go-pro? or other in car camera?
 

Anyone have a suggestion for a cost effective in car camera system?

There are a few competitors to GoPro. Watch techbargains.com, sometimes other cameras come up. I got this guy when it was on sale @ $99:
BuyDig.com - Oregon Scientific ATC 9K Full 1080P HD Water Resistant Action Camera w/ G Force Sensor

I thought it was pretty cool because it includes a G-Meter that overlays on the video and a remote. There is also an optional GPS module that adds position (google map overlay), speed, etc. I got that and an extra battery. Total price was $156 shipped, including the GPS kit, extra battery, and extra battery charger.

Video quality is ok, not as good as the new HeroHD models, but it was cheap and has cool features.

Here's my first "production" using my Contour GPS camera, Android Torque OBDII data (phone mounted on passenger side) and DashWare - this was my first time at Queensland's Lakeside Raceway in my MX5 MSM (aka SE in Australia) - it was a Queensland MX5 Car Club track day event.

The Video and GPS were captured via the Contour GPS camera.

RPMs, Throttle, Engine Load and Water Temperature were captured via Android's Torque application and Bluetooth interface to the car's OBDII port. These are the only useful settings available on my OBDII port, there is no boost information or oil pressure/temperature data

The bottom left instrument cluster and right hand side G-force meter were created by me to match the night-time colours and chrome trim of my car's instrument cluster (DashWare is a great tool for creating customised instrument clusters).

Synchronisation of the Torque data to the video works well at times and awful at others - I used the DashWare RPM gauge and car's tacho to try and get them a close as possible.

Unsurprisingly, the water temperature gauge doesn't move much.



The video looks great at 720p but on youtube, the dark blue gauges are too hard to read to I'll use cyan instead for future youtube videos.

I've got a few issues with my GoPro including that the angle is just too friggin wide sometimes. And the audio is lacking. And if it is in its case you cannot plug into it with an external mike or anything.

I have a GoPro. I got it when there was basically nothing else. I see a few more cameras now-a-days that are cheaper or price equivalent with more features. I doubt there is a significant advantage in the GoPro. Cameras are much cheaper today than a few years back (Thanks to the smartphone market!).

I also have a gopro, While the wide angle lens has its advantages. It makes in car videos look incredibly slow and dull to watch. imho.

Good to know, I thought I had read Emilio post somewhere that you can change the Field of View in the camera's settings.

The wife was getting ready to buy me the new HERO3 Black Edition for this HPDE season.

Guess I should tell her to hold off?

If you want super cheap then there is a thread in the group buy section from a few years back about using $20 spy cams off ebay. I don't know if anyone ever really went down that route, so you would be on your own.

I was dead set on getting a GoPro for track days, until the Race Data Acquisition thread, which brought up the Aim SmartyCam. It seemed to be the consensus for 'easiest plug-n-play' since it does all the data overlay rendering in real time, you just download the video when you are done. However you pay for that privilege, as it's $1,000. Do you have any other acquisition stuff?

Does anyone have one, and have it hooked up to their Megasquirt? Supposedly it supports Megasquirt for the data overlay. It would get a lot cheaper if you could run this + connect to megasquirt for your full DA system rather than spending another $2k on theirs.

Not to jack OPs thread, but I'm not interested in cheap, poor video quality cameras.

The Hero2 with the Wifi or the Hero3 are super slick. You can hook your phone up to it and control the camera from your smartphone. I'm getting an external mic when I buy my next GoPro, and it should be a fairly decent setup.

SPOT METERING.

The settings on my gopro are super-fucking-wide and more-super-fucking-wide. I can be close enough to another car to get reprimanded in HPDE and it still looks like you could fit 12 cars between us in the video. Colin is right, it makes for boring video. I wish I had bought something different sometimes.

There was a video posted online somewhere by a corvette guy using some little spy cameras that was great quality at about $80 apiece. It's been a year or so and I can't recall anything more. I'd check out color spy cameras.

We've got a solution in early beta that allows DA off the MegaSquirt + video sync + overlay with GPS and Accel. It's currently working with MS2.

We've considered developing it further, but one of the holdups is we're unsure if the market is willing to pay what we would need to allow us to scrape by on it. I'm thinking retail price would be in the $500-600 range.

Is this a viable product?

I have the GoPro but have never used anything else. I use it for more than just the car, though. It's been on a boat, taken snorkelling, kayaking, etc.

I saw this one in person yesterday. Very slick operations and great HD video quality. Using the 3M adhesive mounting bracket we stuck it to the bottom of a friends plane and did a flyby over the race track. Very cool footage!

http://www.ioncamera.com/e-shop/

I like my iPhone with Harry's lap timer, similar to contour GPS data, good quality video on an iPhone 4S or 5 or Android phone
http://www.gps-laptimer.de/Home.html

Me too!

I've read some reports of the phones getting super hot and going into thermal shutdown.

Have you had this experience? I've got an iPhone 5 and this is intriguing.

Are you using an external GPS plug-in? ALso what mount are you guys using.

