Got the camera yesterday. Did a preliminary test just twisting wires together and it fired up and looked "okay" in my office. Obviously day time and lots of reflected heat off the glass everywhere.
Got home and broke out the soldering iron and went to town making a new harness to plug in 12v and a composite cable, then drove down to the beach. WOW. From the videos I've seen, I knew not to expect high resolution, but I they videos also looked fairly grainy. I was much more impressed getting it outside and using it in an open dark area. The 1,000ft "range" that I saw online is underrated. While you may not see high detail, at long distances, I was parked above the beach in Oceanside California roughly six blocks south of the Oceanside pier, and while in the dark you could only make out the lights on the pier, you couldn't see structures. From my camera, I was able to make out Ruby's at the end of the pier. That's at a distance of almost 3,000ft.
Another surprise was looking down at the ocean. I was able to make out the waves, which I would *think there's not enough temperature difference to make out details in the water. Apparently waves must make some thermal energy when they crash, because I was able to make out breaking waves.
My initial thought was that the camera wouldn't have enough detail to warrant wanting to move it around like a spotlight, but after playing around for 15 minutes, I think I need to make a quick disconnect mount to add it to my A pillar when parked or moving slow. That way I could move it around like a police spotlight.
The video I took is probably too big to upload directly here, (183Mb), so I've shared it via public link from my WorkPlace account. Try not to refresh the page, as you might get an error after refresh that you need to login to view the video, even though I have public access with no passwords on this specific file.
https://us.workplace.datto.com/filelink/44e9b-3851144d-e9847bb360-2
What you see in the video is still not even how good it looks in person. Trying to get my iphone to focus properly in the dark on the small screen was a bit difficult. Let's just say I'm super excited to move this project forward!!!!