Inside a big scary rotating CCTV camera. 

Hi Clive! I am astonished at the interest you have generated in my 1970's baby! Does it have a serial number stamped on the aluminium casting? If not, it was made in the garden shed at the back of my home, where I first started. Cameras in those days were always supplied by the installers, usually Hitachi or Ikegami with monochrome Videcon Tubes. (I could not afford to stock cameras!) The units most observers have seen and commented on were actually quite a bit bigger than the one you have assessed and would pan, tilt, zoom and focus those large old fashioned cameras. You would be very intrigued to take one of them to bits. I have been retired over a decade now and have enjoyed indulging in a little nostalgia over my pioneering days!

I think that case is pretty clever. It fools some into thinking they're all cameras, but probably more importantly it hides the true direction of the camera pretty efficiently. So even a thief who knows there's just one camera inside doesn't know where it's pointing.

Am i the only one who wants to see the picture quality of the cam and see the insides?

Installed it myself without any issues. The wifi signal is great even ru-vid.comUgkxE_D_sddGAdiVUKp7PkkmyxO7bRtgqmk5 when the router is located far away. I really enjoy the night vision feature that allows me to see clearly any activity near our house (mostly cars and wild animals). The motion detection is helpful to me as well to monitor what happens on our front.

I remember seeing something like that in the 70's or 80's in some big shop. And I wondered why it turned, when it had cameras on all sides, and did come to the conclusion that all but one was fake, so you wouldn't know which way it was pointing. I'm very happy to see that I was correct.

pro tip - if a security camera has a blinking light then its 99% chance fake lol

Wow! 35+ years old and still working! Absolutely fascinating to see it analysed this way. Corrections: Monochrome picture was sharper than most of what you see on Crimewatch etc today, though vidicon tubes were vulnerable and used to require replacement. Bulbs had a permanent faint glow to preserve filament life. It worked didn't it? Some still flashing! The flash was (obviously) to attract attention - as with burglar alarms today. The simple control system did NOT utilise earth. It was a simple figure eight pair switching left or right relays via steering diodes. Go figure it out for yourself. This was the very first model designed and made (metal work, plastics, electronics and all) in my garden shed - even the lenses! This earliest "Multicamera" was made a good few years before the company was formed. Mark Mercer

This was very informative,I remember seeing these in shops like Boots in the late 1980s.As a small child,I found them to be quite scary and thought they were like something from Star Wars. Its surprising to see how they actually work and that they weren't as sophisticated as I had thought they were as a child

OMG you're not just a pair of disembodied hands and a voice! it's like seeing what the newsreaders wear under the table!

The reason the bulb glows dimly and flashes brightly is to greatly extend the bulb's service life. By never fully turning it off they keep the filament continuously heated which reduces thermal shock when it is flashed...essentially it is going from hot and glowing to even hotter and more brightly glowing, but never to cold since it is always on. That, combined with running the bulb below its maximum ratings, results in an indicator lamp that will flash for many years without servicing.

Very old trick. The bulb will last a lot longer if not fully turned off. Less thermal stress and much lower current rush in.

I remember how menacing those things looked when I was a child, and most of them probably didn't even have any cameras in them back in the 80's

Just as FYI, a quick internet search shows "Mark Mercer Electronic, LTD" as being a security/CCTV manufacturer that specialized in dome style camera systems and was in business from 1978 to 2013 until what appears to be bankruptcy. The UK company "Maxey Moverley" seems to be the company who bought Mercer's remaining stock, parts, and test jigs and claims to be the main supplier of service, parts, and support for Mercer equipment. Being from the U.S., I'd never heard of either company but remember seeing similar (now hokey looking) "systems" as a kid. If memory serves, I think it was Woolworth's and K-Mart's that I saw those in.

Would it be possible to get the actual camera to work? Would be intresting to see what kind of quality they had to deal with back in the day :)

The current was probably limited to the lamp on its "off" cycle so the tungsten never fully cools, and increase lamp life greatly.

