Hooker spy cam

Now that all my equipments are obsolete, it's time to show off some history.

This is the first usable hooker spy cam for a reasonable price. Wireless isn't the real issue, but then the cam and transmitter is very small. The cam can be put into a standard cigarette box with ease.

At the same time, there are versions that disguise the cam into many things. But they are expensive, a pen for example, cost $1000.

The less expensive fake devices are mass produced, so you can actually identify the cam by looking at the fake device, the most popular being a mobile phone. They became cheap when video phones appear on the market. Hookers will be sensitive when a mobile phone is around, starting from the day of picture phones.

It will be very expensive when you need to disguise your cam into different things. The cigarette box is all I ever needed. To get multiple angles and closeups, I thought of bringing my own fake smoke detectors to motels. And also part of the lamp, a fake alarm clock, etc. So instead of buying a few spy cams, I buy one and try to put them into fake shells for different occasions.

The wireless spy cams still has it's uses when you need to beam videos continuously from some secret location. You just need to go near the cam to receive signal and store them in some memories. Of course you need a large power source such as an AC/DC adapter, or a car battery. This is what I tried. I use battery packs so the cam can run for hours. So I can find a motel first, setup the equipments, leaving them on, and then go out to hunt for good looking street walkers.

There are little constraints on the receiver side. In the beginning, I had a TV digitizer box connecting to a laptop via USB. The whole thing can run overnight, hidden in one of the drawers.

The first thing to overcome is the power source of the cam. I found the highest capacity 9V battery, which is 260 mA, at least double the capacity of standard ones. Every charge will last me for at least an hour, and probably a lot more. Standard 9V battery isn't that bad, but to be sure I have to throw them away after every use, even if they have half an hour of life left. And if the prostitute is late, I have to change to a fresh battery just to make sure. A rechargeable saves me a lot of money, and I'm sure that I have a "fresh" one every time. Capacity will decrease with time, but that's gradual.

With a 9V battery, the space in a cigarette is an issue. I tried to replace the large battery connector to save space, but discovered that it also duplicates as a large capacitor! I ruined the audio in the process. But then audio is never good, and some comes with no audio to bypass no-bug rules.

The mounting of the cam while disguising it is a big issue. I mount my cam in a real cigarette box with a tiny hole on it. Unlike hand held camcorders, the spy cam len is pinhole small, so a tiny hole will be sufficient, looking like a dot of dirt on the box, or even hiding completely within the characters on the box. Unfortunately, the smaller the hole, the more accurate is the need for alignment of the box and the len. The more problem for me is that I use a real box, so I need to change it often before it disintegrates, or invite suspicion.

I came up with making a cold mould. I pour the mould material into the box, then I dip the real cam in, with the len protected by tapes. When it dries, the mould become like a eraser and can be ported to any cig boxes. The rubber mould will hold the cam tightly in position. Making a precise hole in a new cig box becomes simple. More importantly, this technique can be used on any fake shells, like smoke detectors.

My number one hooker never suspect a thing. She's my favorite star. She is always afraid of being photographed or worse. Indeed she likes to lie horizontal as soon as she have the chance. She is pretty and many johns want to take souvenirs. But being a real cigarette box, lying flat on the table, she never thought it contained other things. Once I put it on the night stand, with the hole facing her face. That's one of the best vid I took.

I already thought of improvements. The newer lithium battery are smaller with higher capacity. With that I can add a switch, and afford the space to put some cut short cigarettes to cover the cam at the bottom. The lighter weight of the lithium will make the whole thing not more heavy than real cigarettes. The new gadgets cannot beat this yet, but their resolution are better. But lithium charger are more expensive.

At the receive side, once I brought the whole house. In addition to a TV digitizing box and a laptop, I brought a car battery station and an inverter. So I hide the whole thing inside the wardrobe so no hooker can find it if they check the house. The good thing is, the memory and power is unlimited. I just need to change the battery at the transmitter, feed a wire to it, or switch it on only when hookers are there.

Later I got a very cheap DV camcorder with analogue TV to DV input, for people to convert old VHS tapes. In long mode DV tapes will last well over an hour, and the battery will be good too. This is a great reduction than bringing a car battery and an inverter.

There cheap DV cams with a hard disk built in. The memory capacity is awesome. But I later I brought something better.

It was those personal Video players, like ipod with video. I brought it in the Far East for very cheap. This one is the rare ones that had a TV input, digitizing my spy cam output into hard disk. The whole thing is basically a laptop hard drive with a screen. It's palm size small, with memory like a hard disk, with integrated high capacity battery. It has excellent audio recording too, which can record pillow talk from across the room!

Sadly I lost it after losing my mind after seeing too much hookers there. One memorable pretty young girl was in the hard drive, being fucked by me. Another pretty girl I downloaded into my laptop. I viewed that and listened to that. But now the laptop is broken. Those vid were inside the laptop harddrive. I may or may not recover them. The laptop is too old now to be fixed.

I went back to the store in the hope of finding the last left over. But no. Those are bulk sales. The advertise on the newspaper when a shipment arrives, and then all will gone within days.

I had been waiting for improvements. Firstly, an analogy receive and then a digitizer and than a hard disk are just too clumsy. I saw one with reasonable price - with all the integrated functions. The palm sized receiver has a screen and a hard drive. In addition, it's 2.4GHz, instead of 1.2 GHz. The latter may or may not be legal. You do not need to turn 2.4GHz, and you have 4 channels to pick if you have 4 transmitters with different frequencies. But 2.4GHz is more susceptible to building absorptions.

With this gadget, I can see a hooker without a bag to put my receiver and video recorder inside. The prostitutes in the far east that I went has very small rooms. If I put my cigarette box on top of their CCTV monitor or table, the cam can record everything. No turning is a plus. Otherwise I had to do outcalls and tune the receiver before the hooker arrives. I also tried to tune and tape the knob before I went to see prostitutes. It's a bit of hit and miss.

The other thing I've been waiting for is higher resolution. As you can see from the screen shots, actually I do not need 640x480 (DVD size) digitizer because the CMOS len do not have that high resolution. High resolutions never came because I think they cannot squeeze the video in the channel bandwidth using cheap and small components.

Of course DVD resolution cams are easy, and CMOS output are naturally digital. The next logical step will be compressing the digital video and store it in memory cards directly. That's why wireless isn't the way to go anymore. And with all things so small, they can fit in anything.

The first mini camcorder are gum sized, with quarter DVD resolution. Now they are at least DVD sized for very cheap. Because people want HD, which isn't very much larger.

For the DVD resolutions, there are many fake devices for cheap. I see working pens, key chains. In the past, a very cautious hooker may check for wireless cam with a mini sweeper. But now they are not wireless at all, but complete recording devices. The only thing against them is that they are mass produced. Anybody will now suspect a spy pen or a spy key chain.

For the sake of old memories, this the one of the best pictures - under me is Tinkerbell.