$50 in car camera solution?

[Keith Carter]

Tiger Direct has the Tony Hawk Helmet Cam for $49 after rebates. The framerate is 15 fps, but it's self contained, solid state and supposedly records up to 30 minutes (but I've read different articles stating from a few minutes to 40 minutes of recording). It comes with a 32 meg card, but I haven' been able to find out if it is expandable to larger SD cards.

There are some sample videos on this site The review is negative about the camera, but for our purposes, it may work out well... For $50, can we really go wrong?

[Keith Carter]

I guess I'll find out... I just ordered one.

[Garey Guzman]

I googled this and saw on one website that it automatically stops recording after 15 minutes. It will only record up to 15 minutes clips until your memory card is full. I also read that it takes SD cards so the 1 GB card in my PDA would work.

I didn't see how big the files were - I'm wondering how big a 15 minute clip is at that resolution. I guess I'll wait for your review.

[Tom Duncan]

Keith, I think you will find the results from the camera acceptable for a while, but I bet the frame rate will get you. The chopiness is distracting.

I do think the reviewer at Big Fat Geek was expecting way to much for his $89. I thought the video was quite acceptible for what it is, except for the frame rate.

When you install it I would suggest you tape a piece of foam over the microphone area. The wind noise will just blow out the audio. I found the external microphone placement for my rig was very important to the impact of the video. I moved it over the gearbox to get it closer to the exhaust and all I heard was the clattering of gears, which did nothing to communicate the experience of being in the car. When the microphone was farther forward I couldn't hear the sound of the engine working so the video felt dis-connected from reality. After a few more tries I settled on a position in the engine compartment, on the exhaust side. It gave a close to real sensation. Does this camera have an external microphone input? I doubt it. You could maybe take it apart and hardwire in an input jack, then get a powered microphone from Radio Shack.

Post a video when you get one. You can do it free at Video.Google.com.

I think the unit is worth a try. Cheap solutions are better than no solutions.

Tom Duncan

[Keith Carter]

That's what I figure. Our budget isn't going to allow a real in-car solution for this year so $50 to get some kind of footage would be good. Thanks for the tip on the foam over the mic, I'll be sure to try it. It's usually $100 and the $50 rebate is over on Tuesday so I figured I'd get it now and see if it works. If it doesn't work well at all then I can dump it on eBay for $30 and not lose out too much on the deal. Now it''ll only be a couple more months until I can actually test it!

[Keith Carter]

I just got it today. It's a decent little camera. Picture quality is actually better than I had expected, but as we had speculated it will only record in 15 minute increments. With the included 32 meg SD card, it will only record 5 minutes, but I had a 256 card laying around. It records a 15 minute segment and shuts off. Then you can start recording another segment at the click of the button on top.

So it looks like it will work as an intro to in-car footage. For $50 ($50 rebate is over tomorrow the 28th), it's well worth it considering there are other systems that are well above $500. I'll need to set some sort of timer or have my crew remind me after the 15 minute mark to hit the button in the car when I get a chance to record another segment for races longer than 15 minutes. Another cool thing is that it is self contained (no wires going anywhere) so we could actually mount this thing on suspension parts, wings, etc... for a different perspective.

[carnut169]

Watch out for Tiger Direct. I've read MANY times about people who never received the rebates they were supposed to.

[Keith Carter]

Yes, I've run into a lot of the scam like rebate issues with different vendors. Tiger Direct didn't want to honor a hard drive rebate because the 3rd party said my shipping address and credit card address didn't match.... After jumping through some hoops, it finally went though. You just need to stay on top of it. This particular rebate is an 'OnRebate' which is a much faster process.