Anyone in canada have any luck sourcing one of these out? Without paying tons for shipping that is.

Anyone in canada have any luck sourcing one of these out? Without paying tons for shipping that is.
Try WalMart

Oh, BTW, I put in a set of freshly charged NiMH's; they only ran 13 minutes. However, they are a couple of years old at least and have not been used much.

Update: I tested the cells when they came out of the camera, replaced the one that tested the lowest, and had another run today. I got a bit over 24 minutes this time. These are 480mAh batteries and are a few years old. I'm going to order some new ones from batteryspace.com, they're rated 850mAh. I don't doubt I'll get over an hour on a charge.

I got over an hour on 780 mAh NiMHs, yet when I charged up a new 900 mAh set that I bought I only got 15 minutes. Maybe I need to go through a few charge/discharge cycles.

OK.. here's the Lithium batt update...
Fabulous at 35F.

And someone was asking for a pic of the camera mount on the head tube:

http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8257/cameramount0bf.jpg

I order my Oregon Scientific last night from Best Buy, should receive it tomorrow or Friday. I am glad that you can put an SD card in it to expand the memory, 32M is not a whole lot.

Bikepacker, thanks for the pic of the head tube mounting. I tried mounting on the head tube today. I put the rubber piece around the head tube and then used the smaller of the two velcro straps to do one loop around the base and the head tube. The velcro strap was a tad on the long side, but I did get it to grip.

Only problem I had is that the camera would creep up from a pointed straight position up a few degrees to be perpendicular to the head tube. Any suggestions to avoid this slipping?

Had some idiots lean out of their car window and smack my backside while riding home the other night - caused nothing more than aggro but wish I'd got their numbers. Thanks for the comments on this thread - just ordered one of these off the ebay store "Not Just Computers" (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Not-Just-Computers) who ship anywhere internationally. Figure its not a bad idea to have it running on the commute home, would at least get the plate/car details. Theres another thread running where a guy got an aggro driver on tape with one of these things - good idea... and a great justification for another gadget hey hey!

I know software comes with the ATC-1000. But will it allow a person to create slide shows on a CD-R set to music? If not what kind of software would work well for that?

Had some idiots lean out of their car window and smack my backside while riding home the other night

I bet it's a cute backside - not that that gives them an excuse!

thanks - it does the trick :) but to be honest the guys were so sozzled they were just aiming for easiest target which on a bike is either the bum or the nose... guess i lucked out!

I just ran some tests on what happens if the camera gets whacked. I just yanked the batteries out while it was recording.

Results: if you expect to be able to use the AVI from one of these if it gets a hard enough hit to break it, you're going to at least have to do some medium-level data recovery.

If the camera shuts down unexpectedly, you get NOTHING. Been recording for an hour? Zero-byte file.

The data is on the card, but it's not easily accessible, even by most data recovery software.

Luckily this camera is pretty durable, and the batteries unlikely to pop out. And the camera does shut itself off if the batteries get low, that won't lose data on you.

But if you ever get into a situation where you want evidence from the camera, and all you have is a zero-byte file, remember that the data you want is probably in there, you just need to hire someone who can get at it.

Here (http://rapidshare.de/files/10222068/new_clip.mpg.html) is a quick vid I made experimenting with the ins and outs of Premier and vid files.

Here (http://rapidshare.de/files/10222068/new_clip.mpg.html) is a quick vid I made experimenting with the ins and outs of Premier and vid files.

Heh. Some blog was having a video contest, and one of the rules was to NOT use Queen's "Bicycle Race" as a soundtrack. Apparently if you don't enforce that, about 95% of videos will do so. It gets old in a hurry.

I still have the original vinyl album with the NICE poster insert.

Heh. Some blog was having a video contest, and one of the rules was to NOT use Queen's "Bicycle Race" as a soundtrack. Apparently if you don't enforce that, about 95% of videos will do so. It gets old in a hurry.

I still have the original vinyl album with the NICE poster insert.

Huh? Who said anything about a video contest?

As I said I was just goofing off, cheezy I know, but what can I say....people were asking what video quality was like. There you go..turn the sound down :rolleyes:

More good vids from this cam - and a great website to share movies!

