In-Car Camera
Build-up of a solid-state digital video recorder that can survive the extremes of offroad racing...
Late in the Commodore's life, we started investigating a cheap method of dropping a video camera into the car. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than first expected. Whilst sourcing bullet-cams wasn't particularly difficult (see these guys - RFConcepts, plus there's quite a few around Oz as well), obtaining a video recorder and camera mount that would survive was quite the opposite. In my trawling of the web, I found this guy's site (zetecinside), which seemed to provide at least a partial solution. The Mustek PVR-A1 is a solid-state DVR that encodes 320x240x30fps into MPEG4 (Microsoft's MPEG4). The unit is a bit flaky and a recent loan saw it come back dead (possibly due to a intermittant power supply connection). So I tracked down a mob called ChaseCam, who are beginning to supply a robust solid-state near DVD MPEG2 recorder, called the PDR100. Hopefully when this unit arrives it will last a bit longer than the Mustek. In the interim I've picked up another Mustek, ex-USA (thanks eBay). Also shown below is the latest camera mount; a fangled ally-plastic combo from Goldstar Racecam (actually purchased from Demon-Tweaks in the UK). Clamps-up straight onto the 38mm tube (although other sizes are available) and designed specifically for retaining bullet-cams (a much improved version of the original 5min "Jez-special"). As an aside, the case is a tough Peli Products 1060 Micro Case and the connectors are all IP67 rated mini-circular quarter-turns.
A couple of things to note:
- The Mustek PVR-A1 was running a 1GB SD card which provides almost 70mins of storage at the high-quality setting (320x240@25fps (aka. 'quarter PAL') - MPEG4).
- The ChaseCam PDR100 runs an 8GB CF card which will hopefully allow for about 4hrs of footage (720x576@25fps (aka. 'full PAL')- MPEG2).
Well, the new PDR100 solid-state digital video recorder has turned up from ChaseCam (Sep 2006) (thanks Randy), and it looks the part (see picture below). The 8GB Sandisk Extreme III card appears to have worked in it straight off the bat, so I'll have to try bunging it into a car before the next race to see how well it goes. Stay tuned...
In the interim I've bolted it under the bumper of my daily-driver (aka. the 'Racing Pulsar'; see definition for 'oxymoron') (Video 1), and a mate has dropped it into his black-track RX7 (Video 2). Both of these setups need refinement, but it shows the concept works and gives a pretty good idea about quality. In fact, talking about quality, it appears that the conversion to WMV format (the native format stored by the PDR100 is MPEG2) has introduced some interlacing issues. Being as editing video is one of those subjects where the more you know, the less you want to know, but the more you need to know; it might take a while to sort out.
One other issue with the PDR100 is the lack of a screen to assist during camera setup. Obviously having the Mustek's is a bit of a bonus in this regard, but it would be nice to have a complete solution (however I can fully understand why ChaseCam didn't add this 'little' feature). Obviously, this is only a problem if you keep changing camera positions.
As a side note, it's pretty important to mount the camera in a location that doesn't have to cope with extreme lighting conditions (eg. interior and exterior of a car). The auto exposure mechanism (in the camera) will generally expose for a medium gray across the entire field of view, so make sure you have significantly more of the stuff you're interested in the camera's view than stuff you're not.