They left the lamp constantly glowing so it could pulse ON more quickly. If they shut it off completely, it would cool between pulses, resulting in a "ramping up" effect where the lamp would fade on rather than flashing on. The dark lens makes the lamp appear completely off from a distance with ambient light, so when it's hanging on the ceiling and you're standing on the floor, you see a lamp pulsing off and on. Thanks for all the quality content, keep it up!

You spoke of this in the fake camera video, and Im glad you got a hold of this product. Im happy to have seen the insides of this thing,

I’ve been watching your videos for ages, but only just come across this one. I worked for Mark Mercer Electronics between 98-06, and whilst we’d moved on to variable speed DC and stepper motors and slip rings by then, I remember these well, covered in dust in the service dept! The dummy lenses were known internally as ‘teddy bear’s eyes’ They had just built a new facility in Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, when I joined them.

I do remember those kind of camera domes in shops in the 1980s. I always thought every camera was genuine and no angle was being missed, but your disassembly has proved that only one lens was real! Given the size of the camera, I'd be surprised if you could get more than one in there...

When I first saw one of these on the TV show Are You Being Served I thought it was a caricature for dramatic purpose because it looked so obviously fake. Eight 70s era cameras inside a tiny housing, maybe on Gallifrey. The fake cameras we have in the US are more realistic.

The trickle current to the lamp could be for making sure the filament doesn't cool off too much between each cycle. An incandescent lamp will have a bit of an inrush current when its cold due to the relatively low resistance of the filaments. Those repeated spikes could significantly shorten the lifetime of both the lamp and the switching transistor.

nice intro!!!

Your opening dialogue made me laugh. "Hey BigClive, what's that ya got?" 🤣🤣

The good old days! Easy to work on, simple discrete components and lasts for ever. Very interesting. Brings back memories of my electrical apprenticeship. Thanks for another great video.

Yet another great video. I do love your little humorous intros you sometimes do :)

The opening of this video is epic. You should do these kind of openings more often!

Wow! lacing cord to hold the wiring loom into shape!. I do distinctly remember being taught this during my apprenticeship and was used extensively during production. That was back in the early to mid 80's. I also remember nylon ties just coming in around that time. I guess that dates this camera to sometime prior to the mid 1980's. great stuff :)

I just love it. All 70's goodness. I wish I had one of these, just for the looks of it.

Looks like Nicotine Yellowing like it came out of a Pub. That reminds me, I used to work for a Mechanical Services company, where by we would, amongst other things, install high voltage, Electrostic Filters in Air conditioning in Pubs and Clubs. The purpose of these devices was to electrostatically attract and trap tabacco smoke in the filters. An interesting device to experiment with, if you can get hold of one. The devices have been retired in Australia since we have also band smoking in Pubs and Clubs

Pl 259 connectors were standard fare in CCTV in the 70's & 80's BNCs came along late 80's. All the cameras from those times were Videcon (with some low light variants Nuvicon, Ultracon, etc.) tubes. Effectively it was like a cathode ray tube in reverse and the target (a wafer thin gold foil at the head of the tube) was scanned and this high voltage target fluctuated depending on the light falling on it and then produced the image. They did need constant adjustment and the target suffered from image burn-in. So you could watch as ghostly live figures drifted across the burnt in image. This burn in means you can plug an old camera in and see the scene it was looking at all those years ago. Resolution at best in modern terms was about 200,000 pixels total. The image sensor was 2/3 inch, or 16mm. The lenses were borrowed from the 16mm film industry and had the same connector, so if you had a 16mm film movie camera, you could unscrew the lens and put it on a CCTV camera. Mostly the CCTV lenses were poor quality plastic adding to image degradation. Companies at the time were: Ikegami, RCA, Hitachi, ITC and Panasonic. The RCA ones were pretty good but a pig to adjust in the field, the top and bottom casing had to be removed leaving the live circuit board in you hand as you adjusted pots, usually 100 foot up a tower getting shocks of the PCB, the target voltage was around 5000 volts if I remember correctly.

Got recommended to me now, almost 5 years later, the algorithm blesses you!

You finally found one of those ! congrats !

