GoPro alternatives?
 

Due to some recent incidents locally with riders I know and motorists (and police) and my own constantly getting buzzed by unsafe drivers I'm thinking about finally getting a camera for the bike. GoPro is the obvious but I'd like something small and new smaller version is $400

I saw this, which looks cool (and cheap)

RIDEYE ? Rideye


Anyone have other suggestions?

Below are some good Go pro "replicas." I'm confident quality will be at least decent if not the same as a go pro.


Waterproof 12MP Full HD 1080p Digital Helmet Sports Camera SJ4000 as GoPro Black | eBay

SJ4000 Full HD 1080p 12MP Camera Waterproof Helmet Action Sports DV Action Mini | eBay

12MP HD 1080P Sports Action Waterproof Camera Mini DV SJ4000 as GoPro Black

They have drones that will follow you now.

Thanks, I was looking at those too. Why didn't I look to China first?

To be honest, for cycling safety, its RideEye or nothing. The problem with GoPro, etc is the battery life is usually 1-2 hrs of recording. Most of the action camera market is designed for short action recording, not 3-4 hr looping. Even if they have looping capability, the battery limitation means that you can't use for the full duration of a weekend ride.

There's a basic GoPro Hero for $130, which is pretty hard to beat.

You might check these out:
http://www.bikeforums.net/sale/10185...hd-1080-a.html

I have a gopro hero 3+ black (nice name, eh? What the heck does it all mean?) that I got at Costco on sale, and I have a RideEye that I preordered for a reasonable amount of money before they jacked the prices. Actually, $149 looks pretty reasonable again, go for it.

The go pro picture quality is superior and it's not close. RideEye is pretty good though. It's hard to see license plate detail in strong front or backlight situations, or at night.

Go pro handlebar mounts suck, I got a k-edge combo garmin/go pro mount and it's fantastic.

I also got an extended battery for the go pro, and used it on a century Saturday and didn't run out of juice. It's about the same size as a go-pro in a housing, so not small, but very convenient. Much better than carrying a handful of those small go pro batteries and switching them out.

the RideEye is fairly heavy and vibrates like heck on the included rubber band style mount. If you're just using it to document bad driving, it's probably OK, you won't want to compile ride videos for youtube on that mount. I bought the go-pro mount adaptor and now I need a seat post go pro clamp for the ride eye - the plan is to have go pro in front, ride eye in back.

You can unscrew the rear panel in the ride eye and put whaver size chip in there you want, they're just microSD cards. I bought an 8 GB ride eye, it now has a 64GB card in there. For some reason, I can't get the date and time to set on the rideeye - I follow the directions, update the text file, do all that and then still the wrong date. Blech. The battery life is very long though, so it's a better set-and-forget option than a go pro, and will automatically save a file if it detects a crash (or you can manually do it). Most of these devices break the files every 17 min. or so anyway.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, I just ordered one from the above link. For less than $50, it's worth a shot. My daughter has been bugging me to buy a GoPro to bring on vacation this summer, but I was balking at the price, considering that all this stuff is obsolete so quickly.

Looks great, have you ever personally used these?

This guy seems to do some good reviews.
Techmoan - TechmoanNo personal experience with any of these.

scott s.
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I have the mobius and it has a frontal area not much wider than my thumb. Quality probably isn't as good, but it works alright.
Shameless promoting, but it gives you an idea on the quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVV-nDzgWLc