Here is the camera mounted to a bulkhead that fits in the Prelude coupler area above the motor thrust bulkhead and below the electronics module.
The camera has a 1/4"-20 tripod mount on the bottom, so I simply ran a bolt through the plywood bulkhead to hold the camera in place. Two blocks of wood were epoxied beside the camera to keep in from turning as well.
Here you can see the camera dropped into the body tube. I didn't have enough room to run nuts down the threaded rods to retain the camera bulkhead, so I'm retaining it with screws through the body tube and into the plywood.
Shortly after installing the camera in the rocket for the first time, I tried starting the camera to see how the hole alignment through the body tube was. The camera wouldn't turn on... So I removed the camera to assess the problem. If I held the power button down, the camera stayed on, but a second or two after I released the power button, the camera would turn off. I fiddled with it for some time, and decided to take the camera apart knowing very well these little guys weren't designed to come apart and go back together again, and that I may well ruin the camera in the process. But it was useless as it was. After getting the camera apart, what I found was the battery terminals simply didn't have enough spring to them, and were losing contact. So I decided to solder a pair of power leads off the battery terminals and use an external battery pack. You can see the batteries in the pictures above. When I go to set up for a launch, I'll use a pair of high capacity AA batteries and hot glue the batteries to the plywood bulkhead. I did manage to get the camera reassembled in reasonable shape and with little damage.
I decided I wanted the camera to look down, rather than just out the side. That means a mirror and shroud on the outside of the body tube. I seriously considered making a nice composite shroud that could be epoxied or screwed to the body tube. But I decided to take the easy route and just cut a small block of wood, glue the mirror to it, then glue the block to the body tube. But I ran into some problems, the shroud was going to be right at the joint between the upper and lower body tubes. So I ended up epoxying the lower part of the shroud to the lower body tube, and running a screw through the shroud into the upper body tube and coupler.
Here are a couple of packages of small mirrors I picked up at Hobby Lobby. I used a 1" square mirror and it seems just about the right size for this application. The mirrors came in a package of 6 for 99 cents, that's certainly cheap enough.
Here you can see an initial mounting of the shroud and mirror on the lower body tube. The mirror is reflecting the hole in the body tube.
I wasn't sure what angle I wanted on the shroud, 45 degrees would give a perfect look straight down, but that might have too much of the body tube in the image. So I started out at about 55 degrees, after checking a short test video, that angle proved too much and you couldn't see the body tube at all. So I brought the angle closer to 45 degrees, likely about 48 or 49 degrees but I honestly didn't measure it. I just tested it with a short video again.
This is a capture from one of my test videos. I like the angle, but as you can see there is a portion of the mirror that's not catching the lens. So I needed to reposition the shroud location. These early tests used hot glue to tack the shroud into position, that way I could pull it off, clean off the glue and reattach it again.
Here is another screen capture with the shroud repositioned. Now the mirror captures the full frame of the image. I also like the amount of rocket visible in the frame.
Another thing I had to consider when making the shroud was my launch rail. This rocket will launch off the true launch rail with no launch lugs or buttons. So I needed to position the shroud over a fin. I also didn't think a triangular taper from top to the bottom of the shroud would be a good idea, as it may wedge into a rail on the launch tower.
Here you can see the shroud mounted to the rocket. It's not very high tech or pretty, but should be functional. The only thing I have left to do is drill a small hole through the body tube to turn on the camera.
I'll post the results of the first flight here after the results are in.