FOG HORN 2014

Twobirds Flying Publication

Copyright 2014, Towbirds Flying Publication. All Rights Reserved.

S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount

Bushnell’s AR TRS-25 – An excellent red dot sight betrayed only by its bargain price. 2014

Copyright 2014, Twobirds Flying Publication, All Rights Reserved

S4 Gear ZOOM SVS Smartphone Digiscoping Mount – the

cornerstone of a basic surveillance package.

By: Sal Palma

S4 Gear is a fairly young company rooted in

their love of the great outdoors and a keen

interest in archery. They’ve developed a

number of products designed to assist bow

hunters with mounting a smart device to their

bows so they can capture hunts on video.

They’ve recently introduced a new product, the

Zoom SVS, a mount that allows attaching a

smartphone to a spotting scope or binoculars.

I’m not as interested in photographing the

mating ritual of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker but I

think their mount also makes an excellent

starting point on which to build a moderately

priced but fun surveillance system with some

fairly cool capabilities. So, in this article I’m

going to brief you on S4 Gear’s Zoom SVS, and

suggest one approach to enhancing your

personal ISR capabilities.

The Zoom SVS is a polymer mount used to align

a smartphone camera lens with the ocular lens

of a magnified optic. It will work with your basic

spotting scope, binoculars, image intensified

optic or thermal imager with an ocular tube.

The Zoom SVS needs about .75 – 1.0 inches of

ocular tube in order to attach to the optic.

Anatomically you’ll find two major

subassemblies, the mounting head, which

attaches to the host optic and the cradle, which

secures the phone.

The mounting head attaches to the cradle with

a wing nut that can be tightened or loosened to

establish a coarse alignment between the

phone's camera lens and the ocular lens on the

magnified optic.

To make the coarse alignment less of a trial and

error process S4 included indexing marks

corresponding to the host optic’s ocular

diameter and the mounting head center line.

Once you’ve secured your smartphone to the

Zoom SVS, determine the diameter of the

ocular tube on your host optic and adjust the

vertical and horizontal position of your phone’s

camera lens so that it aligns with the indexing

marks located on the mounting head. You are

now ready to mount the phone and Zoom SVS

to your host optic.

Bushnell’s AR TRS-25 – An excellent red dot sight betrayed only by its bargain price. 2014

Copyright 2014, Twobirds Flying Publication, All Rights Reserved

The mounting head uses Velcro attachment to

secure the phone and Zoom SVS to the optic’s

ocular tube and here is its only observable

weakness. Although Velcro does support the

phone and mount on the ocular tube, it is

inadequate in isolating the phone from

vibrations associated with touching of the

phone’s screen and equally ineffective against

wind, all of which results in deleterious

vibrations transmitted to the smartphone. A

rigid clamping device would have been an

infinitely better approach in your humble

scribe’s opinion.

Zoom SVS was designed around a smartphone

and it will accommodate a phone with case

from just about any manufacturer. In writing

this review, I used an iPhone, LG and Samsung

devices all of which work extremely well.

As you can see in the photo, the clamping arms

are under spring tension, so to insert your

phone in the cradle simply pull out on the tabs

and allow your phone to fall into place; then

adjust the phone so that it rests against the

bottom tab. S4 used heavy springs so there’s no

concern over your phone falling out. The

clamping mechanism is very well implemented,

as are the vertical and horizontal adjustment

controls.

Once the phone and Zoom SVS are mounted on

the host optic, you’ll use the horizontal and

vertical adjustment controls to center and fine

tune the image on your screen.

You’re now ready to start shooting pictures or

video with your smart device!

As you look at your phone’s touchscreen, it is

normal to see a black vignette around the

image. You can eliminate that by adjusting your

camera App’s zoom; however, depending on

the host optic magnification, and your phone’s

ability to zoom, it may not be possible to

completely eliminate the vignette. Once again,

these artifacts are normal and nothing to be

concerned about.

Alright, we now find ourselves at a juncture

where the smartphone is attached to our host

Bushnell’s AR TRS-25 – An excellent red dot sight betrayed only by its bargain price. 2014

Copyright 2014, Twobirds Flying Publication, All Rights Reserved

optic and we’d like to start taking pictures.

There are two routes you can take.

The most basic approach requires you standing

there pressing on your phone’s touchscreen to

operate the shutter. Fortunately there are

better options, and the more interesting

approach is to have an app snap the pictures, or

video, for you on some trigger or at specified

time interval, say every 10 seconds. What can

you use to help you accomplish this goal?

As it turns out there are a number of Apps

available for the Android platform. The most

interesting, and highly rated, is SECuRET,

consisting of three separate Apps - SECuRET

SpyCam, SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream and

SECuRET Remote Control. When used in

conjunction, they’ll provide you with excellent

functionality and hours of funi. I suggest you

buy all three modules, at a total cost of $6.97.

SECuRET SpyCam allows you to take motion

triggered photos and videos. Any motion

detected in its field of view will trigger a single

picture or a user selectable burst. You can also

shoot a video of specified duration. Once the

capture is complete, the App can e-mail the

photo capture, or video capture, to a specified

e-mail address. It will also upload the image

capture or video to Dropbox. SpyCam can act

standalone or it can be paired with a WEB cam

or with another smart device running SECuRET

Wi-Fi Live Stream.

SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream streams video and

audio via Wi-Fi to any other device connected

to the same network. Without getting into a lot

of detail, you can plant this device and it will

stream live video and audio to either a remote

tablet running SpyCam, for example, or to a

web browser. The web browser establishes a

connection to the smartphone via a non-

routable IP address. SECuRET Wi-Fi Live Stream

does not appear to support a secure socket

(SSL), but for most applications it’s not that big

of a deal. The one real limitation is that all of

the devices must be connected to the same

network.

SECuRET Remote Control allows you to use

SMS messages to control the smart device. For

example, you can command the device running

SECuRET Remote Control, via the following SMS

message PHOTO SD&EMAIL, to take a picture,

store it in device memory and e-mail a copy to

whatever e-mail address you wish.

Once you have an opportunity to familiarize

yourself with these Apps you may want to

reconsider tossing your smartphone every other

year. Hang on to it and put them to work.

In its present state of development none of the

SECuRET apps will zoom the image and the live

stream is done in the open; meaning, it does

not support secure socket layer (SSL). Not a

huge distractor, instead falling into the nice to

have column.

This has genuinely been a fun project for me…

In closing, I’m not presenting this combination

of technologies as a professional grade

arrangement. But, look at it this way.

Most of us have two smart devices, a phone

and a tablet, and if you shoot you probably

already have an inexpensive spotting scope or

Bushnell’s AR TRS-25 – An excellent red dot sight betrayed only by its bargain price. 2014

Copyright 2014, Twobirds Flying Publication, All Rights Reserved

binoculars – the gentlemen among us may even

own Leica or Swarovski glass. So, why not have

a little fun with it and do some

experimentation! Your cost to play is limited to

approximately $7 for software and $65 for the

S4 Gear Zoom SVS.

After you’ve exhausted your search for a brick

of .22LR, and you just don’t feel like pushing

$100 or $200 worth of copper jacketed lead

down range, grab your wife and kids head for

the outdoors and see if you can capture the

mating ritual of the Great American Yellow-

bellied Sapsucker.

-SP

For Additional Information Visit:

S4 Gear http://www.s4gear.com/pages/products/zoom-svs-digiscoping-mount.php

SECuRET http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dooblou.SECuRETSpyCam&hl=en

i Fun is a highly subjective concept; what is for me may not be fun for you.