I've heard that happens when you run off the battery. I keep mine plugged in

It is the opposite. The wide angle lens makes the video look faster.
Same trick is used in video games - when you want to make it look you're moving faster you set the camera with a wider view.
With a narrow lens that footage you watched would've looked even slower and I guess more dull to watch.

The new hero 3 black has 3 FOVs and it includes one called narrow, only for the 1080p or 720p. If you want to shoot in 4k then you have to use ultra wide.

Nothing personal, but I have a hard time believing that, About a year ago, I tried to use my pns camera in car, and the gopro elsewhere. it worked alright aside from getting it to start recording, but for the brief 5 minutes or so that it worked, things appeared much faster than the same mounting spot with the gopro.

I thought the Iphone made me look slow, then realized I was slow!

On a gopro hero 3 silver and black edition and hero 2 in 1080p you have 3 field of view options narrow, medium, wide. On the original gopro hero IIRC you can only go to the narrow view on smaller resolutions, I believe it's at 720p or 960p. The gopro hero 3 white edition will only do medium and wide at 1080p. I had one of those cheap ebay keychain cameras but went to the gopro 2, and now the 3. I wouldn't bother with anything else now there is some other choices but you end up kicking yourself in the ass later. I had the 808 keychain camera, while it was cool and cheap. The battery life was less than 40 minutes, awkward to mount, no way to preview video, video quality was actually pretty good.

Go with the hero 2, or 3 silver or black. It's so much easier to find accessories, and it has spot metering which is great for when the camera is mounted to the rollbar. That way the camera only adjusts exposure for the center of the image, which is the track and not the interior of the car. If you get the hero 3 or 2 with wifi bacpac, you can preview your placement with an iphone or android device. Much more convienent than mounting it, shooting a test video and then unmounting and hooking it up to the computer to see what it looks like. Battery life is about an hour and a half but you can buy the extended battery bacpac or purchase spare batteries.

Here's a clip with medium fov gopro hero 2 mounted to my rollbar diagonal.


Suction cup mount to the door, medium fov

Mounted in bumper grill I think this was also medium

Just for the hell of here is the cheap ebay 808 #11 camera attached to the top bar of the rollbar with masking tape

808 in the bumper

It would be for me.

Assuming it would integrate nicely with the new GoPro.

I plan on going MS when I swap to an NB engine, so a few hundred more for DA would be great.

We've used a GoPro Hero2 HD for two seasons now. In my opinion they produce quite good video, especially for the price.

It isn't the relative speed that bothers me, it is how distant the objects in the center of the field of view appear. If I put it in the bumper mouth the car appears very fast, but it is difficult to judge how far away the car in front is, or even what it is sometimes.

I can get a 30 min session in and re charge before the next one but keeping it plugged in would keep the phone from heating up

Just ordered the HD3 Silver, should be here tomorrow. Got it for $230. It's not at all clear which mounts it comes with. Thanks GoPro. Hopefully something useful, they are ridiculously expensive and I don't want to drop another $30 per.

It tells you right here what it comes with.
HERO3 Silver Edition | Wi-Fi Enabled | Professional Quality HD footage

I left my secret decoder ring on your mom's nightstand. What does "Assorted Mounts and Hardware" mean?

With the hero 2 or 3 silver or black you can set it on the narrow view.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1362097497

Looks like 2 quick release, 2 adhesive, and whatever that other thing is. In your defense, this picture is up for ~2 seconds before it switches.

Yup.

Midpack, if you want a suction cup or rollbar mount you'll have to buy them separately.

The motorsports pack on the hero2 had the suction cup. I had to buy the rollbar mount.

Mind if I Ask where you got such a good price?

I figured as much. Really, I'm just bitching because it doesn't come with the mounts I want. I mean wtf, this is 'murica. That and their description is incredibly vague. Looked around briefly for a motorsports pack and only saw them for the HD2. Either way I'm stocked to have a real track camera that I own. Borrowed an HD2 last year but it sucks when other people's things fall off your car.

I tried the 808 "spy camera" route from a couple years ago. They are fun, unreliable and not worth the hassle. If the battery dies or SD fills up it might save the video file, or it might delete it; or just corrupt it. The charge indicators are either meaningless or just don'r indicate at all; and if you over charge the batteries then the life dramatically decreases rendering them useless. Oh and the cameras point in different directions between different fobs so you're guaranteed to not record what it's aimed at.

Bought it from an Ebay seller, it was posted on Slickdeals earlier this week.

That always happens when Collin is driving that tired 1.6. haha

Dude! It is tired... help me find a vvt engine :loser:

Hey, those of you using Harry's Lap Timer, quick question.

How much space used to store a typical 20 minute session with video? This is making me wish I had a 32/64 iPhone 5 vs a 16.

I just use my phone.

What I'm asking is, if you go out for a 20 minute session using Harry's Lap Timer, how big is the file. 2GB? 5GB? 10GB?

If I hadn't cheaped out on memory on my phone, it wouldn't be an issue.

I figure the ram mount and the $20 for the software is a cheap test before I have the wife buy me the the HERO Black Edition.

