You really should get a camera - I've got a cheapo Crosstour 4K mounted permanently on the front of my jawguard. I hope someone will prosecute, after wresting the SD card from my cold dead hand...
Agreed.
Serious research is underway. Sticking point(s) for my kind of use that for most people would be non-issues are battery life and recording time. I need minimum half a long day on a battery, so 6 hours, and ideally a card that lasts at least a day. I haven't worked out how many Gb that is yet!
I wondered about that - but surely as it's a collision with the ground, for responsible stats collection they should be? It must happen a heck of a lot, just one unexpected bump and wham! Head and shoulders knees but probably not toes. From what I've seen it's often shoulder first, then head.
My friend and I had a badger suddenly run out in front of us too, but unfortunately for Mr Badger, we were in a VW Golf at the time and MrB didnt fair so well.
Of the actual battery - the seller, the importer, whoever else. They are dangerous things if they go wrong.
Those battery cells are difficult to avoid, many laptop battery packs contain those and similar cells. Mad raging lithium-ion battery fires are pretty rare, but of course horrifying and make sensational headlines - my ebike battery hasn't burst into flames yet, but when it does and if I survive, I'll buy a safer design. This outfit's blurb sounds reassuring:
At one stage I considered connecting a webcam to an android phone vio OTP and a USB power pack - many phones do support up to 1TB SD cards now, but waterproofing was tricky and adding mounts etc. were at odds against my laziness. For low light conditions, some of the newer phones are much better than GoPros - you'll have to make sure that the waterproof GoPro case remains waterproof, after you cut an aperture for USB power. They're great cameras with image stabilisation, but I wanted a camera at a cheap and worry free crash-disposable price capable of capturing numberplates, at the very least during the day. At night, it's pretty useless for capturing numberplates, even when exposure is ramped up. And at 4k, that doesn't improve much (I usually stick with 1080p, otherwise I'd have to keep stopping to swap memory cards - 64mb limit) because it looks upscaled rather than native 4K, and it doesn't have IS so I shoot at 60fps for clearer exports of video stills. The batteries are cheap, you get two and they last a couple of hours each at 1080p. Cheap standalone chargers and extra batteries are available, with USB charge input, or were at the time. It'll do until some phone/action camera camera becomes available at a reasonable price, capable of all that you've mentioned out of the box. I suspect I'll be waiting a long time... For much longer journeys than I currently make, I could cut a hole out of the waterproof case for USB power input, but then there's the 64GB SD card limit, which I'd have to stop to swap anyway, so I may as well keep the case fully waterproof and swap batteries at the same time, for now. The Crosstour 4k does have a webcam fuction, so it's possible that I could connect it via USB>OTP to an android phone, for both power and video storage, with the phone connected to USB power pack - but I believe that resolution is then limited to 720P (could be a USB bandwidth limitation, unsure, haven't tried USB2). Mounting it to the helmet jawguard reduces many a jitter. Of course another possibility is the Crosstour 4k as a webcam connected to Raspberry Pi containing a huge SSD.
Which Crosstour model are you on? Seem to be a plethora of variants, and reviews ranging from CT8000 pile of **** to CT9000 best thing since sliced bread!
CT9000, and it's NOT the best thing since the invention of the wheel either! If you look at footage on Youtube shot using the CT9000, it's nearly all sunny footage and quite clear, despite Yotube's bloody awful low bitrate and compression. On murky days it's merely ok, number plates are visible. There's bound to be something better for the price by now? I've had it about 20 months. It's dynamic range is pants.
I might treat myself to something quite good looking forward, and something rather cheaper as tail gunner.
Yep, a rear gunner is a great idea - there are aluminium GoPro-style mounts which cheapo cameras also use, which will attach to pretty much anything. The GoPro 7 Hero Black looks very good indeed. Stinks in low light, but they all currently do. My 1800LM headlight does improve night footage somewhat, but only when it's pointed directly at number plates and I'm looking in the same direction. I should really mount a 1800LM light to my helmet, although it's illegal I've seen cyclists doing that. Or add more lights to the handlebar pointed in different directions.
Has it been removed? Maybe it's only looks removed because of the device you're using? Google are sneaky like that...
It was simply because I wanted a torch with decent life and brightness and acceptably small and light. Eventually got one with 21700 and USB-C rechargeable (for convenience). And a claimed 2200 lumens.Those battery cells are difficult to avoid, many laptop battery packs contain those and similar cells. Mad raging lithium-ion battery fires are pretty rare, but of course horrifying and make sensational headlines - my ebike battery hasn't burst into flames yet, but when it does and if I survive, I'll buy a safer design. This outfit's blurb sounds reassuring:
...but I'm no expert on ebike batteries...
Huge expensive graphics card and Adobe Premiere for about £20 a month will sort that out, which is why I usually stick to 1080P for action camera stuff.
A lot of the standalones I considered were certainly very bright, but it's one more damned thing to remember to charge before I go for a ride - especially if it's work related: two phones, a tablet or laptop, action camera, USB power pack, GPS light, rear blinky, torches, DSLR, flash... it's freaking endless and I always forget something, so I've soldered a 1800LM headlight to the battery via an inline blade fuse. And I might soon add another to improve night footage quality - just the one is very bright already and the minimum I'd now expect of a bike headlight. Drivers assume I'm an approaching motorbike and wait, give way and I feel a heck of a lot safer. It's also made me more visible during the day, which I'm very pleased about.
My torch wasn't for cycling! But for general purpose use such as walking and trying to find where the cat has gone.