Monson Hill - all the way (http://www.zippyvideos.com/9448258922996696/monsonroad/)

My old neighborhood back in the 70's - this is on studded tires

Rochford Circle (http://www.zippyvideos.com/9157762552995926/firsthome/)

THIS IS THE PLACE TO UPLOAD VIDS! (http://www.zippyvideos.com/)

Free, you can create a free account to keep track of vids, lets you u/l to 20mb/file and it's a direct link to the video, instead of all the BS of Rapidshare!

Battery life update:
My initial tests were with the NiMH AAA's I had around the house. They were old, low capacity, and half shot, and I never got more than 23 minutes out of them.
I just had my first run with fresh AAA NiMH 850MAh cells from batteryspace.com. I charged them, let them sit for a day, then recorded my trip home.

Results: at 23*F, recorded the entire trip home, then recorded some more (left it outside) until the card filled up, for 55 minutes total time. Then I erased the card, put it back outside by the bird feeder, and recorded another 55 minutes. Erased that, and recorded another 19 minutes inside. So about 2:10 total.

This is the first charge of the batteries. They usually get a little better with a few uses.

Ok, I need a camera or something here.... I am sick and tired of these motorists in norteast florida. today, the first ride of the year, I was hit with a whole block of fireworks! The little *******s must do it often because they timed it perfectly. the second they hit the ground next to my bike (i was going 20mph) they blew... they are just normal firecrackers so the explosion itself is pretty harmless, of course the shock of the noise is certainly enough to kill you when you loose control though! this is like the 3rd time someone has thrown fire crackers at me... If I only had a helmet cam... priceless!

so,

by reading this post, i see that 2 hours is the longest recording time, but you are limited to about 1 hour per gig of memory... questions:

is there a 2 gig card that would work with the camera? if so, how much is it?
how certain can one be that a license plate will be recorded if you look at the back of the car for a few seconds? will you only sometimes be able to make it out, or rarely or never? (talking about the resolution that allows the hour of recording time.

What is the total price list for suck a project including camera, batteries, memmory, charger, straps, card reader, and whatever else one needs?

thanks,

Mike

What is the total price list for suck a project including camera, batteries, memmory, charger, straps, card reader, and whatever else one needs?


Say 3 sets of NiMH batteries, 2 1G cards (I don't think the cam reads over a gig - but that needs to be researched), an 8 cell charger and a USB card reader, I would figure about $275 (tax incl) for the whole kit and kaboodle.

Including the ATC-1000 vid-cam, of course!

why so many batteries? 1 set goes for over 2 hours right?

why so many batteries? 1 set goes for over 2 hours right?

Not that I've seen yet... but of course, I was riding in 20F New England weather.

You also don't need a card reader if you are willing to wait about 1min per 2 minutes of recorded video to upload to the computer via the USB cord. Thats what I do, it takes about 20min to upload the AM and PM commute (25min each, but the AM is dark and therefore more compressed)
I use 4 batteries and a 4 slot charger. My only expenses are
ATC-1000 - $80
1GB card = $45
4 AAA NiMH = $10
Charger = $8
Total = $143

Al

$80 for the camera
1GB card about $50, look for sales, no more than $55 if you just go out and buy it.

You could get a cheap-ass charger, but go ahead and spend the extra couple of bucks and get one that will serve you well in several capacities for years, will work in a car, on other (non-US) voltages, etc.

Here:
http://www.batteryspace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1128
Smart charger, four AA and four AAA rechargable batteries for $19, plus about $6 shipping normally. If your blinkies take AAAs, get the alternate bundle with 12 AAA's for $20.

My run time with those batteries, at 23*F was > 2 hours, first charge out of the box (so not to full capacity yet, they get better after a few charges).

So total about $160, maybe a shade less.

why so many batteries? 1 set goes for over 2 hours right?

With good cells, yes. See my earlier posts.

My first tests were with older cells, originally rated 450 mAH, and a few years old. With fresh 850mAH NiMH, I got about 2:15, filling the 1GB card up > 2 times. Others have reported the same.

Also, if you need a card reader, look for one that goes in the 3.5 floppy slot. I really like mine, because I hate wires all over. SuperMediaStore.com has them for about $15, and they read pretty much all formats.
Otherwise just go pick one up, they should be < $20.

I wonder if having one mounted on the bike would be a deterent to bad behaviour by motorists.

