtube memberships with the same benefits as patreons? And also remember that you can blame any mistake on Charlie Garcia because he is not a real person. If you saw the livestream you know what I´m talking about.
On the DJI thing: DJI also makes bog standard 3.5mm jack microphones, sell them separately from their standard kit... And they don't work on non-DJI gear. I'm almost impressed how they managed to do that.
Man the last video was the first one I watched and I just want to say ... If this is no effort in November then I shudder to think of the magnitude of effort that must go into a video in the remaining 11 months.
Thanks! It's so exciting to be able to come along with you on your journey. I can't afford much, but these last two "No effort November" videos have just been so good. I spent 27 minutes listening to your excitement about cameras and epoxy....and i feel like i totally understand the learning journey you took just to ensure we all get to watch what happens (plus data, ya ya). Please continue the style of no effort November. I wish I could afford more but sending a very small token just to say thanks, and you're awesome, and i look forward to your videos as much as a starship launch.
Hey Joe, FPV enthusiast here. Based on your requirements this is likely not good enough for you, but in the off chance it helps or at least gives an extra potential option I'll post it. Have you looked at the caddx walksnail avatar system? (yep that's a name!) It's a competitor to DJI's FPV system (also digital, quality is not as good but still quite nice) but they sell a receiver module that has HDMI output, so no need for goggles (though the receiver is still needed). The VTX it'd likely be best for this is their moonlight kit. Anyways loooove watching your journey through this. Totally a hobby I'd love to also get into if I had the time (and money). Keep it up 💪💪
Asking the dumb question, wouldn't a mirror do the trick to offset the view? Like, with the camera inside and and the mirror at 45° to point in the direction you want? The FOV wouldn't be great with a planar mirror but for the price you put in the current setup some fancy convex first surface mirror should do the trick, no?
That could work, but it doesn’t fix the ultimate thermal mass issue. The cameras are sealed inside a tube, there’s no air going in or out. That air will eventually heat up, so the problem remains. That could achieve a better weight:thermal mass ratio though, as the air is already in there.
Two things that stood out as an engineer myself that has worked with cameras: 1. You do not need that much thermal paste. The processors are what get hot and that is why they had the thermal pads from the factory there. Thermal pads are OK but a thin layer of paste works. It needs to be thin when bonding a heatsink to a heatsource as its job is to minimize the air bubbles between them. Its not that great of a conductor of heat just fills in the space. 2. You should really think about machining something that you can precisely pot these cameras on the back. I used to work with a thermally conductive epoxy, black gooey stuff you had to heat up before using to pour properly. This would not only fill in all the gaps and bond it to a heatshink better but also increase the vibration resistance of the camera. In order not to increase the mass to much you would have to create a mold or something to precisely place the camera in and figure out what the minimum amount of epoxy you need for both thermal mass and actual mass in relation to the delta v of the rocket
Hear me out, FPV enthusiast here. You can have the "best" of both worlds without using DJI (albeit no 4k120 yet, only 4k60/1080p100) with a Walksnail Moonlight from CaddxFPV. All you need aside from the camera is one Walksnail VRX which you can then connect via HDMI to any screen you want, and voilà you also have a live feed in 1080p60. With the onboard DVR still recording at 4k60 or 1080p120 of course. BUT don't be so quick disregarding DJI, you can get second-hand DJI Goggles V2 for about $250 and that'll let you record at 4k120 using the O3 air unit! And if you're looking for the lightest O3 Flywoo offers a barebones version, but you'll have to cool it someway.
I wonder if you could take a 360 camera and rather than putting it on the nose, split it in half and mount each half on opposite sides and the body of the rocket essentialy becomes the center plane. Then you could have footage pointing in all directions.
Something that might be worth looking into is phase change materials. Sounds fancy, but NightHawkInLight has some home garage recipes for them made from common stuff you can get. Instead of increasing thermal mass by adding more mass (which isn't great for flying things!) you have the material go through a phase change, think like ice that melts. That requires a lot of energy to push the material past the temperature at which it transitions phases, so in essence you can store cooling potential in something that is solid at room temperature and goes mushy liquid at silicon-getting-warm temperatures.
The thermal place and block were a massive upgrade. Pretty much 9x thermal performance, 5 min vs. 46 min to overheat. That's nuts. I've done similar with some old devices, but wow!
About the conductivity of thermal paste: Be careful for ESD. We have been experiencing weird behaviour on heating panels on machine, our company manufactures. All machines manufactured in the summer were good, but machines manufactured in winter, when air humidity is low, had chance around 40% to have defect temperature reading after one particular test step. Panel is just aluminium sheet with silicone heating pad and thermistor bead blobbed in the middle in thermal paste. Strong hit in the middle of heater panel helped for a while. We have investigated, that MX4 (and probably all other computer related) thermal paste contains some kind of conductive segments, which can be oriented by ESD into conductive channel, jist like ionization channel in gas, but permanent. Mechanical percussive motion could break the channel, but dielectrical strength was as high anymore. The thermal paste claims "non conductive", which is true for voltage rating +-30V of this paste, but only before first ESD strike. We have switched to cheap noname white paste and never had similar problem again :D
Hi, I think you already solved your problem reaching 45 minutes. Something that is interesting to have in mind and eventually use, is to use PCM materials (Phase Change Material). Specifically, materials that require a lot of energy to change from solid to liquid. Solid parafin from which candles are made is an example, but there are for sure better products tailored for different temperatures (melting temeperature compatible with your electronics). The one I am dealing with (I am trying to recall the numbers from memory), has a specific heat when solid of 1,7 J/g/K (Joules per gram per Kelvin). But in the melting phase change, its specific heat (from about 65ºC to 73ºC) raises to 60 J/g/K. It will consume a more than 35 fold ammount of energy to raise its temperature by one degree, so it behaves as a huge heat sink, that lets you "buy" time for a certian power, until you are completely liquid and your specific heat goes down again to 1,5 or something like that. These materials are not good heat conductors, so you have to move the heat into them with aluminum fins that have a lot of surface. The container has to have free space (air to acomodate for the expansion). One way to move heat into them is to use heat pipes (you can buy them in aliexpress) or scrap them from laptops. Here you have a site for info and it has even a calculator. www.1-act.com/thermal-solutions/passive/pcm/heat-sinks/?srsltid=AfmBOoo36CKDPc70l1rRWRzedGh8YywXBRnc56QMfWTSD-H0Ceamd5jt Thanks for the videos.
