The new Astrocam from Estes has arrived on the shelves of Target Department Stores, and I picked one up tonight in Kennesaw, GA for $59 bucks.

The kit comes with a Porta Pad II and Electron Beam controller, a fairly standard E2X kit with a longish, pre-colored BT50 body tube, and a couiple of motors: B6-4 and C6-5. A coupon is included for a free pack of B6-4s in exchange for you entering info on the Estes website.
The kit comes with a special nose cone to receive the camera, and some rubber bands to assist in holding the camera on the nose cone.

Then there's a wad of bubble wrap, with a label saying "DON'T THROW THIS OUT!!" (well, words to that effect) Inside is the camera.

The camera appears to be an off-the-shelf device (i.e. made for general use, not specifically for the rocket). It's a nice ovaloid shape. There is a button on one of the flat sides. There is a slot in one of the long edges which has a 16GB Micro SD card. Press in to unlatch it and pop it out, press in again to lock it in. On one of the ends is a tiny hole where the lens (and probably microphone) is. The other end slides off, revealing a standard USB 2.0 connector. The first thing you do is plug the camera into a usb port with power in order to charge the 3.7v LiPo battery. It takes two-three hours to charge. It discharges in 40 minutes.

The camera shoots video at 1080p, 30 frames per second. Saves video files as .AVI. You can shoot stills 2560x1440 on .JPG files. You can access the files with your computer just by plugging the camera into a USB port. Or you can take the SD card and put it into your computer. 16GB is enough fro 90 minutes of video. The camera will accept up to a 128GB card.

My camera is charging at this moment and I'll update this thread later.

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Roy
nar12605