Video camera for bike

We were shopping in the Big Mall and ran across this guy selling digital video cameras. Knowing how much I enjoy reliving my summer tours through video I thought that this could be fun, and the financial tabulator had wandered off-- I bought one.

http://driftinnovation.com/hd170-action-camera/

So the first project was to mount it. Once again a scrounge through the scrap iron pile was in order. I wonder what people think of my scrap iron pile after this many projects?

I found an old fridge rack and with some cutting and grinding a mount was fabricated. The slight annoying wobble was sorted out with a tiny bungee cord. Even painted it black to meet the wife's aesthetic parameters.

This seemed to work well enough but listening to 9 hours of wind noise can get a bit monotonous even in the depths of a Canadian winter. Some improvements were in order.

I tapped into the intercom system and connected an extra speaker that was randomly thrown in the trunk. The mic for the camera was then taped to the speaker. OK so it was sloppy but it was another pressed for time thing and it only took me 20 minutes. The problem was when we hit a bump there would be a clunk in the audio, NOT to be confused with the helmet clunk that is produced from speeding or other fancy maneuvers. The audio was also too quiet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNc54hE7tSI

Winter is a good time to sort out little issues like this and it has been properly wired in. Static test on the side stand shows great promise.

Ready for another summer of admiring bike enthusiasts saying What is that?

Update type tinkering...

I have made a new mount for the trunk. It now is removable when just regular commuting and in a split second it can be just slid in.

The electrical was a bit interesting. I had a problem with alternator whine getting into the camera. I fought with this problem for a long time and in the end the answer was eloquently simple.

Just feed the 12 volt in to a 7912 (that cuts the bottom off) and then into a 7805 (that cuts the top off). Now i have a regulated 5 volt power supply to feed the camera that is neither connected to ground or +12.

The audio is just tied into the the passenger intercom speaker but was a bit loud for the camera and was some clipping. A simple pot was installed to tune the volume level.

Return to the home page