very cool product

[Gary]

check out this link. http://vacucam.littlemini.us/
looks like a low cost way to record some cool videos that would be difficult or much more expensive otherwise.

 

[Peter Delaney]

That is just so cool, and cheap !

 

[Gary]

I took a spin around the web and found the clamp for $15.00 and while i did not find the exact camera, one with the same specifications was about $60.00. Even assuming that they get a discount, the price is still quite good. I saw a few camera specific suction cup mounts for more than $100.00 by themselves.

 

[Ron Earp]

It'll take about 5 mins before track officals decide those don't work and enfore the bar mounted cameras like they do around here. Still good for the street thouigh.

 

[BenL]

Be careful how you use it. In Massachusetts a convoy of 9 VWs got stopped for wreckless driving. They denied they did anything wrong, until one of the State police officers noticed that a passenger had a video camera. The video showed the cars weaving in and out of the traffic cones, passing in the breakdown lane, and driving at 100mph.

You can see the news report, and some of the video at: http://boston.mirror-image.com/newsvideo...s_worcester.wmv

 

Hey guys,
I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Richard Lin, the developer of this camera system. I'm normally on NorthAmericanMotoring.com or MINI2.com but decided to Google my product name to see who's talking about it, and I happened upon this discussion!

To answer a few questions:
1.) I brought this product to market as a cost effective alternative to the very pricey bullet/cone cams currently available. As a consumer, I figured it would be pretty killer to introduce a complete ready to go system for under $100. You just supply a recording device, and I do the rest. A nicely configured 3 camera system costs about the same as a single medium level camera.

2.) It's fully switchable on the fly between 4 cameras, and even a remote start/stop for the camera, so you never have to touch it. Switching cameras is simple than changing radio stations!

3.) It's been track tested on a MINI at 115mph, but it doesn't mean it won't stick at higher speeds, I just haven't gotten a car to put it on to test that out. I'm pretty confident it should stick on at even 140mph or higher since the mass is very low, and drag is minimal.

4.) RON- I've put thousands of miles on the VacuCams, and I've never had one come off. I just drove 400 miles today from Los Angeles to San Diego and back for a Ralley with the VacuCams. Captured some great stuff which will be posted in the next few days on my site.

5.) BenL---Very wise tip. Driving wrecklessly is irresponsible, but capturing it on tape is even dumber!

6.) The name VacuCam comes from the fact I've repurposed standard Vacuum Lifters as camera mounts. They provide a super strong, lightweight, no scratch mounting method that sticks to all kinds of materials--painted metal, plastic, fiberglass, glass!

7.) The fully switched systems, which I dub "Ready to Roll" were designed for the MINI, but they do work with other cars. Primarily, I take advantage of unique features specific to the MINI--from providing exact cable lengths, to special mounting cups that stick to the MINI's glossy dash, etc.. I'm working on making a Universal version as well, but my first priority was to make it the best it could possibly be for our MINI's before branching out.

I did an event a few weeks back at California Speedway with European Car magazine where I outfitted a number of VW's and Audis with my cams during a track event. It worked great!

Well that's it for now, if you have questions, feel free to shoot them my way! I'm happy to answer them.

Richard

 

[Ron Earp]

[ QUOTE ]
4.) RON- I've put thousands of miles on the VacuCams, and I've never had one come off. I just drove 400 miles today from Los Angeles to San Diego and back for a Ralley with the VacuCams. Captured some great stuff which will be posted in the next few days on my site.

[/ QUOTE ]

Richard, I like the product, I'm just pointing out the SCCA is not going to allow those on cars on the track during a race. I understand it was a fairly serious pain in the ass to get them to allow rollbar mounted cameras and those have a defined mount that is allowed. Having one adhere during runs on the track or mountain roads in one thing, having them adhere in SCCA/NASA etc. races is another where the racing is head to head and fender to fender.

 

In my younger days I used to work in the movie business and we used the suction cups for mounting cameras and rigging to cars. To enhance the stick of the cup, we would often pour a Coke on the car and let it dry. Don't know if it really worked, just glad they weren't my cars! Most of stuff was then secured and safetied to be redundant - nobody wants a million dollar camera on the street.

 

Hi Ron!

Oh I understand they are very strict about anything attached to the outside of the car. I wasn't aware of ths roll bar cam issue though. Thanks. Definitely canyon runs and general stuff like ralley's, it works great. =)

re: Pat
Yeah, I come from the commercial production side of the industry, and having seen my share of on the spot solutions, it's no surprise Coke was used. LOL

Actually, for my mounts, I do recommend a quick shot of a quick detailer both on the car and on the mount. It's like in my younger days where we shot dart guns(with suction cups) at the windows of our house, and they wouldn't stick unless you spit on them.

Sometimes you need to do multiple applications of the QD for a good strong stick on glass.

