s surveyors we always look forward to the next challenge and one of our current projects on the Margaret River Perimeter Road certainly did deliver a unique one.
While attending site to perform our regular drone capture we started discussing possible ways of capturing imagery of the pile rock socket. Achieving high quality imagery from a pitch dark, wet environment at around 17m below ground level got our team thinking. Sure there are dedicated inspection cameras out there ranging from super cheap on eBay or Amazon to the “How much is that!” level of response.
Due to the tight time frame a solution had to be found which would meet all the criteria immediately with little or no learning curve. Our brief was to keep it as simple as possible, maintain the ability to angle the camera, view the imagery remotely from the surface and allow anyone to use the device.
The idea was quickly drawn up to encompass a GoPro camera mounted alongside a pair Lume Cube high intensity LED lights. This ensured all devices were waterproof and ready for the harsh environment while the camera was capable of transmitting live imagery to the surface to avoid any blind capture. A quick trip down to Bunnings and the mounting rig was constructed from simple irrigation pipe. This allowed a great deal of the portability as individual lengths were then screwed together as the rig was lowered down the 17m pile for the inspection process.
All in all it was a great challenge and contributed to some very impressive footage for the project team.
