22 Oct 2022:
Finally after much hassle the multi-camera capture are setup and is working great. I added some photos at the end of this post.Next up is to finetune the lightning and brightness/contrast of everything but from thereon its just a matter of physically pick out each VHS tape, place it in place, press a button, remove VHS and continue until all the 900? pcs are taken care of.
When all photos are taken they will be merged together for each VHS tape, renamed, cleaned, upscaled (most likely with using AI) and presented on a future post to finally capture my entire VHS collection. I have waited years before I had the chance to pull this off!
20 Oct 2022:
As my FlashForge Finder 3D printer recently get a new print-plate I have big problems with adhesion problems while printing. After 3-4 attemps, I gave it up. That means maybe that the attempts of using the HDMI Tandberg camera with my own 3d printed casing, won't happen most likely as its just too time consuming.So, I started searching my house for other camera's that I could try to use, as laptop webcameras are just of low quality on any older aged laptops. My camera search revealed I also have 2 x D-LINK DCS-6620G IP Camera's that have an okey image quality, but only a resolution of 704 x 480.
Since this is an IP camera, I would just call up the image stream (no video stream), just the single jpg via typically
http://192.168.1.19/cgi-bin/video.jpg
Problem is that my software expects a WEB Camera to be captured by a 3rd-party tool, not an IP camera. So, I thought what if there are any IP camera to Virtual Webcamera software. Yes, there are, the one I liked (because its slim, easy and straight to the point) was "IP Camera Adapter". It basically lets you just enter that url above and turns it into a virtual hardware device called "MJPEG Camera".
Next I found an command line tool for grabbing screenshots from any named or device numbered webcamera as well. It was called "RobotEyez" and is simple, fast and works great.
With just a command line of
"RobotEyez.exe /devname "MJPEG Camera" /width 704 /height 480 /bmp"and it saves out an BMP image which my own software picks up, renames and job done. Since my own software is capable of sending capture command to any other PC with the same setup, I have finally multi-camera instant 1 click button system running!
I'm sure this kind of setup can be useful for other future projects where 1 click to capture images from a multi-camera setup is needed.
During my other search around in the house, I found some older PAL based video camera's with Composite RCA and BNC video outputs. These can be connected to a IVC-200 PCI 4-channel capture card very easily.Luckily that card automatically creates a Video Device in Windows, so with some "ffmpeg" commands I was able to capture a screenshot out of that as well. I'm not sure if this will become the solution with a PCI Capture card+ffmpeg variant, or the above mentioned IP CAM to WEB CAM approach.
02 Oct 2022:
Finalized the 3d modelling to re-create the casing of the original Tandberg camera. Now officially called "Oakberg" Camera. I will try to print tomorrow and hopefully, everything will just click into place. I will use glue and metal screws to tight everything together into a single movable object.01 Oct 2022:
Managed to test the naked electronics as explained yesterday and one of the camera's work fine. Together with a newly purchased "CAME-TV Video Capture USB" with HDMI device that part worked great too. It just shows up as a regular WebCam in Windows 10 out of the box.Now, I had an connection accident with 1 of the Tandberg camera (#47) and some tiny little chip started spewing out smoke. That camera is now dead and will be trashed. I have however another Maritime surveillance camera (I believe), very industrial like with 12VDC power input and BNC video out. I plan to use that Composite video together with a another old capture device to hopefully get an hook on that camera with software as well. I still have to dig around and test a couple of things. I plan to start 3d modelleing and 3d print a casing for the Tandberg camera during the next week.
30 Sep 2022:
After starting to test my software against 2 x laptops with integrated web camera, I came to realize that the quality of these where 640x480 resolution which was in addition very blurry and blocky codec compression causing quite a headache. I had to find other camera alternatives, and I was lucky enough to be in posession of 2 x Tandberg PrecisionHD 720p (TTC8-01) cameras that came from a thrashed/defunct teleconference system from 10 years ago or so. I started on a long trip down the rabbit hole.
They were part of a system called "Edge 95 /85 /75 MXP".
However, the coating or paint on the camera's had become VERY sticky and impossible to wash/clean/scrape off and just touching them resulted in sticky fingers for hours. Who da hell produces CRAP LIKE THIS? Tandberg is a Norwegian company and I'm pretty sure they where environment friendly and tried alternative, so called "safe" coating and paint. 10 years later after beeing exposed to variance in temperature they seem to convert into a very sticky substance covering the outside AND inside of the camera! BAD! JUST BAD!