 

[jkyte]

I have raced several races in open wheel cars. Barber Dodge, Formula Mazda mostly, last 3-5 years and an on board camera system is great for watching your race after the fact. But, as stated by a few others, all cameras had to be mounted on the roll hoop/bar. I have had a lot of races at a lot of different tracks and have never seen a camera mounted on the outside pod or chassis. Always on the roll bar!!

This might be ok for a street car set up when the owner wants shots of his/her driving style or something of that nature. But, SCCA or the other club racing people will not allow this on the outside of the car.

But, it is a great little device. It would almost always run at least $100-150.00 to get a video system set up by one of the guys doing this for pay!! It would more than pay for itself if designed and mounted in the proper format, method. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[Malcolm]

It would be interesting to see if our club could make use of these sweet looking cameras as we often run in-car cameras to capture the action. No SCCA involvement and often the final decsion on cameras is left to the local scrutineers.

www.gtd40club.co.uk

has a selection of downloadable video clips to see what I am talking about for those that don't already know.

Would these little suckers work on UK camcorders?

 

What's the video standard in the UK? Is is NTSC or PAL?? Because my market is specifically north america, I've only focused on NTSC.

I participated in a TSD ralley yesterday, and here's a video clip from it. I had a 2 camera setup--one on the door and one on my rear window looking back.

Windows Media 9
http://store.northamericanmotoring.com/video/OctaneGuyStore/rally1.wmv

Mac/Windows Quicktime 6
http://store.northamericanmotoring.com/video/OctaneGuyStore/rally1.mov

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Richard, dont know about U.K. but in Australia it is PAL.

 

Thanks Pete! My suspicion is that they are PAL as well. The USA always has to be different from everybody else. =)

 

[Paul W]

The Uk is PAL. Are the cameras PAL only ???

 

The cameras are NTSC for the USA. PAL are available, but unless I know I'm going to get a lot of orders for PAL, it's not possible for me to sell them right now, and especially make it under the US$100 price point. How many is a lot?? We're talking about more than 50 cameras.

I will keep this in mind though on my next order! =)

 

[Bill Musarra]

Your format is not what is important. What is is the final output. most of the programs out there will ask which format you want to output. And your only talking VHS anyway. CD/DVD burners are cheap.If you burn CD's or DVD's it won't matter unless there is some new format out that I haven't read about. All you need is a capture card, which usually comes with the program. The card reads directly from the camcorder, even if its not digital. Even VHS can be captured edited and burned. Check out Roxio, they are up to version 7 now. There are others out there also. They will let you add music or voice overs.
Bill

 

[Bill Musarra]

Just ran across this today. Another system.
http://www.race-sport.net/helmetcam.html
Bill

 

I don't mean any disrespect, but actually there is a bunch of misinformation here.

1.) You cannot connect an NTSC camera to a PAL Camcorder which is being used as a recording device. Once the video has been recorded, lets say in PAL format, then yes, you can transfer this to you NLE (Non linear editing system) and perform your edits. So the video standard IS important when using my miniature cameras or any camera for that matter.

2.) I'm not sure why you're saying we're talking only about VHS. Where did this discussion come from? Nobody mentioned anything about recording to an analog medium such as VHS. Are you confusing the idea of Composite video with the VHS format??

3.) The final output format does matter for CD's/DVD's IF you are watching your DVD's on a television set. If you're watching them on your computer monitor, then you are correct, video standards don't mean much.

4.) Most of the low cost (under $100) capture cards on the market today are Firewire based, simply because it's very cost effective to sell a card that only transfers data and doesn't do any video compression/decompression. Firewire is Apple's Trademark name for IEEE-1394 or Sony's iLink. The best are OHCI compatible which means the card can be used with any OHCI compatible software. I use Sony Vegas 5 which is an excellent mid range NLE.

To capture from VHS aka an analog source, you will need to convert this analog signal to digital, either by using the passthrough feature of your digital camcorder (assuming it has this capability), or using an external Media Converter such as from Sony or Canopus which allows you to input an analog signal, and it outputs a digital signal via IEEE-1394. I wouldn't bother with any MJPEG based capture cards, if they even exist today, or MPEG-1, or MPEG-4.

MPEG-2 capture systems can be decent as well. Popular systems are from Canopus and Matrox.

[ QUOTE ]
Your format is not what is important. What is is the final output. most of the programs out there will ask which format you want to output. And your only talking VHS anyway. CD/DVD burners are cheap.If you burn CD's or DVD's it won't matter unless there is some new format out that I haven't read about. All you need is a capture card, which usually comes with the program. The card reads directly from the camcorder, even if its not digital. Even VHS can be captured edited and burned. Check out Roxio, they are up to version 7 now. There are others out there also. They will let you add music or voice overs.
Bill

[/ QUOTE ]

 

[BenL]

[ QUOTE ]
MPEG-2 capture systems can be decent as well. Popular systems are from Canopus and Matrox.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some TV tuner cards for PCs can capture video from a VCR. I have a Hauppauge WinTV-DVR card that I use to watch and record TV programs on my PC. It does hardware MPEG-2 compression.

You can read about TV tuner cards at: http://www.tv-cards.com/index.php