I don't know if having one mounted on a bike will be a deterent to bad behavior by motorists, I'll find out this spring when I start using mine mounted to my bike.

I do know that when you point it at another motorist while you are in traffic on the interstate the other motorists tend to behave themselves. Like obey the speed limit, use signals when changing lanes etc. How do I know this? Well shortly after I bought mine my wife & I went to Omaha. We took Interstate 29 to get there & back. Just to see how much time it took the cam to fill up using the 3 resolution settings with out the SD card I was pointing it at other drivers. They must have thought I was a cop or something.

For those that have used this cam on while riding bike what is the quality of the resolution you have used when you view it after your ride? What resolution do you use & like best?

For those that have used this cam on while riding bike what is the quality of the resolution you have used when you view it after your ride? What resolution do you use & like best?

There are plenty of samples on this thread, try downloading a few.

IMHO ony 640x480 is acceptable. Even at that res sometimes plate numbers aren't terribly readable (depending on vibration). In lower light this camera is fairly susceptible to vibration. Not such a problem in daylight when it drops the shutter speed to well under 1/15 second. It is a cheap CCD (no shift-out area) so there's some jitter in the image when the camera is vibrated, but it's hard to expect much better for $80.

Anyone try using this oregon scientific camera off road? How choppy/distorted is the video since it doesn't look like it has a stabilization feature to it?

Samsung came out with a 'sports' camera that looks great and comes with an external lens for mounting, but the price is high (around $500) and the reviews are TERRIBLE... maybe a 2nd or 3rd effort will produce something better. Still kinda cool if you're loaded and like to throw money away on toys.

http://product.samsung.com/event/optin05/sportscam_site/

Anyone try using this oregon scientific camera off road? How choppy/distorted is the video since it doesn't look like it has a stabilization feature to it?

Samsung came out with a 'sports' camera that looks great and comes with an external lens for mounting, but the price is high (around $500) and the reviews are TERRIBLE... maybe a 2nd or 3rd effort will produce something better. Still kinda cool if you're loaded and like to throw money away on toys.

http://product.samsung.com/event/optin05/sportscam_site/
I haven't used it off road, but if I were to try, I would only use helmet mounting vs. bike. Helment mounting should provide quite a bit of natural stabilization. Oh, another AZ biker (SteveAZ) posted a helmet mount off road video that was watchable.
Al

Here is some offroad on an ATV trail full of moguls - not too bad:

http://www.zippyvideos.com/6325862273014126/snowride4/

BTW, the camera is mounted on the head tube


Anyone try using this oregon scientific camera off road? How choppy/distorted is the video since it doesn't look like it has a stabilization feature to it?

Samsung came out with a 'sports' camera that looks great and comes with an external lens for mounting, but the price is high (around $500) and the reviews are TERRIBLE... maybe a 2nd or 3rd effort will produce something better. Still kinda cool if you're loaded and like to throw money away on toys.

http://product.samsung.com/event/optin05/sportscam_site/

Anyone try using this oregon scientific camera off road? How choppy/distorted is the video since it doesn't look like it has a stabilization feature to it?

Samsung came out with a 'sports' camera that looks great and comes with an external lens for mounting, but the price is high (around $500) and the reviews are TERRIBLE... maybe a 2nd or 3rd effort will produce something better. Still kinda cool if you're loaded and like to throw money away on toys.

http://product.samsung.com/event/optin05/sportscam_site/


The video is actually not bad in it's original format (AVI) but degraded when I changed formats (still need to experiment with that more).

In really rough stuff, it definitely goes out of focus at times, not bad for the money and convenience though.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=166352

The video is actually not bad in it's original format (AVI) but degraded when I changed formats (still need to experiment with that more).

Obviously that's just an artifact of the conversion. Video encoding is a black art; you need to do a lot of fooling around with filtering and bitrates and multipass encoding settings to get good results.

I'd probably play with some temporal prefiltering on this camera before encoding. There may be some de-jitter filters that might help as well.

Obviously that's just an artifact of the conversion. Video encoding is a black art; you need to do a lot of fooling around with filtering and bitrates and multipass encoding settings to get good results.