In addition the plastic had stared to rotten and break apart of just age (again, what crappy materials!). Now, thats pretty shitty materials. So, I had to dismantle the cameras, as you can see below. I'm only interrested only in the electronics and camera. It has a HDMI output which I plan to convert to USB capture resulting it to become a standard webcamera, but with better quality.
I will also have to 3d-print some new base and parts so I can make my own "Tandberg" camera module out of it. Since I at this point HATE Tandberg, I can assure you the new name of the 3d-printed version of mounting the electronics and camera will be a much better name that just oozes of pure quality: "OakBerg", or "StoneBerg" or maybe even "OakvalleyBerg". I now claim the re-invention of the internal electronics to produce a fully NON-sticky version of these. I laugh hard!
Funny fact is that Tandberg has been a company cursed of so many bankrupts so I guess its better they are dead and buried forever as far as I'm concerned as this kind of paint or coating should be forbidden, not to mention the crappy plastic that literally just broke by ITSELF or fell into pieces just pushing my fingers on certain internal plastic parts. Laughable, just laughable.
The camera's was marked inside with dates in Dec 2006 and Mar 2007, causing them to be quite old already, just as old as the "idea" of a functional "Tandberg" company that can keep their business running for at least a respectable number of years - not!
Tandbergs Radiofabrikk (bankruptcy 1978)
Tandberg Industrier (dissolved 1979)
Tandberg Audio (bankruptcy 1988)
Tandberg Audio Products (bankruptcy 2000)
Tandberg Data (bankruptcy April 2009, operations continued)
Tandberg Storage (subsidiary company, bankrupt at the same time)
Tandberg Television (acquired by Ericsson in 2007)
Tandberg (acquired by Cisco in the winter of 2009-2010)
Tandberg Telecom (subsidiary)
Tandberg Educational or Tandberg US / TANDBERG USA or SANAKO (purchased by Finnish Teleste in 1984)
Since the original Tandberg website was dissolved (but preserved by Archive.org) they got bought (probably for 1.5 pennies, exactly how much their worth) by Cisco. They had kept traces of the original documents, API, technical docs etc., but man, Tandberg had so many models and fancy product names it was a big huge maze of trying to find documentation for it. I have a plan to investigate I they can still be controlled via RS-232 through RJ-45 to 9P D-DSUB. I added some docs and links of my discoveries so far at the bottom of this page. It might help others out there.
Fun fact: I should point out that even on ebay and internet, other people are also saying these camera's became sticky after many years. So, yes, this was not a storage fault or cleaning the cameras by me. This is REAL FACT BASED information backed up by others. Lawsuit, Tandberg anyone? - haha. Negative balance is probably something Tandberg is familiar with, so right up their alley to loose another one in the market. WIN-WIN really.
Fun fact 2: The camera modules was marked with a pencil marker internally by Tandberg's production - the numbers 47 and 19. So, we're already reached the "Hitman" and "Vietnam war" with this project, which is a great game series and a fantastic song from the 80's called "19" by Paul Hardcastle.
26 Sep 2022:
I never had a plan to gather all of them naturally, but could never say no to them either, if their life was to end in the dumpster. It just breaks my good memory and nostalgia I have of VHS tapes.
I have been given huge trash bags filled with these VHS original tapes that either came from a rental shops, those which can be bought and even free-to-grab at the local dump, or even just a fill-in-the-bag or very cheap ones and everything in between. It should be noted that the money spent on all of these the past 20 years are minimal. Prior to that, I did buy expensive VHS tapes which I still have in my collection to this date!
I thought since I never made any list or notes of this collection that now is probably a good time to invent a new way of taking pictures of these (from two angles) at the same time by using a little bit of own software (server/client) approach hooking myself up to laptops or any PC that has a webcam connected and capture all at the same time on all computers to be efficient enough for this little side-project I had in my mind for the past 4-5 years already.
At the moment, I just finalized the software during a 1-2 hour coding session, see the first picture to the right and the actual capture of each and every tape cover should be done during the next weekend(s), like Week 39-52 or so.
Hopefully it should not take long, but with 800+ tapes stacked in big heavy boxes the logistics of it will take more time than the actual taking and publishing of the entire collection. Wonder what treasures that are hidden amongst these, as I have the really old BUBBLE cover tapes, the 90's hard covers and some randomized "no-cover" tapes in my collection.
The genres range from anything to nothing, there is no plan behind the collected tapes, they are all just kept safe. I also plan to at least write down the titles in plain text, otherwise the pictures taken will be without any text or caption added, but the possibility to at least view the pictures in a higher resolution by clicking on the thumbnails to the right.