Special video camera needed
 

I'm looking for a small video camera that can take decent night and day movies, but I need it to record in rolling 5 minute intervals. Why would I need this? I'm tired of all the lowlife cops that think they are above the law (staties are the worst - I swear they have some sort of god complex) and do whatever the hell they want while hiding behind their badge. They give people tickets for the very same things they do, but for them, it's ok. Well, I'd like to mount this camera to my dash of my car and it will keep recording a rolling 5 minutes of video. Then, when one of those douchebags does something stupid, I can stop the recording for later upload to my PC. I'm sure the local newspaper would be more than happy to have footage of such things since they are always trying to find some scandal anyway, especially in the gov't.

And no, I didn't just get a ticket or anything. It's just that I see so much crap happen but am powerless to do anything. Reporting the abuse is pointless since they all stick together and then I'd be a target as revenge.

Why not get one of these cheap rc cams. A man of your talent could rig up a power supply from the cigarette lighter. I don't know how long you drive for on average but with a permanent power supply your record time would only be limited to GB size.

I'm assuming this is so you can be an anonumous whistle blower, stick it to 'em :na:

http://www.rc-monster.com/forum/show...316#post328316

Careful Brian, If they really think that highly of themselves it doesn't mean you might not be put on their "List" after the media is shown the video ?
Or the day will come you really need a cop and you find yourself without much help.

I had a cop neighbor who was a real F'in tool. Watched him do a burn out with his patrol car in front of his house and then write a ticket for someone rolling through a stop sign at the end of the street. No B.S. They are bastards .

i had the pleasure of going on a school camping trip with a cop who had just gotten promoted, so boy was he a douche!!

i had gotten in a little trouble on the trip and he comes over to interrogate me about the whole situation! he wasnt even an effin teacher or anything

cops just feel like they have power at all times even when not in uniform. (not all cops.. just those ones who arrogant Aholes)

Since I want the camera to record all the time when driving (otherwise might not have time to click the record button when something happens), whatever I get would have to continuously record over and over (obviously erasing older content). Thus the need for a "rolling" ~5 minutes. None of the cameras I saw were clear about that. Most of the time, you click a button to start, and again to end.

I'm not worried about revenge since I can be an anonymous submitter.

As far as finding a cop when you need them, it never happens. I called them once because my hick neighbors were firing fireworks at various objects around the neighborhood (not up), and some were landing on my property - and it wasn't even the 4th. The cops never showed, so I went over there and threatened them with a beating if they didn't stop. They stopped. Another time, another neighbor up the street had some random guy walk in their house and start snooping around in the middle of the day. The people were home too! The mother was doing something in another room, but a kid was playing in the living room and started screaming when she saw the guy. The guy took off. They called the cops and they never showed up. That's just two instances on my street alone. They are good for nothing except bothering citizens.

Yup. Many cops are just legal bullies. And like bullies, they don't mess with real situations, just easy ones. There are some decent cops out there though, don't get me wrong. It's just that the bad to good cop ratio is a bit high.

Funny you mentioned this Brian because I've actually thought about this myself. It could be useful if manufacturers included cameras in their cars. Not only for cops but for hit and run incidents or the like. Of course the video could possibly be used against the driver if at fault.
As far as cops, I think a higher percentage of people who crave power and authority gravitate towards that job. Just as a pedophiles would probably want to be a teacher, day care provider or priest.
On the other hand all jobs have some sort of unofficial perks, maybe running red lights and such is theirs.

http://www.spycameras.com/

Just an idea, you might be able to hook a camera up to a laptop/netbook then set a script or something on the computer stop, erase, and record every five minutes. Might a more complex then you'd like but if all else fails it's worth a try.

Find out what the cops are using, that's maybe as close as you'll get.

Short of that, one of the keychain cams would be as good as you'll get, without IR obviously. Running off a DC-DC converter, and using a 16GB card you'll have nearly unlimited space. They are low-profile and the lens is in the laydown position. I really don't think you can do better for less. The timestamp would actually be a GOOD thing for your app as well. They are well under $50, (they are as low as $15) which means you could use more than one.

I kinda like that idea. Something small, cheap, and takes decent video. Ideally, the license plate or some other identifying characteristic should be decipherable on video to incriminate a specific officer. At first, I was thinking of getting one that does well at night too, but that's probably asking too much. Besides most of the crap I see has been happening during the day anyway. Got a link to a keychain one that you know is decent? I see stuff all over the place, but you never know what you're gonna get until you get it.