I'd probably play with some temporal prefiltering on this camera before encoding. There may be some de-jitter filters that might help as well.
I get reasonably decent video with Indeo 5.1 at quality 25 setting. I reduce by 2x first and the size reduction and compresion give a good balance between quality and file size. Quality is not really that important for bike videos.

I've tried the temporal and other filters and they do help smooth things out, but they increase the processing time significantly so I don't do it.

Al

I've tried the temporal and other filters and they do help smooth things out, but they increase the processing time significantly so I don't do it.

Well, yes, that's the price you pay. When I'm encoding for public release, I use an extremely tuned and aggressive filterset. A 20 minute cartoon typically takes me over a day to filter (not encode, just filter) on a 2 GHz machine. But the results are stellar.

Are you guys having to convert the file in OS software before your editing program will recognize it?

Decided to test my cam out while driving today. First I had it mounted to my steering wheel. This worked, except when I turned it ended up hitting my legs. I took it off & proped on the dash board. This worked fine if I could hold in place while turning & going over rough surface.

While it was recording I removed it from the steering wheel & proped it on the dash. When I turned it rolled off the dash & onto the floor. This shut it off by the way. I think it was because it had an impact applied to it. Could this be a method to help prevent damage to the cam?

When I turned it rolled off the dash & onto the floor. This shut it off by the way. I think it was because it had an impact applied to it. Could this be a method to help prevent damage to the cam?

No, there aren't any moving parts. If the camera would be damaged by impact while running, it would be damaged while off too.

More likely the battery pack lost contact with the electronics. This is a problem because the camera does not flush directory updates out to the CF until you tell it to stop recording, so if it just loses power, you'll wind up with a zero-byte file. I've been thinking about writing a recovery program for this situation, since it may be necessary if involved in a crash.

No, there aren't any moving parts. If the camera would be damaged by impact while running, it would be damaged while off too.

More likely the battery pack lost contact with the electronics. This is a problem because the camera does not flush directory updates out to the CF until you tell it to stop recording, so if it just loses power, you'll wind up with a zero-byte file. I've been thinking about writing a recovery program for this situation, since it may be necessary if involved in a crash.

I just sent the following email to Oregon Scientific (their "corporate relations" address, info@oscientific.com).
I encourage others to do the same so that perhaps they will listen and make a product that's really suited to accident / hit & run documenting & mitigation.

----
Hi,

I've read a lot of reviews and seen a lot of sample videos of the ATC-1000 camera.

As a full-time urban bicycle rider I'm extremely interested in using the camera for accident / hit-and-run documenting & mitigation. However, as it stands the camera is not usable for this purpose. It needs some significant modifications which I hope you will include a future version of the camera:

- It needs an accurate timestamp feature with date and time accurate to the second, available as an option to embed in every frame of video, preferably at the far upper right corner. Without this data, video from the unit has only limited value as evidence in a court trial.

- It needs a continuous-recording mode where it will capture the last 60 seconds of video / audio to a buffer, but NOT dump it to Flash card UNLESS the camera takes a hard knock. (I.e. it needs dual-axis accelerometers in it to detect a crash or hard braking event on the bike.) Highly accurate multi-axis accelerometers have been miniaturized and are now available as very small form factor IC's (5mm x 5mm x 2mm), for example the Analog Devices ADXL311, see here: http://tinyurl.com/fsoyk.

- The power supply (battery) system needs to be redesigned so that loss of power to the camera does NOT prevent the camera from properly shutting down and writing the contents of its buffer to SD card. (The current version apparently trashes the video data file if power is lost during recording, rendering the camera useless for documenting an accident.) Ideally it would include a high-energy capacitor to allow the camera to record at least 5 seconds *after* battery power is lost to capture the effects of / final camera position after a crash or accident.

Basically, what I'm requesting is a helmet-mountable, cordless version of this product:
http://www.drivecam.com.

I, and I think a great many (10's of thousands) of other committed, regular bicycle riders would be willing to pay at least $200 to $250 for such a product. In fact I'd probably buy two, one for the forward direction, the other pointing to the rear, of my bicycle.

Thanks for your consideration.

No one has posted to this topic for a while. How are the helmet cams doing?

I've started using an ATC-1000 for my daily commute on a busy street in a large city. Here's some thoughts, some of which have been previously posted.