One common mistake I see people make when they test camera's in a "lab" setting (when they are trying to make improvements for real-world use), is pointing the camera at a static wall, image, or in this case pointed down at the black matte. If you test the camera like this, you're not really stretching it's legs. It's not working to encode details, complex scenes, and lighting. If you want a better way to test in the lab, you should point the lens at a laptop or TV that is playing a video of something. A video on a screen with changing details will stress the sensor and encoding hardware more and give you a more realistic test to then interpolate to real-world usage. :)
You may want to look into using thermal epoxy and thermal pads, thermal paste isn’t meant to conduct for long distances its just meant to fill in tiny imperfections in the surface of a CPU and a cooler. It could actually be that some of the components get insulated by all that paste.
By the way, you can get cheap aluminium heatpipes in a flat form factor. 2mm and 3mm thick is common and you can bend/shape them to attach to the CPU or thermal block of the camera. This combined with shaping it to actually snugly mate with the surfaces and not filling giant holes with thermal compound instead should make wonders.
U might be the person I'm looking for. Why hasn't anyone attempt a mirrorless camcorder? It seems like it's finally time for the camcorder to come back. A mirrorless camera with a parafocal lens is something I feel EVERY creator would want
Instead of any kind of epoxy on that assembly, I would use a conformal coating on the circuit boards, as it is a moisture barrier and is serviceable, a factor you should enjoy. The dielectric 'thermal paste' is not efficient enough to use to try to homogenize the whole thing into a 'conductive cooled' set-up. What I am saying is that the two original contact patches are the thermal conduction path you need to stick with (har har), and you are actually "blanketing in" some of the circuitry's heat (that does not get carried or conducted away)by gobbing that much paste on. So, a small amount of proper, conductive (both thermally and electrically) paste would likely yield better overall conduction and heat 'removal'... and weigh less. You could also make a back to back peltier slab that would replace the Aluminum block. And after all these years one would think that "you guys" would have come up with clamshell rocket bodies instead of tubes. Which I think would be way more serviceable. It is not like you are carrying some heavy payload into space. Then you could 3D print some slides for the circuit boards to sit in. Somebody should make a 6 inch version of that cable interconnect. That looked like an industry flex PCB type connector, so there has to be some out there or a flex PCB maker that will make you one in short run real cheap. You could sell them yourself.
I, too, wondered why you'd smooch everything in thermal paste instead of applying a thin layer and then adding correctly sized heatsinks to this after carefully removing the microphone from the metal plate. You could, given that you have access to a cnc milling machine, buy a larger heat sink and mill the underside to fit exactly over the PCB parts containing the (two?) gopro heat sources, making sure to have good contact. The height differences from cam to cam from tolerances from the soldering process and parts measurements should be minimal and easily bridged by a thin application of thermal paste. Once you've got the height structure for the heatsink right, it would fit all cams of the same model and, as a bonus, you could even sell a few to fellow rocketeers or other people. Add a small-ish fan (like on the flywoo cam) or get some fresh air in through a vent and out somewhere else, and the heat problem should be gone. EDIT: OR, and I just came up with it now, if you're creating a "coupler" section for the rocketbody , include an aluminium ring (like what now looks to be glass fiber or something like PCB material) that has contact to the outside and couple the heat sources to it from the inside using either thermal paste and/or short heat pipes like those used in laptops or pc cpu air coolers (they are available on ali, another option would be trying to "harvest" a fitting set from one of said cpu air coolers). The section in contact with the surrounding air should eat up the heat pretty well while not adding drag or weight compared to the alu blocks inside, plus adding a bit of rigidity to the section housing the cameras and keeping the weight distributed way better than the blocks. Also, it would get the heat out of the core where it would just sit and increase from the cooling/thermal mass blocks.
Said it on the stream video, but those are FPCs and FFCs (flexible printed circuits and flat flex cables), not ribbon cables. You can get custom ones made by the usual PCB manufacturers (OSHPark, PCBWay, JLCPCB, Advanced Circuits, etc.) More expensive than the mass-produced premade ones, but you can get exactly the size & shape you need for a rocket, which might end up being important.
I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS: putting a mirror on the outside of a rocket IS another option, but it ends up cutting into the camera's field of view really hard, so I'm not a fan. To get the same FOV as having the sensor outside, you'd need a larger mirror which would add to overall drag more than the sensor itself. Anyway - lots of ways to solve the camera problem!
I suppose a curved mirror and some fancy optics could make the mirror option work, but this seems easier!
You could probably tweak with lenses on a periscope.
why dont you toss a cheep heatsync on that plate instead of the aluminum block? I would think with the correct heat sync it would run indefently
Hi
Mirrors.. Trying mirrors. Periscope, microscope, cameras.. They work 🥸🧐
oh THATS why its the meat rocket
He said "best behavior" right? 😂
@@matthewellisor5835 *stretches condom over nose cone*
"Riiiiiight?"
He shows exactly why we need to be on out best behavior!
@@matthewellisor5835 He said "when we watch it". We can behave like troglodytes in *these* comments!
@@jlight7346 and the name...
The go pro case is amlost certainly ultrasonically welded together into a single piece of plasic.
Was thinking the same
yeah just like these nuts
@@penguiin12Nice.
@@penguiin12 lol
I'm not sure Joe is going to get a GoPro sponsorship after showing how janky the physical construction is.
Thermal paste is designed to be applied very thin to fill in the microscopic surfaces in the materials, it isn't actually that good at conducting heat. Covering things like caps and resistors will just make them hotter as you're containing all the heat around them with all that paste.