They still had those in the late 90s in Woolworth in Germany. In that UGLY orange color and looking like an UFO. They also had 1 camera in them, because there was monitors showing the feed at some places in that store.

It's been said, but I'd also really like to see the camera in action. All 144 lines or whatever horrid resolution it is

You finally got hold of one, I wondered how long it would take. I remember seeing these in Asda and other places in the 90's. I remember thinking they can't all be real cameras and looks like I was right. Great video :-)

Very fascinating stuff, great job Clive!

"That's going to potentially introduce a lot of ripples into the picture, then having said that, the picture in this thing would have been shit anyway" Favourite line from the video, so casual. xD

OMG they had these in british home stores "aka BHS" when i was a kid

I was so excited to see this video after seeing the original video on it. Glad you found one!

Hey Clive your videos just get better and better...Thinking the ZZ Top beard looks ace.Cheers for the time your putting in fella.

I'll be honest, didn't think you had a beard... But I love it!

The camera is an Ikegami CTC-4700, there's a service manual here: www.manualslib.com/manual/679286/Ikegami-Ctc-4700.html

The bulb cycling between dim and bright is really good design. Toggling an incandescent on and off every few seconds 24/7 is a lot of thermal stress, and the bulb would burn out quickly. By going between dim and bright, they get essentially the same end effect, but with much less thermal stress on the bulb and it'll last significantly longer.

This guy is like Bob Ross levels of chill, these are great for sleep. Kinda awesome to see this stuff too...

Hi Clive, great video. Any chance that we could see what is inside the actual camera in this?

Clive, the way the lamp is operated, is the same thing they do in pinball machines with flasher lamps :) (hey I knew this pinball education would pay off one day lol) The lamp is supplied a continuous low current, and when you want to flash the lamp, a higher current is supplied by an alternative path. The reason is that, flashing a lamp on/off when the filament is cold significantly reduces it's life as parts of the filament surface are blasted off each time it is powered. By keeping the filament continuously warm, the damage done when flashing the lamp is significantly reduced. This is particularly important in pinball machines, as the vibration adds to the stress to the filament. In this scary camera unit, it is being done just so that the lamp doesn't require regular replacement. (which was probably quite tricky) There is a side effect that the lamp can be flashed on quicker, than from code, so that may also be a consideration.

I remember all the big shops having these in the 1980s when I was kid. I was fascinated by them because then they looked so futuristic. Thanks for the vid !

I'm so happy you have this, I remember you drawing a picture of one not long ago. hope you enjoyed it!

Magnificent beard sir!

Wow takes me right back to the 80's. Last time I saw one of those was in Boots in the late 80's

I was looking forward to this! Thanks Clive! Very entertaining! :)

These type of cameras were used into the 90s as our local Sansburys used the type that was round and had lenses poking out. I imagine they would be very similar to this one internally.

Anyone remembers these in Toys R Us?

Is there a part 2? I would like to see the camera in detail

This is the best opening to one of your vids ever.

This is the first video of bigclive that I have ever watched, now I am binge watching

is it possible to see if the old camera still works ? maybe via capture card? sometimes if its a valve sensor pictures are burned in of the location , making funny ghost like images on the actual image

is that a poundland precision screwdriver i see?

Holy cow! I can't believe they used a genuine Ikegami camera in that hokey contraption.

You sir, deserve more subs! Your videos are always such a joy to watch :D

Wow! That camera has a UHF connector on it! I've never seen those used anywhere but radio! It probably outputs some kind of RF ... probably standard analogue CATV PAL (or NTSC if they bought it from america) signal that you can plug into a standard, old fashioned telly.

What's the name/model number of this? Because you don't really get good results for googling "Robot head security camera"

Bigclive

I think the purpose of those was always to house a single camera, but to leave the public unaware as to which direction the camera was facing at any one time, so as to prevent people thinking they could evade it.

Love the intro

That switch hysteresis is ingenious!

I like spooky-looking industrial or fancy commercial stuff such as strange security cameras, industrial lighting, tornado sirens, etc. I would love to get ahold of one of these spooky spinning camera units and actually use it

I remember one of these in the old Co-op when I was a kid. And just like everyone else, I assumed it had a camera for each side. Great idea to deter shoplifting!!