~8GB @ 1080 for a 30 minute drive I think, I use 720 though because I am not making a film.

Are you plugging it in, or just going off the battery?

Hallett we only do 20 minute sessions, so 720p would be good. ANd that's a small enough file size I could come in after each session and download the file to a laptop or tablet.

I get about 4 hours of time on 16gb sd card with a go-pro set to 720 (I think 720).

It lasts about that long (3-3.5 hours) if I am careful not to leave it running after a session.

I have a little USB plug in my car and I plug it in between session if I forget to charge it overnight.

If you have a decent little point and shoot camera that does video - this is what I use...


Last month in my ES Miata. Mount is on the seatbelt tower brace.


on a road course in my old 240sx. Mount is on harness bar.



IO Port Racing Supplies: Camera Mount for medium to large cameras, I/O Port
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1362179334


I use a canon powershot a560 with a 32gb card with lithium batteries. I only use this camera because it's what I had. I didn't buy it specifically for this use. The card will hold 5 hours of video, but the batteries last about 2 hours or so. The mount is very stable and it doesn't vibrate the camera at all as you can see.

Here is a video taken with an iPhone 4 the 5 should have much better quality
http://youtu.be/2FEkpMgOqcc

i have an original gopro hd here with teh suction cup mount and it's great. if you dont choose a normal field of view the video looks like crap with lots of fish eye. just choose the right FOV and it looks fantastic, been using mine for years now.

Ive also tried other cameras, i have a countour plus and its nice, but i like the go pro better it always seems the countour goes dead in oen session and the rotatable lens is always off center a bit. the easiest thing with the go pro is to put it in one touch mode where when you turn it on it goes directly to video recording and automatically starts. turn it on on teh grid and you are off with nothing else needed.

this video is from a drift hd ghost, data is overlaid from my aim solo timer and dash ware.



as you can see the video is on the wrong orientation, i placed the camera the only way it woudl fit in the small back window and ended up with this. not nearly as easy to use as the original go pro.

this is my gopro, set on 1080p with normal field of view, i forget the setting now. i just fiddeled with it in the house when i first got it until the video looked right and have never changed it.



this video is from my countour, you can tell right away the gopro has better color and as i said before, the lens always seems off a bit though it is adjustable for angle, i just find it hard to use. Battery life is also not good, one session if you sit on grid long and its dead



also on an iphone 4s harrys was hit and miss on recording consistent lap times and locked up a lot for me when recording video. trackmaster on android did the same thing for me.

Duh, I just bought one to document all my car mods... I don't know why I didn't think of that! Thanks.

I use Harry's (iphone 4 no upgraded to the 5 going forward) with a 5ghz puck but never trust the video function. I use a hero 2 for video and then overlay the Harry's data onto the gopro video.


I rendered this on a new iphone5 - import the video (.mov) into the phone via iphoto, select the lap/session corresponding to the video in the lap list and match it with the video. Sync up the end of the lap/session with the right spot on the video and press the overlay button. The iphone5 did this video in about 3 minutes which is pretty close to real time. They are getting pretty bad ass for the cost.

This is about the best you are going to do without dropping a grand on a proper video/data system. If you don't have that coin, Harry's is the best $15 you can spend. :party:

Setting the GoPro field of vision to the medium setting makes a world of difference.

Hero3, Naked frame, 1080/60fps, Medium field, spot mode on. Youtube downconverts to 1080/30.

spot mode is key on the go pro, without it you end up with a nicely lit interior and you cant see the track outside the car.

d3100

Also turn on protune on the GoPro

For only $89.61 each when QTY 50+ purchased - Monoprice MHD Action Camera


Super cheap cost effective solution. It has GoProHD quality at a fraction of the price. I'm on the development team, so i have been able to use these a few times for events and such. They will be released later this month, so check them out. They are meant for the entry level user and they are super easy to use. Just a quick Start/Stop switch. they record at 1080p/30 in MOV format. these will also work with any existing traditional camera mounts, so you aren't stuck with having to use a proprietary mount like the go-pros.


Auto-x Cam on helmet


Night footage at local kart track

720x480 @30FPS, microSD 8GB (upgradable to 16GB) for $17.99

I heard about it on one of the NASA forum threads about Road Atlanta a year back. The guy taped one to the mirror and the other one to the license tag.



GearXS Mini DV MD80 DVR Video Camera w 8GB Memory The World's Smallest Camera | eBay

that spit screen; front/rear camera would sure be great in traffic. Does it take any special software? or, is it included in the kit?

I just mounted these cameras for test purposes. Some of them are out of focus, or I accidentally left it on auto focus.

canon 5d mark iii (forgot which lens lol)


sony nex-5n with 18-55mm lens


gopro hero2 mounted with suction cup to the hardtop glass

Unless you have a professional post-production software suite, the only thing protune seems to do is make everything a little blurrier. If you're just posting the videos straight to Youtube, leave it off.

http://www.biglots.com/p/c/cameras-g...11&storeId=564

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1363914056

$39.99