This thread will answer questions you didn't even know you had...
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1115052

And the specs for the good one-

Crap, that JPEG is unreadable isn't it?

lol, I can sort of make it out. :smile:

I know my FlyCamOne2 can continually record video, over-writing the previous video once the memory card (MicroSD) is full. You would want to use an external battery as the internal one is only 200mah, but that is easy as the cam has a connection/cradle for external hookup of a battery or receiver control cable. I haven't played with it much yet to test the video quality, but I'm pretty sure it's on par with all the other sub-$100 micro digital cams on the market.

I just scored one of the key chain jobbers for $13.60
http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Spy-Car-Key-...item19b7e1adf6
To cheap not to try ?

Here's some more on the keychain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8_0NuGkioI
http://www.chucklohr.com/808/

The FCO2 only supports a 2GB card, so that one's pretty much out.

You having good luck with yours champ?

Sweet.

Try to post a vid in my cam thread ay?

Shit these things are entertaining enough even strapped to a pet!

:lol: Where's the vid? :na:

"PET" Is that what you call your Crank ??
Don't think I wanna see videos of something hairy playing hide and seek :no:

Dam PP3310, Just noticed your avatar has Camel Toe.

A little trouble at home lately? Seems to be something on your mind. Off the topic (sorry Brian) but I guess I need a change

[IMG]http://www.rc-monster.com/forum/pict...&pictureid=413[/IMG]

I guess I'll continue the off-topic and ask a question: What is the deal with girls and cat ears and tail? Maybe it's because I'm not into anime, but if I was at a bar looking to hook up, any girl sporting a tail and a set of furry ears would get a polite but definite NO THANKS!.

To be honest, it has never interested me until I started looking for avatars. I figure it's all in the name of fun. If it's offensive to maybe some of the younger veiwers then I'll change but nobody has said anything.

My wife also thinks I'm disfunctional :oops::whip:

No, it doesn't matter to me, just curious that's all.

I haven't tested on my RC's yet, so not sure on how well it will perform while driving, or how well the remote receiver cable works. The tests I've done out of the vehicles have been pretty decent, but they don't deal with the vibrations and speed of putting the cam into an RC.

I don't see why the 2Gb MicroSD card limit would be a problem. BrianG said he was only looking to record the most recent 5 minutes of video, and 2Gb is enough to store far more than that. Regardless of the memory card capacity, the FlyCam is capable of continuous recording while overwriting the previous footage, which from what I've gleaned seems like what BrianG is aiming for. The FlyCamOne2 isn't the newest or greatest model, but it might do the trick perfectly for BrianG purposes.

Some good info about cops gone BAD,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal

lol, that's probably a bit more than I expect to record. I'm just looking to record the stupid crap cops do that they would stop/ticket other citizens for. Things like turning on the blues just to go through a light, burning rubber on take-off, excessive speeding for no reason, doing donuts in a T intersection of a secluded back road, etc.

True with the overwrite it may not be a problem.
You never know what you may end up filming however, or how long an 'altercation' may be...

if powered externally then the only limit to recording time is the card, The only other reason I'd see not to use the FCO is because it's slow going thru the functions, and most people wouldn't want to mess with it in a hurry.

For the OBV I'd just play with a few different mounting options, hope it works well for you.

Whatever camera I get will probably be the card type. With the amount of write cycles I will be putting through it, I'll probably hit the ~100k write cycle limit before too long where memory errors start happening. At least with the card-memory type, when that happens, I just get a new card instead of a whole new camera. A fast 1GB card should be plenty memory to hold around 5 minutes at high quality video.

Don't know if your still interested in this idea.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/HD-11-Mini-Ke...item3a63e69ec8

lol wow, thread back from the dead.

I will point out that we've tried using the 808 keychain camera (or whatever it's called) at nighttime, it does not work very well at all in low lighting conditions. We tried taking onboard 1:10 drifting footage at a school during nighttime, and even with the school's ambient sodium lighting (and the body shell LED's) the video was murky.

I have an SSD in my netbook (old 8.9" Aspire One), and it comes with a webcam that handle darkness ok but the FPS is quite low. If you have a better, external webcam mounted somewhere discreet you can leave a laptop running a video capture program that suits your needs (not sure of any, sorry) elsewhere in the car. Most software-based video capture programs can take video until the hdd is full unless the hdd is FAT filesystem. You don't even need an SSD depending on how smooth your roads are over there...even the basic netbooks come with 160GB hard drives, so unless you're shooting full HD you will have capacity to spare.

This guy has a ton of reviews of many different mini cameras and other technology stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uj26JjSiazQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Marginally closer to what you were looking for. This one has a wide veiw angle.
http://www.dinodirect.com/dvr-accide...html?affid=232