While the camera takes surprisingly good video when stationary, relative to what it costs, the video quality is lower when moving. For recording interactions with motorists, it is sufficient, except that you have to no farther than 20'/6m to record license numbers, with the camera steady relative to the plate. The lens seems to be just the right field of view, neither too narrow nor too wide.

An alternative is to note the license number of an offending motorist and speak it to the camera, or stop and write it down.

This relates to the time/datestamp issue. The ATC-1000 has no way to set the time and date, so all the files have the same default time and date. Presumably a proper time/datestamp would allow the videos to stand on their own as evidence. However, most court testimony is verbal and does not have time/datestamps. My view is that a video, with personal testimony for the time and date, should stand up in court. A way to record the time and date is to speak them to the camera after an incident.

For mounting the camera on my helmet, I felt most of the gizmos provided with it were unnecessary. With hook and loop self-stick velcro attached to the helmet and the cam, and a velcro or zip-strap around the camera, it is stable and cannot fall off. It takes some experimenting to get the angles right, but this setup is lighter and lower profile than using the provided bracktes. You can buy self-stick velco to experiment with or enlarge the attachment areas. Placing the camera on the side of the helmet makes it easier to reach the buttons, but also makes the helmet unbalanced. My helmets always seem to tip to one side, so placing the camera on the other side balanced that out. Of course, you could use two cams - one to show what's coming up behind you.

I'm using fast-charge NiMH batteries, so I'm not discarding lots of cells, and refreshing them is not a big problem.

The microphone records a lot of wind noise, and as you pick up speed, it becomes a crackling sound as the microphone overloads. I mounted open-cell foam in front of the mic, but that only reduced, not eliminated, the noise. I'll try more, or more dense foam. Right away I found you can't operate the camera with gloves on. And it is very slow to react to the controls. Both of these characteristics are especially troublesome given the intended use of this camera.

I don't worry too much about the camera being wrecked and losing the video in a bad accident. The chances of the camera being broken, where also the video would make a difference in determining the circumstances, are very low. I'm more worried about motorists endangering and bullying me. For me the function of the camera is to record and report these incidents.

I found I recorded many motorists violating traffic laws (in addition to their universal violation of the speed limits), and I recorded one "discussion" with a motorist who cut me off. I decided I needed a storage system for the videos. Since the camera applies names varying only by a number, storing them in the same folder means they can overwrite each other. Thus it is necessary to rename them first. The numerical characters in the filenames can be used for the day and number of video that day, with different folders used for each month/year. At the root level I maintain a simple spreadsheet listing the filenames, and a checklist of the infractions etc. on each. Since the video files are rather large, I will copy the "keepers" to DVD disc as necessary.

I have yet to record an incident worth submitting to the police. So far, in the only incident that endangered me, the motorist apologized after a brief discussion. I will report only the most dangerous incidents or nastiest motorists. Probably the best means to submit the incidents to the police would be to copy them to video tape, which the camera is set up to do. Alternatives may include a copy on cd-rom, or even email.

There are alternatives to the ATC-1000. As noted previously, there's the cheaper Digital Blue Tony Hawk helmet cam. It videos at a lower resolution, but has autofocus and a laser aiming system. The Tony Hawk does not take stills as the ATC-1000 can, and does not have a tv-out port. It comes with a head/helmet strap rather than the ATC's collection of mounting hardware.

Then there are a few hybrid cameras such as the Samsung Miniket Sport models, which have remote lens heads. The problem with them is that remote lens attachments get into control and cabling hassles. Some hybrid cameras have video-in ports, to allow use of spycams as remote lens heads. I tried this, and found the setup was simply too complicated to bother with. Just figuring out some way to carry all this stuff was problematic. Then dealing with it after you park the bike adds more issues. And controlling all the components was time-consuming and prone to errors.

Many remote "lipstick" or "bullet" lens attachments are made for camcorders, and there are purpose-built helmet cams. Most of these are too bulky for consideration, or use tapes. The great thing about the ATC-1000 and Tony Hawk cams is that they can record such long clips onto solid state memory cards (1hr 4min at 640x480 onto 1Gb sd card.)

Lastly, there's the DejaVue. It is designed to record continuously, while deleting video more than 30 seconds old. When you press the record button, it saves the previous 30 seconds and keeps on recording. Unfortunately it costs three times as much as the ATC-1000, records in lower resolution, and has the complication of separate system and lens units. And in an unlikely but really bad smashup, you may not be able to operate it.

