The Rock - Cognisys Scout Owner's Manual

4.2 The Rock

Scout equipment uses a frequency 2.4GHz. What does that mean? It's pretty fast. It's the
same frequency as some Wifi equipment. Fast is usually good. After all you want the sensors,
camera box, and especially the flash(es) to respond as soon as possible. The downside of using
this frequency is that it doesn't do well going through things. A few trees? No problem.
Vegetation? Not going to stop it. A boulder the size of a small house? Houston: We have a
problem.
Why, you might ask, would someone have their sensors on one side of a boulder, and the
camera on the other? Usually you want to take a picture of a critter pretty close to where the
sensor is since that is the point they were detected. You would be correct! But for this
situation we're shooting video. In this case, the sensor is vertically down 10 meters and there is
a natural path coming up and around the boulder. Think of the cinematography. The sensor
detects the critter, the camera starts recording, and then, as if out of nowhere, this magnificent
critter walks up a path, around a corner, and into the field of view. Nice!
But all of that wonderful footage isn't going to happen if the sensor can never get the signal to
the camera box to start recording. It's just a nice dreamy video that will never be. That's where
your shiny new Scout Repeater comes into play.
Here's a graphic showing the problem:
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