Endoscope type camera for iPad

[Getonit]

Does anybody have any recommendations for buying one of these? I don't really need it for my plane but I thought I saw references on these forums in the past. My internet search has lead me to review seems like dozens of them and hard to tell which one(s) are the best value.
Thanks,
Mark

 

[skynewbie]

A dental camera might work well but not sure

 

[nddons]

Drop by a local hospital toward the end of the day. There should be plenty of colonoscopy endoscope cameras to choose from.

 

[NoHeat]

For an ipad? I don't recall a thread here for that, specifically. Google ipad dental camera and you will find something.

For use in spark plug ports, the snapon model that was introduced a year ago is supposed to be great. Mike Busch recommended it. Not cheap, though.

To do things cheaply, Silvaire started a thread a year ago for a $30 dental camera from China that worked on a PC, after some minor hassles. Some of the dental camera models available a year ago required a little surgery to make the head small enough to fit through a plug port.

 

[Silvaire]

But iPads don't have USB ports so I don't know how you'd get around that. Maybe there's such a thing as a USB to WiFi adapter?

 

[FastEddieB]

But iPads don't have USB ports so I don't know how you'd get around that. Maybe there's such a thing as a USB to WiFi adapter?

Apple sells a "Camera Connection Kit*" for both 30-pin and Lightning model iPads. This is the Lightning version:

One cable is for USB, the other for SD card.

I bought one for my 1st gen iPad, but never really found a use case for it. I'm sure they come in handy for some.


*I think now the USB and SD card models are sold separately for $29 each

 

[Henning]

I bought the kit not long ago in the big plug form and it came with both the USB and SD pieces for $30.

 

[Silvaire]

Well that would probably work then. The Chinese Dental Cameras are all pretty much the same thing and are around $30. They ship via China Post which I guess literally means on a "ship" because it takes about a month for it to get here. The software that comes with it is most likely going to be in Chinese and even if you have a Chinese pal help you get it installed it'll be mostly tailored for dentists with numbered graphs corresponding to various incisors and molars. But all you really need is a decent generic webcam program, many of which are free.

The camera itself does a single thing fairly well and that is display a very close macro image at exactly 90 degrees from the head. It will not fit into a spark plug hole as it is and has to be modified by cutting off half of the housing. It's not hard to do, I made mine so the housing can be screwed back on when not being used to look in cylinders.

The 90 degree viewing angle makes it just about perfect for looking at engine valves and it has a very bright illuminating LED. Personally I don't believe there is much use to this because if you could visibly see any sort of anomaly on a valve with this thing your compression reading is going to be zero and the cylinder is coming off anyway. But that's not an argument I care to get into again so do with it as you please.

They can easily be found on eBay.