So I tried smokeless range and PBS. I picked these two out of a bunch of others for a few reasons. Lasershot was pricey as heck and you had to buy their laptop.. ouch. Not that into it yet. some other aps looked a bit clunky. Imarksman looked promising but recent years showed severely downgraded product videos making me wonder if they got sued or what. (25 games turned to 12 down to 5) are they about to disappear? A few others were unremarkable. So I started with PBS and bought their camera after trying it out with my web cam. their cam was better but looking into it, its just a fast HD camera with a NIR pass filter or vis cut. Any red filter will do most of this. But I do like their zoom and aperture though its still a bit pricey when you can buy the parts off of ebay. I then wanted to do smokeless and tried their trial period using the PBS camera. I liked the fact they had a trial and I was sold on how clean their software ran on my OK game computer compared to PBS which was a bit stuttery. However Smokeless wont sell their software without their camera claiming some BS about its proprietary and custom and blah blah. Yea anyone with a technical background who cracks open their camera will see there is little special about it. I was annoyed at having to buy an inferior product (camera) to access the software (and I'm still using the PBS camera as its just better) so I decided to at least upgrade their mediocre fixed distance camera to something that sucks less. Now if I travel with it say to a friends house and want to setup there ill probably take the smokeless so i don't risk loosing/damaging the better camera.
They took a basic HD webcam.
Marked up the price a bit for their effort and sold it. Then they sold another having a short and long throw camera. It was such BS. PBS doesn't require you buy their camera but theirs is superior if for nothing else as it has zoom and aperture to adjust to brightness. So i wanted to at least upgrade the camera from smokeless to something almost on par with what you get from PBS. First carefully cut the epoxy off of the back of the lens that comes with smokeless camera. then buy a 2.8-12mm or so variable focus(vari-focus/ focal) lens, M12 thread (or get an adapter for CS mount to M12), or even one with a manual or auto iris with NO IR filter, and glue the filter onto that lens assembly with,... you guessed it, a wee dab of liquid electrical tape ( it slices, it dices it glues everything in a reversible way and it eats light, great for filter placement).
Now for 12-30 dollars you have a camera that is short or long throw and sucks a little less! but really if you want both smokeless and PBS you need to buy smokeless's camera first since they wont sell software without their overpriced camera. Just dont buy two of them, spend 12-30 and updgrade the camera to be on par with the PBS camera.
When reassembling the camera use just a general native camera software built into windows to view the output as you adjust the proper seating depth into the M12 socket. Then set your set screw and close the body up.
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