Yes thermal paste isn't a very good thermal conductor. Heat transfer is a complicated thing and it's hard to know if it hurt or helped without doing some calculations. If I remember my heat transfer equations correctly, the ideal size for wire insulation for cooling is k/h, but obtaining the value of h is not trivial. Thermal pads are frequently used to cover gaps on the order of maybe 1-2 mm to a heatsink in electronics
It's still better than air lol.
I was thinking K5 PRO would be a better fit here, since it's intended as a thermal pad replacement.
Obviously, either way, his application worked out just fine for him.
@DaimyoD0 if I was going to all this effort to make a 4k cam I could move between rockets/my future projects I would use a metal housing filled with a dielectric liquid oil to exchange heat to the case and then heat sink the case.
I would mount the lense flat on one of the sides of the metal case, mount the case completely internal to the rocket and use an angled mirror like a periscope on the outside to get the angle/shot I want.
I do get that weight and size are a factor, but that's what I'd do.
@@han5vk It's better than air conduction. I'm not an engineer, but I'd guess it's substantially worse than air convection.
I spent some time trying to come up with a clever way to have a camera on my land speed car that doesn't add much drag. I was considering drilling a lens-sized hole in the side and sticking half of a 360 camera up against the inside. So I'd have a 180° lens just slightly poking out the side, which would give me front, back, and side views with basically no drag penalty.
yall should team up and make the land speed car rocket powered
I liked your solution on the top of the fin. I wonder if you could use the 360 degree cameras in little fins like that in other places. I don't know the convergence point of the two 180 degree lenses, but presumably it's at least a few inches, so you could have a pretty good streamlined fin hidden inside the convergence zone that the camera wouldn't see. It would add a few weird little fins to the car, but probably wouldn't have a terrible drag penalty on something that size.
To me that would be the obvious solution here too. Stick one lens out one side, the other lens out the other and stabilise the image in edit. That would solve the roll issue he was having too.
FORESHADOWING
Project Binky and BPS Space ... where will Matt show up next? Great idea, btw.
An ultrasonic knife would make cutting open the case much easier. It doesn't wear out like a wheel, it doesn't spray particles around, and the knife can't cut most of the things inside (while the dremel will cut through anything).
or some xylene, which will make the plastic brittle and fall apart
There are plastics inside you want to keep, like the ribbon cable locks so that will ruin the whole thing @@T-Ball-o
using gopro is overall bad idea
@@T-Ball-o NO, do not fuck with xylene. Are you mad ?
Are you hoping that people will follow your advice and you're chuckling about it because you know what Xylene is and the hazards it brings forth ?
Or are you dumb ?
JoeyB didn't forgor heat shrink, i'm so proud
Thermal paste like that is not designed for those thicknesses. Part of the reason the stock unit used thermal pads. You're looking for thermal putty like K5 Pro. Also, thermal mass buys you time but little actual dissipation. Remember, a heat sink works to dissipate more heat than the equivalent non-ribbed mass of the same material thanks to not only surface area for airflow but also radiation. Lastly, spreading your thermal paste onto non-heat-generating components might induce a failure by conducting heat to to those SMD components which wouldn't normally be heated (though, probably not a serious concern).
Seeing people slather thermal paste makes me cringe. I bet these people who load their shit up would probably freak out that I don't use enough but yet I never have heating issues and get excellent performance.
I'd use a thermal pad because they are designed for more thickness
I think part of the reason he didn’t use a heatsink is because the options are put it inside the rocket or put it outside the rocket. Inside the rocket doesn’t do much good because it’s a tight, sealed space with no airflow. Outside a rocket would be very difficult to do without impacting aerodynamics.
Adding thermal mass might not be the best solution, but it is a good enough solution, and knowing when to call something good enough and walk away is really important in engineering.
I was thinking about phase change myself, but I've never used it and don't know how much it migrates when hot and vertical.
@@Grandwigg it stays pretty viscous even when liquid, but it doesn't conform to weird uneven surfaces like the PCBs here
honestly, companys should sell naked versions of their products more often. I understand why they don't; certification, import rules, and a long, long list of other problems come to mind. but damm would it be useful and interesting.
I wonder if those rules could be "navigated" by selling "spare parts", preferably in a subassembly form...
@@owensparks5013-- Just selling spare parts in the first place would be fantastic.
@@owensparks5013they'll have to sell spare parts soon enough ;)
@@owensparks5013yes a company called framework sells their laptop this way, you can buy a complete laptop or a bare bone laptop and buy l
Displays, motherboard, io battery etc and assemble it yourself... Many people just bought a motherboard and made a compact/mini pc with it.
I don't think this would be a good idea for certain products 😏
This video came out LITERALLY as I was researching onboard cameras for my model rocket project. Thank you!!!
while you do that im going get these small cams in ur backyard to watch you make that rocket project.. thank u imagine all the other things people can do and place them
"you cannot daisy chain them together, that does not work" I haven't dealt with these specific Flat Flex Cables but I have put a truely frustrating number of hours and dollars into getting longer cables for an Arducam. The key thing I eventually understood was causing a great deal of my frustration is that FFCs have a special property, the chirality of the cable is determined by whether the ends of the cable are on the same side or opposite sides. Critically, the two arducam products I bought expect to have a crossover cable, where the connectors are facing opposite directions, so the pins are reversed between a pair of sockets that have the same Up (nothing can be consistent). This adds a multiplication step. Crossover connectors are times -1, an even number of them daisychained balanced out into a straight-thru cable, while an odd number is the same as a longer crossover cable. Straight-thru cables are times 1, they do not modify the situation no matter how many you have. But you may require the situation to be modified.
So you can do extensions with 3 crossovers or 1 crossover and 1 straight-thru, but one straight-thru on it's own or two crossovers will cause a chip on the sensor board to get very hot, potentially destroying it, I got lucky. This is specifically in regards to the SD extender, if you can find a combination of extenders that are built different, you may be able to daisychain them.
