Load line camera

Function is much more important than beauty!

Doing an HVAC job for a customer last week, I realized he didn't know about my camera system, so I sent him this picture in the middle of the job, and he put two and two together. It saved him running back and forth from the units to the parapet to signal me. This is about as much fun as when I text someone an aerial pic of their jobsite, while still circling overhead! Keep in mind, this is a cell phone pic of a screen, the actual image as I see it is much better.

My last mod to the system was replacing the lead acid batteries with good quality lithium ones, (lighter, more capacity, more everything) two to more efficiently fill the space available, wired in parallel. NOT the cheapest I could find, ones with proper BMS's (battery management systems). Having 3 electric bikes and 1 electric motorcycles, this is something I have never cheaped out on, not the place. I think I have less than $2500.00 in it all, somewhere between that and $2000.00, and worth every penny. I had a good contractor/customer ask me on a job last week "OK if we set this sheeted gable in front of you, it has hangar for the next batch of trusses," knowing I have the camera, taking advantage of it. I'm almost disappointed now when I pull up to a job that can't benefit from use of the camera.

A buddy in AZ also in the biz, got tired of me sending him before and after pictures showing how dramatically my camera improves my situational awareness, and my temperment. So I made up two complete systems for him and his employee. Like me they do mostly truss setting/working with carpenters, and also like me, they don't have X ray vision . I will post the cost, when all the bills come in, but about everything has, surprise, gone up since I did mine. This is NOT a pitch to sell them, just a sharing of info. I have easier ways to make a living, this was a favor for a friend. A little beer money would be OK though.

Man, I just read through this whole thread and my first thought was, "If they had had these in the '80's, I might not have sworn off boom truck work."

It's a game changer for me, not so much for the 11K trash compactor I lifted off a trailer today, or the compressor I put up on a roof, but for many/most of my truss jobs where I'm working blind or nearly so, with no signals. I still use my eyeballs and my radius indicator and primitive geometry to figure where the next truss goes, but being able to SEE how I guessed (I can eyeball down the load line once the truss is on the plate, and see if the hook is short, past or dead nuts over the trus, and then fine tune the next one even better. There is a learning curve involved, having the LMI and the HD 10" monitor close together helps a lot.

I finally got the right battery combo, a single plain old 14 AH lead acid, sealed battery. Cheap, about 40 bucks. After first trying dual lithium-ion batteries of 7 AH ea ($120.00 for both) (I would have got a single larger one, but they didn't have one that fit my space, thus the dual) that I was assured would work fine wired in parallel, as a single 12 VDC cell. These batteries offer a lot of advantages, but in this case, for whatever reason, the built in battery management systems (BMS's) seemed to be feuding with each other, shutting themselves down when one got slightly out of sync with the other. High summer temps may have also triggered their shutdowns, or some combo of both. The good news is, almost all of my developmental problems ended up being those hi tech batteries, not the camera or wireless transmitter and receiver. My frequent HVAC and contractor customers are spoiled now, making the system's reliability even more critical. New customers, that don't know I have the camera, are just stunned by how well I operate...., I usually fess up at the end of the job and give the camera some credit, but not always. This job on a modest little home ( only 10' ceilings, in the basement) yesterday, setting the little scissor trusses, a sheeted gable first so I was blind the rest of the set, no problem, no signal person or hollaring back and forth either.