New Toy: Helmet Camera
After my experiments last year with strapping my compact digital camera to my handlebars to film what I see when I’m out and about, I finally took the plunge & bought a helmet camera a couple of weeks ago. Really I wanted this for three reasons:
- Insurance. What?! Well, if anything happens, I want a record of who ignored the traffic signals etc.
- To recallibrate my own sense of the road. I can review film of anything ‘dangerous’ and ask myself if it was really as bad as I’d thought, or was there anything I could have done to avoid the situation in the first place.
- Because I see too many people driving while on the phone, and it bugs the hell out of me. At least if I can post their faces & number plates on Youtube, I’d have done something to vent my rage at this stoopidity.
- Because I live in a beautiful part of the world, and want to share. It’s not all road rage and muppets - the vast majority of road users are wonderful people (especially compared with London drivers
), and the scenery’s just great here. It’d be a shame not to record it!
Here’s my first edited & put together film, which is taken from my ride this morning. This clip falls into the second category, above:
Some technical details . . .
- The camera’s an Oregon Scientific ACT2000. VGA resolution at up to 30 fps, writing to a 2GB SD card. I’ve taken the frame rate down to 15 fps, giving me 90 minutes of recording time.
- The viewing angle of this camera is approximately 30º, it weighs just shy of 200g (7 oz ), and is water resistant to 3m. I’m fairly sure it’s going to come to the pool with me at a later date. The weight’s OK, but it means you have to wear your helmet a little tight. Maybe top-mounting it, or adding a counter-weight will help this.
- The film’s put together by cropping to the relevant sections using Quicktime Pro (’cos it’s QUICK). The graphics are then overlaid with Keynote, and iMovie HD then adds the soundtrack (which is just one of the Garage Band sample tracks in this case), before final export as a QuickTime .mov movie.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 03/26/2008
- Time: 16:10:03
- Total Time: 00:53:00.00
- Distance: 15.5 miles
- Average Speed: 17.55 mph
Neither looked particularly serious from this vantage point either, Karl.
But then again, I’ve been on the roads for a long, long time and am quite comfortable in traffic.
You have such tiny cars!
I need to get me one of those cameras!
Bill - ’s what I thought - I don’t think I even braked for either car. At the moment, I’m still a bit twitchy after my last fall [while not stationary], and I think I might be a bit overly-sensitive to traffic & my personal space on the road. Hence the need to recallibrate.
Kim - It’s a compensation thing, making the driver and the country as a whole look bigger. We actually used to have a tiny Ford Ka like the one that pulled across me at the first roundabout. It was great fun, like driving a go-kart with a lid, though I also felt a lot like Noddy!
Brad - I meant to post a link to their site:
Action Cam in the USA is only $129, including a 2GB card
In the UK the official price for the Action Cam is £100 + the £25 for the card. Hey! that’s almost a 1:1 $:£ rate. So much for globalisation.
I got myAction Cam from Aces Electronics for £79, and my SD card from Amazon for £10. That’s still a pretty crumby $:£ rate though
Oh my gosh, my kids love Noddy. Can’t stand the little guy myself. It’s kind of like Ballamory. We’ve never actually seen it on TV, yet my kids know every… single… word… *pulls hair* The glory of the Internet.
My only experience with the Ka was this commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Guufs3mdgg