By all appearances the control board to sensor FFC is straight-thru, the lever arm style sockets have the cable's contacts facing the PCB and the lever pushes the cable down into the socket's contacts; while the sockets with a black U shaped piece you push in have the cable's contacts facing away from the PCB and the U piece is a wedge that shoves the cable up into the socket's contacts.
btw, based on how your screwdriver isn't mating well with those two phillips screws, I suspect they're actually JIS #0 or #1, which have a shorter tip and a steeper angle on the flutes. When you put a similar size phillips bit into a JIS, the flutes only barely touch at the inside corners of the cross, making them strip easily. Again with the laptops, HP used JIS for a minute in the early 2010s, and Lenovo does whatever they want, as hard as they want, at all times. This just means Gopro was beating you at the weird use of a cross-head screw game.
you should use wax to absorb heat since it needs a lot of energy to melt. wax was also used on the electronics on the lunar rover.
I agree, since metal actually doesn't have very good thermal mass, you would want to use something a lot more "dense" like wax or mineral oil. Another idea would be to use a heat sink and use the thermal mass of the air in the body tube (more weight efficient), however I have no idea how effective that would be in practice.
A group called HyEnD actually does this! I think it works pretty well for them and their rockets, but the aluminum is a lot simpler imo :)
@@BPSspace If you have the mass budget, you can just hot glue a "floor" to one end of the camera section and pour molten paraffin in to make the camera section solid with a bit less mass imbalance. Sealing the other end is optional, but probably worth it to keep the mass in a predictable place once it starts melting and to keep the liquid available as a thermal conductor.
edit: my experience is not with rockets, and the overheating electronics have never been cameras for me. But a plug/bath of paraffin is a useful hack for a lot of projects with sealed electronics packages where you are too lazy to plumb proper cooling.
Ooh, and it's electrically insulating. Next time I have to pot something that's a real consideration.
EGO actually uses this method on their power tool batteries to extend their runtime. The battery is set to go into thermal shutdown a few degrees higher than the wax melting point, so you get the entire phase change period of the wax for "free".
I have never clicked faster
Same
So true
fr
That is s o f r of you to say
You are not safe, this is restricted airspace bud
Honestly you should totally get the goggles for the O3 unit as using those units in the future will be cheaper than continuously buying GoPros. Also, seeing the video feed live through the goggles is an amazing experience.
And older dji used Goggles are pretty cheap right now
You can get HDMI out to a screen from the googles too, albeit probably delayed. I'd use a smallhd or some other pro camera monitor for it
O3 quality is nowhere near a proper action camera however. The point is to get the best quality video you can in a small package.
11:26 Made me realize just how close "Mic Hole" is to "My Goal". Also the settings in the QR code able to be scanned in the extra barebones model is so cool, I wish it was added to other brands as well, like DJI and Insta360.
have you considered using a normal camera inside the rocket, pointing at a mirror protruding frome the airframe, like some kind of periscope? and if yes, what has motivated your choice?
Just like my phone
the pinned comment explains this, but in case you didn't see it: the FOV of the footage will be limited to the size of the mirror, so if you have a 2 inch size mirror (which will be about the same amount sticking outside the airframe with his setup), your fov will be severely limited compared to the wide(r) angle lens the GoPro gives you with the same amount of drag.
The mirrors will add a good amount of weight and if you want to use plastic versions they are mostly expensive for a good quality.
@@Philly_Willy Could use a curved mirror surface and correct it in post.
@@Philly_Willy convex mirrors have higher FOV. And the curvature effects can be removed in editing.
you may want to look into thermally conductive epoxy/resin, it is used in potting IC chips
Yeah this. There's even the potting epoxies meant for potting electronics for enhanced environmental resistance and many of those are thermally conductive.
A thin film of non-electrically-conductive material followed by a conductive epoxy with higher heat conduction would probably be ideal. That said, the thermal paste is a really simple solution. There's a LOT of value in just doing something that works, even if it is a wild abuse of thermal paste.
Agreed an its not even that hard to self make a thermal epoxy, look for the channel Tech Ingredients and his adventure into making a thermal epoxy that outperformed some of the best thermal pastes with Linus Tech Tips
Cotronics in Long Island is probably the OG here.
I've been using their products since the early '70's
In an unprecedented event, joe garnered 4 billion likes on X (formerly Twitter) resulting in this masterpiece being made publicly available.
Hi
If this is 'No Effort November' then I can't wait until 'Diligent December'!
Dude, these have gotten good, like I’m not watching bc rockets, I’m watching bc of the engineering jokes and that it validates the wacky design decisions we all make. Keep it up!
Now *this* is rocket surgery.
You beat me to it.
Always good to practice safe nosecone practices. Better for all. Nice explanation on the GoPro deconstruction.
I'd scrolled past this comment before I got to the nosecone bit of the vid. oooh that's what you meant 😂
15:13 - I believe the base in most thermal compounds is a silicone oil. This is per derbauer who works at thermal grizzly, a thermal paste manufacturer for PC components.
I'll 2nd that, it's what I've heard too. I think those little single-use packets of white thermal compound U get with CPUs are sometimes even labelled: "Silicone thermal grease", silicone oil being the base ingredient.
Silicone oil is also used as a... Um... "Nosecone" high quality lubricant that doesn't slowly dry out during intended use (unlike more commonly used water-based lubricants). Tho it should NOT be used if your nosecone is also made of silicone rubber, since they will cross-react & slowly degrade the silicone rubber.
Just incase anyone wanted to know where to easily get off-the-shelf silicone oil 😁
I was shouting at the screen "DJI video system" until you mentioned it. Had no idea you cannot set it up without goggles, mind boggling!
it's still funny because a set of goggles is way cheaper than what he spends on three gopros
@@Mister_Brown sounds like a matter of principle, which I can understand regarding DJI
u have no idea how much this video helped me, i was trying to build a camera into glasses so i can film stuff on the street incognito and i gave up 2 days ago because i ripped the ribbon cable and i was already at my 2nd gopro hero 12 ruined for this project and i could not afford going further like this, but your video helped me finish this, so i swear, one day, i'll get back to you if this project finally works, thanks again man, you have no idea how much this helped me
25:25 too late, i wont
To cut the edges, you can make a jig to keep the Dremel a certain distance from the internals. A bit like (exactly like) a routing template.