The main problems with the ATC and the Tony Hawk are the size and weight on the helmet, and the limitations imposed by the price point. Overall for my purposes, the ATC is the best solution, irrespective of the cost.

My suggestions for improvements for the ATC-1000 are:
- buttons designed to be used while wearing gloves, or clip-on remote controller
- faster reaction to controls
- "graceful" inadvertent shutdown
- louder status beeps, audible in traffic
- image stabilization
- microphone protected from wind noise
- lens hood or anti-glare optics
- 30 frames per second frame rate setting
- autofocus
- date/timestamp
- in-camera battery recharging, such as using an NP-60 NiMh.

Any improvements would, of course, push the price up. I believe these features could be added for another $50, and I'd be happy to buy a version upgraded with these features for even more than that.

Lastly, I was thinking you could use these cameras for doing instructional videos, such as wheelbuilding.

Some of those suggestions are reasonable for a small increase in price.
Autofocus probably not; that means switching from a no-moving-parts fixed simple lens to a much more complex lens, motor, focus sensors or fast CPU to drive the motor.
Image stab. - obviously optical would be best but would cost well over $50. Digital could be done but would mean a bigger image sensor AND a much more capable CPU to do the image shift detection and correction.

Take those two off the list and it probably can be done.

An alternative to image stabilization - if they used a slightly higher end CCD chip with a shift-out image retention area, they'd get rid of that irritating image squish when the camera is shaking. If every frame is crisp but they just jump around, that'd be better than what it does now.

I use my ATC on and off. I just got a new digicam to carry with me, and at present I'm more interested in taking pics along my commute than filming the road and the morons on it. I'm planning on putting it on a rocket or kite this summer though.

I wonder if having one mounted on the bike would be a deterent to bad behaviour by motorists.

It's been demonstrated to stop B.S.ing motorists, and good in court.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1570923955766744009&q=%22motorcycle+accident%22

In this video, the motorist does a 180 in front of a motorcycle and then claims that "She hit him." as though it were the bikers fault.

Some of those suggestions are reasonable for a small increase in price.
Autofocus probably not; that means switching from a no-moving-parts fixed simple lens to a much more complex lens, motor, focus sensors or fast CPU to drive the motor.
Image stab. - obviously optical would be best but would cost well over $50. Digital could be done but would mean a bigger image sensor AND a much more capable CPU to do the image shift detection and correction.

Take those two off the list and it probably can be done.

An alternative to image stabilization - if they used a slightly higher end CCD chip with a shift-out image retention area, they'd get rid of that irritating image squish when the camera is shaking. If every frame is crisp but they just jump around, that'd be better than what it does now.

I use my ATC on and off. I just got a new digicam to carry with me, and at present I'm more interested in taking pics along my commute than filming the road and the morons on it. I'm planning on putting it on a rocket or kite this summer though.


The even cheaper Tony Hawk helmet cam claims to have an autofocus (and a laser aiming system), but since I don't have one, I can't say for sure they actually have those features. I was hoping for autofocus because the ATC seems to focus closer than infinity, and that's where most of my subject matter is.

Optical image stabilization is not feasible at this price point. Digital image stabilzation could be implemented with a loss of 10% of the viewing area and detail, or by making the very small (640x480) sensor 10% larger. Plus, as you say, a more powerful cpu. You can buy hybrid digital still/video cameras for $130 that have digital image stabilzation (such as the Aipek MPVR and various Digilife DDV models), plus a host of other features the ATC does not have. The prices of hybrid cameras actually fell as image stabilization was added to them, thanks to the ever-improving affordability of the technology.

30 frames per second and the faster reaction to the controls strike me as the more costly things to add, but should be doable in this price range. 30fps will double the storage consumption, of course.

This is interesting...I'm sooo tempted. The movies people posted are pretty good.

I got my ATC-1000 through Amazon / Ritz Cameras for $80 usd. People are getting them for as low as $50 on eBay.

