Total Motorcycle Community Forums

After watching a video in another thread of an accident caught on a helmet cam, I was thinking it would be great if there was an inexpensive camera setup for the bike.

Anyone run into this? There is that helmet cam but wow its a pricey setup. You can buy cheap video recorders, Im thinking something that could discretely be mounted to the bike that would digitally record constantly a 10 minute feed, that could be wired into the 12-volt system on the bike.

I've thought about this for a while in the cage, having been struck (twice) in my lifetime by idiots not looking where they are going (that goodness for witnesses!).

Hmm.

Camcorder, roll of duct tape, helmet.

Done!

Red Green would be proud

If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy

Actually I was thinking more like a miniature camera (like a pin, button, or pen cam) hooked up to a small digital recorder. Maybe something with an SD storage slot, but small enough to be mounted under the seat compartment or somewhere else discrete.

Cameras are easy enough to find but I dont know of a digital recorder that just has a memory slot (or USB port) with an input for an external camera, that will record a certain length of time and automatically record over anything beyond that time limit.

Interesting idea. I googled portable dvr and got some possibilites:


http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... pfp=BROWSE

http://www.cornerstonesecurityservices. ... order.html

http://www.spygadgets.com/digital-video ... order.html

http://www.eyespyvideo.com/videorecorde ... mdvr-3.htm

That last one doesnt seem bad. I found some small bullet and pin cameras on a spycam site for about $90, so its looking at $400+shipping for a basic setup.

Maybe the setup Im thinking of isnt feasible...a camera mounted to the front of the bike, a recorder in a strong box (no LCD screens or anything) that just records automatically when power is supplied to it (wired to a 12 volt lead on the bike hot when ignition is on).

A camera inside the helmet (pin camera or similar) and one of the DVRs in a jacket pocket would be an easy setup I think. Maybe there's a wireless pin camera so you can put a wireless receiver into the DVR without having to plug your gear together.

Just mindwandering

A MiniDV camera can only record for an hour before you need to go swapping-out tapes and plus it's not a good idea to re-record on MiniDV tapes over and over again. You don't want to use a new tape everytime either. So, some sort of digital device that records directly to a harddrive would be awesome. Then, you could get hours of recording all at once. No need to change tapes. If you do a 3 hour ride, you'll have a 3 hour video, non-stop.

But do they make such devices yet? It's inevitable that they will come to market eventually. But are they available now?

A quick search on Google and ...

Why yes they do!

In fact, a company named Archos seems to make some very good ones at:
www.archos.com

So, I'm thinking a setup like this might be sweet as hell:
Archos AV 500 30GB Pocket Digital Video Recorder
Archos AV 500 Digital MiniCam
then to protect the camera, go to www.HelmetCamera.com and get:
A1- XTREME ALUMINUM HELMET MOUNT

Yes, it would be more expensive than a camera-mount or a helmet-camera attached to a MiniDV camcorder. But, for the extra $200-$300 I think the longer record-time and convenience might be worth it.

According to the Archos manual, the highest-quality it can record at is 2500Kbps. On a 30GB unit, that means approximately 28 hours of recording time!

A DVD-R camcorder might be a good alternative to MiniDV. Then you could use DVD-RWs over and over, instead of tape, with no dropouts. Sony has about 5 models of DVD-R camcorders. I just need to research record-times on DVDs ...

Ah, here we go:
• Recording Media: 8cm DVD (DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW)
• Recording and Playback Times: HQ: 20 min., SP: 30 min., LP 60 min.

Hm. Interesting alternative to MiniDV indeed. Although I don't know what the image quality would be like in LP mode.

Let's do the math and find out...

A 8cm DVD is 1.4GB.

1.4GB divided by 60 Minutes = 3.111Mbps
1.4GB divided by 30 Minutes = 6.222Mbps

Hm... Realistically, you wouldn't want to go down to 60 minutes then because at a rate of 3.111Mbps, especially on fast-moving motorcycle footage, the images would look like poop.

So, realistically, you only get 30 minutes of quality-record-time or 60 minutes of crapola-record-time.

I bought a gas cap camera mount but it doesn't work with my handle bars so I have it in ebay now. Here's the link if anyone is interested.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... AMESE%3AIT