Go pro seriously need to think about it and redesign a modular “pleaceable” configurable camera to fit inside this, submarines, rc’s, helmets or anywhere you need, it would make them provide solutions in to a market never thought yet. Meanwhile it happens you can try the new runcam thumb 4K, it seems have great features and quality and affordable price. Your heat aluminum dissipating block could be upgraded by making a CNC cutting diamond or strip pattern, it can add more dissipate surface to the block
I've had good results with the thumb 4K, but it's only 4K/60, so it can't compete with the 120 fps of the GoPro.
Much less expensive though.
At some point I hope GoPro just contacts you and does a sponsorship where they give you 10 bare chassis to have fun with😂
For increasing runtime, it may be worth investigating phase change materials, which can absorb heat by melting a solid material. I've seen this used in a firefighting thermal camera to protect the insides from external heat. No idea on sources/types I'm afraid!
The first thermal paste application is not really necessary imo. The factory thermal paste should be 'adequate' under most circumstances, even if you consider the extremes as in your case, THAT much thermal paste does more harm than good. Contrary to it's name thermal paste is not really a good conductor of heat, now don't get me wrong, it's certainly better than air, but it isn't very good. It's job is only to fill in the microscopic air bubbles between heatsink surface and processor package. Usually you want as thin layer of it as possible, so that heat can travel most efficiently. If you put a thick layer of thermal paste, it may actually act as insulator. Instead what I'd recommend is that you repaste the processor (if really necessary, probably run some tests to see if there is any difference) and you should be good.
On a side note, I have a question.... Can't you use some kind of air diverter to provide some airflow to the camera. I mean if there is a system which has lower drag losses as compared to adding extra mass to the rocket, it will be better.
Edit:- Maybe you could machine the aluminium in shape of heat sink and add a small fan inside? (I mean 2 flat surfaces for the cameras, and instead of solid aluminium it will have fin like structure in between). It will also provide some airflow for other components on the board. I had seen a video on Linus Tech Tips regarding a piezoelectric fan which has high static pressure, maybe that could be used.
Edit 2:- you should also clean the surface of aluminium with something like IPA or Acetone so that you have a clean surface for thermal paste to adhere to. And one more thing I forgot to mention, the 'spreading' of thermal paste may introduce some bubbles which may not be fully removed, so it would be better to use zig zag lines of paste and apply pressure to the aluminium block. This will squish it together and reduce the possibility of air bubbles and also result in thinner layer of thermal paste.
Joe, you're quickly becoming my favorite channel. Perfect mix of tech, fab, action, and "humor". I didnt realize until I saw you posted a new vid and it made me really happy.
new bps video = day can‘t be better
Seeing the amount of paste applied on the livestream was surprising lol.
Joey B: "This stuff sure is expensive" *Squirts the rest of tube*
7:45 we used similar cables to these with Ardupilot/PX4 flight controller. They failed to log about 9/10 times, perhaps they use i2c instead of the full SD bus.
I think you should try the o3. It’s the same quality video as a GoPro but much less expensive even if you got an entirely new set of goggles for every rocket it’s still cheaper. The o3 is $180 and the cheapest set of goggles from DJI is $230 180x3+230=$770, 770 is less than 900. It’s also smaller, lighter, you would be able to see live video from the rocket, you can move the camera around without needing to take the entire thing apart, and if you do need to it’s just 4 screws.
Sounds good to me too. I'm puzzled why he resists the o3 also. You can pair the goggles to each new set of o3 modules just keep adding them to the goggles. You only have to set it once and you're good. He'll only need 1 set of goggles and you can verify the settings before launch each time. You can even start recording with the same enable function. It's almost like he thinks that the goggles and o3 are an exclusive matched set of something. I don't understand the issue of having to set record settings once for each camera ONCE. Can't you start recording from the flight controller just like the Go Pro?
I wonder if using prisms can be a solution for cameras. The camera is inside the tube, and only the prism sticks out and redirects the view of a camera.
Maybe it can be done even with off-the-shelf prisms, or maybe there is a way to make custom prisms at home.
You know, you could have just use a small high quality mirror outside of the rocket so that you wouldn't have to deal with all that. Secure the gopro in the rocket, mount a mirror out of the rocket and with a small opening and you're done. No seriously I'm just curious, have you ever considered that?
Super cool to see you fixing these kinds of issue, cuz a lot of hobbyists are probably in the same boat as far as being dissatisfied with the runtime of the GoPros
Because you're going to be exoatmospheric for a little while during the space shot, have you considered trying an evaporative/sublimation cooler? The hardware would be able to dissipate a ridiculous amount of heat pretty quickly - around 2kJ/g if my math is right
Let's be honest. You don't want a GoPro sponsorship; you want a FoxConn sponsorship. You want all of the GoPro parts in a custom frame that's specific to your needs. That's no what GoPro does, that's what Foxconn does.
18:50 "I'm unwilling to consider that as an option." And all of us applaud you for that!
That thermal paste layer is WAAY too thick to transfer heat to the aluminium block. It's made to brige tiny gaps between heatsinks and chips, not millimeters.
I originally thought the same thing but hey, it seems to work ok so it can't be all bad.
The stock design also has thermal paste
I like the irony of a no effort november video about the recording and telemetry of a mach 3 rocket
You are probably the only person who is interested in the o3 air unit for recording and not the video transmission. That's why it needs goggles by default.
5:20 I believe that tape is more likely to be RF shielding to either block signals exiting the camera, or possibly entering.