I cashed in my Amazon coupons and ordered one last night. I can't wait to send people videos of my explorations in the wilderness. :)

On a somewhat related topic, I am interviewing the UofT Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering tomorrow for one of his unusul inventions. He is reknowned for inventing WearComp and EyeTap: a wearable computer and personal imaging system that can record everything he looks at and deposits it onto the hard-drive. It also can play-back or display any other data using the eye as the monitor. What a handy device that would be while cycling. I doubt it's low-cost, however.

http://www.eyetap.org/about_us/people/mann/index.html

As for the speed of the ATC-1000 reacting to the controls, I've found it has the same problem as many other digital cameras. The larger the memory available, the longer it takes to do most things. I'm not sure why, maybe it stores a file allocation table in memory and has less space for processing. Maybe it has to read clear through some such table every time it does something. But the ATC certainly works faster the less memory is installed. With just the integrated 32Mb, it's almost acceptable, but what good is 32Mb?

Neat - everything is AVI and JPEG, and easy to download across the USB cable and view right away in firefox/etc. Wow, it's VERY obvious that I'll need the 1Gb memory card to take the size/length of videos I expect to take. The internal 32Mb fills up so quickly! :eek: Now...where the heck will I store 1Gb videos? I still use a lot of machines with 2 to 6 Gb drives.

The even cheaper Tony Hawk helmet cam claims to have an autofocus (and a laser aiming system), but since I don't have one, I can't say for sure they actually have those features. I was hoping for autofocus because the ATC seems to focus closer than infinity, and that's where most of my subject matter is.

That's marketing weasel words. It's a fixed focus lens, I'm sure, same as the ATC. At a given f/ stop, any lens will be "in focus" (IE diffraction limited to the resolution of the media) over a given range of distances, called the "depth of field". A technique used by photographers with manual focus cameras is to close down the lens so that the depth of field encompasses anywhere your moving subject might be when you take the picture. This is called range focussing. If you push the focus out just right, the range will go "to infinity". If the f/ stop is small enough, the range could be 6 feet to infinity, or 3 feet, or in the case of extreme f/ stops like with pinhole cameras, it could even be millimeters to infinity.

Cheap cameras, such as disposables, use a small f/ stop and range focus typically 5 feet to infinity or something. That's also what the ATC does, and also most security cameras.

I can almost guarantee that the Tony Hawk one does as well. See, when you let marketing people loose on this stuff, they can convince themselves that if the user doesn't have to focus, then the focus is automatically determined, therefore the camera has auto focus. I've seen disposable cameras that claim to be "auto focus".

This is a lot like selling a glass of water and saying that the surface is self levelling. However, it's true enough to not get taken to court, so it passes by.

Optical image stabilization is not feasible at this price point. Digital image stabilzation could be implemented with a loss of 10% of the viewing area and detail, or by making the very small (640x480) sensor 10% larger. Plus, as you say, a more powerful cpu.

You need one other thing as well; you need a better CCD. The current CCD is extremely cheap. Normally video CCDs have an imaging area, then an optically masked shift out area. The imaging area is blanked, light falls on it for a time (the shutter speed), then a pulse causes the resulting image to be instantly shifted into the shift out area. The electronics then have time to read out the image while the imaging area is busy taking the next image, and since the image now resides on a masked area, further light won't affect the image.

The CCD used in the ATC doesn't have a shift out area. The electronics are reading the image out while light is still falling on the chip. In fact it's not taking whole images 15 times a second. It's taking a bunch of horizontal stripe images and assembling them into an image 15 times a second. That's why it looks so wonky when the camera is being vibrated; the images is stretched and compressed because between reading the top part of the image and the bottom part, the camera moved.

With the image getting distorted like that, you can't really stabilize it effectively. You need each image to be reasonably clean, then you can shift the images around to make them all line up. Heck, if the images were clean, you could do the stabilization in your computer afterwards; there are in fact VirtualDub filters for doing just that.

30 frames per second and the faster reaction to the controls strike me as the more costly things to add, but should be doable in this price range. 30fps will double the storage consumption, of course.

Yes, but that's not a big deal anymore. The big issue I think was storage speed and size. Now that you can buy 150x 4 GB SD cards for < $100, 30 FPS shouldn't be that big a deal. I think the biggest question is whether you have a processor that can do MJPEG compression 30 times a second, and also how much worse your low light performance will be if you switch from 1/15th second max shutter speed to 1/30th.