The remote video camera equipment we have is not a cheap toy, but rather a professional bit of gear used by motorcycle racers, mountain climbers, kayakers, and extreme action sportspeople of many disciplines. Its main bit is a Sony 540 line video head housed in a solid alloy tube that is totally sealed. For the actual recording of images, a miniDV Handycam is used. This needs to be housed inside a waterproof box along with an amazing amount of cabling that connect the various components, which includes a set of batteries for the video head. To turn the Handycam on or off, a separate controller is used. The controller uses what’s called the LANC port that was standard on some of the older video models, mostly in the Sony range. The newer Hard Disk video recorders have done away with these extras so I had to search the internet for a suitable device, eventually finding several on EBay. They fetch a high price even though second hand because other people also want them for remote recording. Nevertheless, over time while on the East Coast recovering from appendix surgery, I managed to obtain two; one as a spare. The actual LANC controller is just a small handheld gizmo with a single red button dead center and a LED light that either glows or blinks red and/or green to indicate one of several things: On, record, low power, out of tape, and when rapidly blinking, switching off. While it looks a simple device from the outside, inside there are loads of transistors and semiconductors, so when I waterproofed it as instructed by the supplier, I used heaps of silicon to cover the red button and around where the LED pokes out.