With regards to SD cards, and knowing you've lost a few of them to some harder-than-optimal landings or McYeeting camera's out of the airframe at some point during flight, have you considered adding some sort of "Black Box" type containers for your SD-cards, or by extension, for your flight data? Now that you're going higher and faster with each launch, the possibility of permanently damaging them without recovery options gets higher and higher. And by black box I mean like actual aircraft flight data recorders, with the memory units inside some container with shock absorbtion and a tough case. Since you're using SD extention cables anyway you might as well put the other end of that extender somewhere safe so that footage and flight data stay protected in case your rocket decides it want to come down as fast as it went up.
An aircraft "Black Box" is located in a known high survivability location. They are well insulated against fire, but not as armored as people think. Four of my rockets have survived impacts with the ground without loss of data or connection to the SD card. These impacts ranged from 600G’s to a little over 900G’s. At these high deceleration loads you want the least amount of mass potentially moving. The SD card and socket have very low mass. Placement of armor around them only increases the potential of damage. Placement of electrical tape on the SD card and socket increases the survivability. Fins and nosecones are areas of high survivability.
RunCam now also offers the Thumb 2. It can record 4K60, it has a similar QR Code feature, stabilization is available for e.g. 4K30 and you can trigger a recording via PWM. We plan to fly it on a next launch, because we had a lot of problems with the Split H. The SD Card reader did not secure the card properly and we bricked a lot of them. Will be interesting to see. But we still need to test how quickly the Thumb 2 will overheat with no airflow 😂
Also Insta360 Go 3S. Although he'd have to forgo the 4K 120 as it maxes out at 2.7K 100, but probably a good alternative for space tight options.
what about a aluminium heat shield that also holds the lens in place and is mounted on the outside of the rocket? Like its inside but its flush with the rocket wall and theres a cutout so the aluminium has direct contact with the outside air. this would work as a nice heatsink and allow you to cool your camera for basically free (energy and space wise).
I was thinking the same thing, and since he is already mounting the cameras in a section of tube, making the tube the heat sink might save some weight. Having the heat sink in the air flow would make it more effective. Maybe even add a few fins. He needs to get JLC3DP as a sponsor and 3d print such a metal camera mount.
No effort november just means that this becomes the rocket nerd’s favourite channel
11:50 why don't you just use a heatsink?
Even as someone who isn’t into cinematography I can immediately how much better then GoPro it’s great to see the extra effort for amazing footage
I know that sharkbyte has a digital camra like the DJI one
I dont think its FHD but its super small and im pretty sure as long as you get their decoder you can use it with anything
Called HDzero nowadays, but definitely not worth the camera quality. Made for low latency HD
Thermal paste is basically made of silicone oil as a liquid base and various additives like metal oxides as a thermal conducting agent.
And for your use there is a stuff called "liquid thermal pads" which would be more suitable for this kind of applications.
BPS Space always inspires me
Really enjoy your videos. Always so impressive to see how much you've learned since the last video and how willingly you share your newfound skill and the problems you experienced along the way. You're a good guy. We are fortunate to have you.
QR code for settings changes sounds extremely convenient! ..And an extremely interesting attack vector :) Change the resolution, fps. It looks like you might even be able to "stop" recording but unclear if thats purely a USB trigger.
It's amazing to see the camera have increasing current usage as it heats up. I think it shows the concept of how components use more current the hotter they get, which i think is tied to how conductors have more resistance the hotter it get.
just gonna say, small 2010 fan and a small heatsink would be less then 30g and would run both cameras indefinetly for the cost of 100mA
Once it reaches high altitude, the fan has fewer molecules of air to move making it ineffective at cooling.
Having watched the live stream, it made me giggle when you said at the start you'll get to the heat solution.... loved the stream about this teardown btw, it would be fun to see more of those
16:36 he looks exactly like Elon musk here
Facts
small elon make small rockets
It is probably worth buying up a few broken gopros off ebay, if you're already going to be doing what is effectively repair work anyway. Especially if you can find some that work except their screens are broken...
Thermal pastes are generally made with something thermally-conductive (and sometimes electrically-conductive) suspended in silicone oil, though the really high end ones can use an incredibly high-grade synthetic oil with thickeners to get the viscosity way up, because vibrations can make the two surfaces act like a pump and push thinner oils out.
Thermal paste is for filling in microscopic imperfections in two mated surfaces. It is a lousy heat sink itself and not even great at heat transfer; it's just better than air pockets. If the goal is to optimize heat transfer from chips to a heat sink, more thermal paste is exactly the opposite of what you want. Nothing compares to direct contact between the two; if you need something to bridge a gap, a microns-thick layer of paste on either side of a high-conductivity shim is going to do far better than the equivalent thickness of paste.
If the two surfaces can already touch, lap them so they touch more.
Speaking of silicone, a flexible potting material is far better for high-vibration environments than a rigid epoxy; yes, a rigid epoxy will keep connectors together, but then the flex is simply transferred further up the cable. Coating the cable ends in aquarium glue, though, will dampen the vibrations instead of just moving them around.
Count me in on the use of FPV goggles for flying rockets.
Just a little heads up: Thermal paste only does it's job properly if it is applied THIN. If you apply too much of it in a too thick manner, it will not do what it is made to do. Which is transfer the heat as good and as quick as possible onto a metal surface.
You sure you wanna call it "meat rocket"?
I love it when I see someone else also bought the absolute cheapest version of the tool I want on amazon. More than once in a video is just the cherry on top
11:30 - thermal paste isn't that good of a heat conductor for filling gaps, it would be more effective to apply paste and squish a chunk of aluminium or copper to the plate that actually fits *inside* the rim or fill the space with a metal shim. EDIT - OK, seems good enough anyway.
15:09 - usually some sort of silicone oil
2:42 - Many plastic cases are ultrasonically welded
If done right no chance of splitting it apart again. Dremel 100% the right tool.
10:30 - Normal thermal paste needs compression to work, you could be doing more harm then good. You need to use a special paste like K5 Pro wich is made to bridge gaps!
Any reason you didn't use small heatsinks (like the ones used for VRAM) on the SOC/CPUs?
You might've been able to save a fair bit of weight, if that's relevant.
