Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:40 pm by madsamurai
I've played around with those chinese USB borescopes... image quality isn't bad (640x320 or something) however the problem I can't seem to get around is the delay in playback on the phone/tablet screen. There's a solid 1-2 second delay and many random pauses in the video feed, and it makes it really difficult to stop at the right place when you're turning a wheel and watching... you have to keep pausing to let the video catch up, and it becomes very annoying and tedious, and most often it gets slower the longer the app is kept running. The apps I tried (about 6 of them before I gave up) would run for 3-5 minutes before they were completely stuttery or simply crashed. Also some flip or mirror the feed, and that gets really confusing. Maybe a higher-end mobile device with a faster processor would help that some, but it's never going to be real time, which you would get with a proper analog borescope or even a digital borescope with all of its processing resources devoted to video throughput. There's just too much other background stuff going on on most phones/tablets.
Still tho, if you're just messing around, it's something to play with... you can get those cameras for under $10 and the apps are generally free. You might have better luck than I did...