Lol, I wonder if there was ever a case of the footage from one of these EVER used to prosecute somebody for shoplifting? "Exhibit A , your honour, the strange blurry blip was seen the secret the item on his person behind the grey pixellated scrolling mass"

I'm going to take a guess that you've picked this up from a closing BHS store?

i have now officially watched every video on RU-vid during quarantine

When you were describing the "memory" effect of the microswitches, it didn't make sense at first, until I realised that if the camera were to pan continuously, it would drive the person watching the security monitors to distraction. An intermittent motion in either direction would let the camera pause on a scene for a few seconds so that one could better perceive if anything of interest is happening. Nowadays the problem would have been solved with stepper motors and a microcontroller, so that was a clever solution for something designed in the 1970s.

You got a like just from the intro :D

I am going to have to see if I can get hold of one now.

Not sure if anyone has already replied, can't see one but, The reason for the lamp resistor will be to prevent the filament from going completely cold, it will keep a bit of heat in it to stop thermal shock from destroying the filament very quickly.

Love your vids Clive.

It might be because bulb will last longer when it is not switch all the way off. IIRC the old scoreboards at stadiums that did simple animations with incandescent bulbs, kept them warm by not turning them 100% off, at least the ones i know about did.

Aside from it looking cool, the lamp will be on pre-heat to extend it's life. "quite neat"... :)

Awesome video. This was one of my favorites.

I love the fact that you actually found one of these things that actually works!

Whenever you flash an incandescent bulb you don't want a full voltage pulse going from 0V because it can burn out the bulb. You should know this. This is also done in old car flasher circuits. The element remains warm and greatly increases its life expectancy and also reduces the current spike making it reach full brightness quicker.

Clive, where did you purchase it? ebay?

Wow that was cool. I remember them scary Dalek CCTV things. Cheers Clive great video.

Sucks it's so cheaply built but I would love to find one of those to hang up in my basement. It would fit the environment down there perfectly. I've never seen one in the US but I'm sure it would look cool in my early 80s arcade haha.

can you take a closer look at the camera or try and get it working?

"Dalek head camera"... and I thought the camera chassis looked like K-9!

I remember you talking about these in another video. Channel is meta af.

Looks like the old complementary pair flasher circuit with medium current BJTs and some lamp bias current to extend its life. I'd love to see the exact topology though, old stuff like that is always fun to reverse engineer.

Good I remember working on those type of units. They were pure sh1t when they were new. Noisy too. especially on hollow ceiling. the ikegami camera, probably 2/3inch tubed camera. very old as it has a pl259 style connection. they were the Rolls of its day. Still making cameras as far as I know especially in the tv studio business

I figured these things out when I was 6 in Woolworths, “if there all Cameras why is it turning mummy?”

The big black round ones that Woolies had, always fascinated me.

Clive’s finally captured a Dalek and has taken its head!

i'm curious about video quality... also design looks.. redundant? isn't it better to have stationary camera than rotating one.

337 is an NPN transistor 327 is the PNP complementary

I love the electromechanical stuff. Please do more. Maybe a pinball. That would be really fun.

My word, I remember these things. There was one in the Boots and the C&A in Bristol on the Horsefair, at least. I recall that John Lewis had ones that looked a bit more intimidating and upmarket- large glossy black spherical ball with 4 or 5 big chromed camera lenses sticking out and multiple blinking red lights. It would oscillate randomly, so probably the same guts, just a more fancy housing! Haven't seen one of those in years. Thanks for the video!

mark mercer electronics, 1985 - 2013 liquidated, shame :-(

Did you try and intentionally make the start of the video as sinister as possible? Because it worked hahaha

Keeping lamp filament glowing/warm was used to increase lifetime of blinking lamps. Incandescent mostly fail at startup when filament is cold and has low resistance you have big startup current that damages filament. Probably that's why it's glowing also in this camera.

I remember these cameras when I was a kid in the late 80/early 90s. Found them to be a bit intimidating.