Heat dissipation wont be good after being smothered in epoxy, a block of aluminium will give more thermal mass for the size. Metal to air thermal transfer efficiency was not the target here 🙂
I really enjoyed watching you modify the cameras on the livestream. it was a great chill hangout.
25:18 ROCKET CONDOM
Never thought of that trick!
Joey B: “Yeah, I’ll have one of these as well.”
Cashier: “Ooh exciting night ahead, huh?!”
Joey B: “Oh yeah, this is going on my meat... Rocket nose cone for a RUclips video.”
Cashier: 😮
Glad its not just me
Hey Joey B, have you given any thought to the idea of having youtube memberships with the same benefits as patreons? And also remember that you can blame any mistake on Charlie Garcia because he is not a real person.
If you saw the livestream you know what I´m talking about.
On the DJI thing: DJI also makes bog standard 3.5mm jack microphones, sell them separately from their standard kit...
And they don't work on non-DJI gear.
I'm almost impressed how they managed to do that.
Man the last video was the first one I watched and I just want to say ...
If this is no effort in November then I shudder to think of the magnitude of effort that must go into a video in the remaining 11 months.
How hard would it be to mount this to say, a giant nerf projectile? Hypothetically
The narration in this video is super chill. I like it.
The assembly shots inside of the garage are sooo cool. The lighting and angles are SO slick and professional. Another great video
Isn't it easier to work with mirrors instead of dismantling the camera?
Thanks! It's so exciting to be able to come along with you on your journey. I can't afford much, but these last two "No effort November" videos have just been so good. I spent 27 minutes listening to your excitement about cameras and epoxy....and i feel like i totally understand the learning journey you took just to ensure we all get to watch what happens (plus data, ya ya). Please continue the style of no effort November. I wish I could afford more but sending a very small token just to say thanks, and you're awesome, and i look forward to your videos as much as a starship launch.
Hey Joe, FPV enthusiast here. Based on your requirements this is likely not good enough for you, but in the off chance it helps or at least gives an extra potential option I'll post it. Have you looked at the caddx walksnail avatar system? (yep that's a name!) It's a competitor to DJI's FPV system (also digital, quality is not as good but still quite nice) but they sell a receiver module that has HDMI output, so no need for goggles (though the receiver is still needed). The VTX it'd likely be best for this is their moonlight kit.
Anyways loooove watching your journey through this. Totally a hobby I'd love to also get into if I had the time (and money).
Keep it up 💪💪
Asking the dumb question, wouldn't a mirror do the trick to offset the view? Like, with the camera inside and and the mirror at 45° to point in the direction you want? The FOV wouldn't be great with a planar mirror but for the price you put in the current setup some fancy convex first surface mirror should do the trick, no?
You can get some really tiny fans - may be smaller/lighter than a big heatsink
That could work, but it doesn’t fix the ultimate thermal mass issue. The cameras are sealed inside a tube, there’s no air going in or out. That air will eventually heat up, so the problem remains.
That could achieve a better weight:thermal mass ratio though, as the air is already in there.
Two things that stood out as an engineer myself that has worked with cameras:
1. You do not need that much thermal paste. The processors are what get hot and that is why they had the thermal pads from the factory there. Thermal pads are OK but a thin layer of paste works. It needs to be thin when bonding a heatsink to a heatsource as its job is to minimize the air bubbles between them. Its not that great of a conductor of heat just fills in the space.
2. You should really think about machining something that you can precisely pot these cameras on the back. I used to work with a thermally conductive epoxy, black gooey stuff you had to heat up before using to pour properly. This would not only fill in all the gaps and bond it to a heatshink better but also increase the vibration resistance of the camera. In order not to increase the mass to much you would have to create a mold or something to precisely place the camera in and figure out what the minimum amount of epoxy you need for both thermal mass and actual mass in relation to the delta v of the rocket
Hear me out, FPV enthusiast here. You can have the "best" of both worlds without using DJI (albeit no 4k120 yet, only 4k60/1080p100) with a Walksnail Moonlight from CaddxFPV. All you need aside from the camera is one Walksnail VRX which you can then connect via HDMI to any screen you want, and voilà you also have a live feed in 1080p60. With the onboard DVR still recording at 4k60 or 1080p120 of course.
BUT don't be so quick disregarding DJI, you can get second-hand DJI Goggles V2 for about $250 and that'll let you record at 4k120 using the O3 air unit! And if you're looking for the lightest O3 Flywoo offers a barebones version, but you'll have to cool it someway.
QR code configuration is so good. Even better when the codes can be printed to flash cards.
I wonder if you could take a 360 camera and rather than putting it on the nose, split it in half and mount each half on opposite sides and the body of the rocket essentialy becomes the center plane. Then you could have footage pointing in all directions.
For real I keep thinking insta 360 , and it solves the "stick out too much" problem
Something that might be worth looking into is phase change materials. Sounds fancy, but NightHawkInLight has some home garage recipes for them made from common stuff you can get. Instead of increasing thermal mass by adding more mass (which isn't great for flying things!) you have the material go through a phase change, think like ice that melts. That requires a lot of energy to push the material past the temperature at which it transitions phases, so in essence you can store cooling potential in something that is solid at room temperature and goes mushy liquid at silicon-getting-warm temperatures.
the QR code for camera settings is a super cool detail! one of those things that seems like it just makes your life easier.
Right, I am drawing a giant QR code in the desert to configure Joe's camera on the way up to be 320p @15fps. :)
The thermal place and block were a massive upgrade. Pretty much 9x thermal performance, 5 min vs. 46 min to overheat. That's nuts. I've done similar with some old devices, but wow!
About the conductivity of thermal paste: Be careful for ESD. We have been experiencing weird behaviour on heating panels on machine, our company manufactures. All machines manufactured in the summer were good, but machines manufactured in winter, when air humidity is low, had chance around 40% to have defect temperature reading after one particular test step. Panel is just aluminium sheet with silicone heating pad and thermistor bead blobbed in the middle in thermal paste. Strong hit in the middle of heater panel helped for a while. We have investigated, that MX4 (and probably all other computer related) thermal paste contains some kind of conductive segments, which can be oriented by ESD into conductive channel, jist like ionization channel in gas, but permanent. Mechanical percussive motion could break the channel, but dielectrical strength was as high anymore. The thermal paste claims "non conductive", which is true for voltage rating +-30V of this paste, but only before first ESD strike. We have switched to cheap noname white paste and never had similar problem again :D
Hi, I think you already solved your problem reaching 45 minutes. Something that is interesting to have in mind and eventually use, is to use PCM materials (Phase Change Material). Specifically, materials that require a lot of energy to change from solid to liquid. Solid parafin from which candles are made is an example, but there are for sure better products tailored for different temperatures (melting temeperature compatible with your electronics). The one I am dealing with (I am trying to recall the numbers from memory), has a specific heat when solid of 1,7 J/g/K (Joules per gram per Kelvin). But in the melting phase change, its specific heat (from about 65ºC to 73ºC) raises to 60 J/g/K. It will consume a more than 35 fold ammount of energy to raise its temperature by one degree, so it behaves as a huge heat sink, that lets you "buy" time for a certian power, until you are completely liquid and your specific heat goes down again to 1,5 or something like that. These materials are not good heat conductors, so you have to move the heat into them with aluminum fins that have a lot of surface. The container has to have free space (air to acomodate for the expansion). One way to move heat into them is to use heat pipes (you can buy them in aliexpress) or scrap them from laptops.
Here you have a site for info and it has even a calculator.
www.1-act.com/thermal-solutions/passive/pcm/heat-sinks/?srsltid=AfmBOoo36CKDPc70l1rRWRzedGh8YywXBRnc56QMfWTSD-H0Ceamd5jt
Thanks for the videos.
One common mistake I see people make when they test camera's in a "lab" setting (when they are trying to make improvements for real-world use), is pointing the camera at a static wall, image, or in this case pointed down at the black matte. If you test the camera like this, you're not really stretching it's legs. It's not working to encode details, complex scenes, and lighting. If you want a better way to test in the lab, you should point the lens at a laptop or TV that is playing a video of something. A video on a screen with changing details will stress the sensor and encoding hardware more and give you a more realistic test to then interpolate to real-world usage. :)
You may want to look into using thermal epoxy and thermal pads, thermal paste isn’t meant to conduct for long distances its just meant to fill in tiny imperfections in the surface of a CPU and a cooler. It could actually be that some of the components get insulated by all that paste.
By the way, you can get cheap aluminium heatpipes in a flat form factor. 2mm and 3mm thick is common and you can bend/shape them to attach to the CPU or thermal block of the camera.
This combined with shaping it to actually snugly mate with the surfaces and not filling giant holes with thermal compound instead should make wonders.
U might be the person I'm looking for. Why hasn't anyone attempt a mirrorless camcorder? It seems like it's finally time for the camcorder to come back. A mirrorless camera with a parafocal lens is something I feel EVERY creator would want
Instead of any kind of epoxy on that assembly, I would use a conformal coating on the circuit boards, as it is a moisture barrier and is serviceable, a factor you should enjoy. The dielectric 'thermal paste' is not efficient enough to use to try to homogenize the whole thing into a 'conductive cooled' set-up. What I am saying is that the two original contact patches are the thermal conduction path you need to stick with (har har), and you are actually "blanketing in" some of the circuitry's heat (that does not get carried or conducted away)by gobbing that much paste on. So, a small amount of proper, conductive (both thermally and electrically) paste would likely yield better overall conduction and heat 'removal'... and weigh less. You could also make a back to back peltier slab that would replace the Aluminum block. And after all these years one would think that "you guys" would have come up with clamshell rocket bodies instead of tubes. Which I think would be way more serviceable. It is not like you are carrying some heavy payload into space. Then you could 3D print some slides for the circuit boards to sit in. Somebody should make a 6 inch version of that cable interconnect. That looked like an industry flex PCB type connector, so there has to be some out there or a flex PCB maker that will make you one in short run real cheap. You could sell them yourself.
Using a side channel attack to determine if your camera settings are working - epic 😄
I, too, wondered why you'd smooch everything in thermal paste instead of applying a thin layer and then adding correctly sized heatsinks to this after carefully removing the microphone from the metal plate. You could, given that you have access to a cnc milling machine, buy a larger heat sink and mill the underside to fit exactly over the PCB parts containing the (two?) gopro heat sources, making sure to have good contact. The height differences from cam to cam from tolerances from the soldering process and parts measurements should be minimal and easily bridged by a thin application of thermal paste. Once you've got the height structure for the heatsink right, it would fit all cams of the same model and, as a bonus, you could even sell a few to fellow rocketeers or other people. Add a small-ish fan (like on the flywoo cam) or get some fresh air in through a vent and out somewhere else, and the heat problem should be gone.
EDIT: OR, and I just came up with it now, if you're creating a "coupler" section for the rocketbody , include an aluminium ring (like what now looks to be glass fiber or something like PCB material) that has contact to the outside and couple the heat sources to it from the inside using either thermal paste and/or short heat pipes like those used in laptops or pc cpu air coolers (they are available on ali, another option would be trying to "harvest" a fitting set from one of said cpu air coolers). The section in contact with the surrounding air should eat up the heat pretty well while not adding drag or weight compared to the alu blocks inside, plus adding a bit of rigidity to the section housing the cameras and keeping the weight distributed way better than the blocks. Also, it would get the heat out of the core where it would just sit and increase from the cooling/thermal mass blocks.
For my uses i would like GoPro to use a larger sensor. One day they will… maybe…
Said it on the stream video, but those are FPCs and FFCs (flexible printed circuits and flat flex cables), not ribbon cables. You can get custom ones made by the usual PCB manufacturers (OSHPark, PCBWay, JLCPCB, Advanced Circuits, etc.) More expensive than the mass-produced premade ones, but you can get exactly the size & shape you need for a rocket, which might end up being important.