Front / Rear facing bike mount camera / DVR solutions?

[Moike]

So given I'll probably actually be riding regularly again on public roads (and given a friend was just hit/run today on his bike) I'm looking for recommendations for hands-off auto-record front / rear facing cameras/DVR for the streetbike.

I'd prefer:

• Permanent mount front and rear.
• Wire into the 12v system so I don't have to worry about batteries.
• Auto loop record on an SD card
• Auto start/stop without me having to remember to open an app and start / stop the cameras.
• No helmet mounts, I tried helmet mount cameras while racing and hated the drag.

In my daily-driver pickup I have 1440/60fps front/rear facing dashcams that auto start/stop so I don't even have to think about them aside from checking for SD card errors once a week.

Looking for the motorcycle equivalent of that setup. What's the hot item these days? Google search for gear and reviews is useless as it's returning all paid SEO and sponsored hits from fake review sites.

 

[Marcoose]

Danate/Nate has a nice set-up that pretty much describes what you need. I reckon the system might have improved since. Look him up.

 

[sniper1rfa]

I have an Innovv K2. Aside from some annoying design flaws around the power management when the bike is off, it's been reliable. If you don't need the parking mode that's an easy fix. It's 1080p/30. The 720/60 mode is frame doubling and therefore worthless.

Supposedly they've improved the power drain while off, but I haven't seen anybody confirm that.

 

[Junkie]

If you attach it to a switched power source, power draw with the bike off shouldn't be a problem.

Or do they really need full time power?

 

[Climber]

The solution that I've come up with for powering items on my Goldwing is to use a USB battery backup instead of wiring it into my bike, that avoids lots of issues that might come up and for around $20 you can get a 20 mAh battery that should drive the camera's for any length of ride you'd want to take.

BTW, OP, are those roller boots in your avatar a real thing?

 

[Junkie]

http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=337911

yes, it's real

 

[sniper1rfa]

If you attach it to a switched power source, power draw with the bike off shouldn't be a problem.

They come with a delayed relay, that allows the DVR to save and quit before being powered down after the ignition is cut off. It's solid state, and has a power output and a trigger out, which is what allows the graceful shutdown and parking mode. If you put it on switched power, you might end up with a corrupted last file? I don't know.

The easiest way to preserve the graceful shutdown is to wire a diode in series with the ground wire on the relay, which tricks the system into thinking the battery is dead. Saves the graceful shutdown, disables parking mode.

Other folks have just put it on switched power, but I can't vouch for it.

 

[Moike]

I have an Innovv K2. Aside from some annoying design flaws around the power management when the bike is off, it's been reliable. If you don't need the parking mode that's an easy fix. It's 1080p/30. The 720/60 mode is frame doubling and therefore worthless.

Supposedly they've improved the power drain while off, but I haven't seen anybody confirm that.

I'm going to give the Innovv K2 a shot.

 

[sniper1rfa]

Cool. I would read through the forums on their website to see what kind of problems you might expect, along with dashcamtalk, before committing. It's not a 100% fleshed out product - more of a beta.

 

[295566]

I'm going to give the Innovv K2 a shot.

Hopefully their quality has improved. Mine never worked more than two weeks at a time. Had to send units back to China 3 times before I gave up.

I really wanted to like Innovv but it seemed their cheap Chinesium build quality didn't work on a demanding environment like a moto.

 

[Alan_Hepburn]

To read a really good, and thorough, review check out this web forum

 

[Moike]

BTW, OP, are those roller boots in your avatar a real thing?

Yes...

 

[Moike]

So, an update... The Innovv kit arrived.

The camera mounts pictured on their k2 product page website...

...are for sure not what shows up in the box.

The hot garbage stamped steel mounts included don't even fit the camera body securely even when shimmed with the included rubber strip.

I sent e-mail off to support with a "I'd like the mounts I was supposed to receive as pictured on your website or this whole box of bullshit goes back to Amazon with gusto." tagline... we'll see where that goes.

Honestly, for the 418 bucks this cost, I'm not at all impressed with the Android software and overall functionality of the UI.

 

[mean dad]

I'm with numbers mcdigits up there. I wanted to like them but just can't vouch for the product with good conscience. Mine worked sporadically at best and I'm pretty sure it's just dead weight at this point.

 

[sniper1rfa]

Looks like that was 'improved' a while ago. Mine came with the aluminum ones, which work fine.

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threa...nnovv-k2-c5-easier-to-adjust-the-angle.36689/

 

[Moike]

A followup to my followup, they responded a bit ago.

(begin)
Hi Michael,

I have explained the material is the same for these two mounts, The original bracket is too difficult to install, and the new bracket sent to you is more flexible and easier to adjust the angle.
If you insist on need the old mounts, I checked in the warehouse, there are several mounts in stock.

Please give us your address and phone number, we will arrange to send two mounts to you. Thanks
The tracking number will be sent to you once be shipped.

Best Regards

Dolly Zhang
(end)

I insisted that I needed the 'old' mounts, so we'll see what arrives.

 

[Moike]

So an update, I ended up fabricating my own brackets to hold the mounts.

Bike is finally buttoned up so I'll take it for a spin sometime in the next few days and see how the image quality is.

They're unobtrusive enough that I don't think anybody would notice them unless I pointed them out.

 

[matjam]

I have tried a few systems, the innov for one and some other alibaba systems. They’re all garbage so far. Noise from the electrics interferes and you get all kinds of weird effects.

Let us know how you go with the innov. It may just have been my tigers electronics are particularly noisy but honestly it should be designed to handle that.

 

[Moike]

Finally got a chance to get out and give the system a shakedown.

It seems to function without issue, and on my last couple tests captured front / rear video without errors.

As long as you're using it strictly as an auto start/stop 'dashcam' and not a 'capture my cool ride up 9 so I can post it to social media' cam it works as designed.

Since the wireless connectivity to my smartphone is 2.4ghz the transfer rate when moving videos off the MicroSD card is painfully slow. The fastest way would be to pull the MicroSD card from the DVR and transfer directly to a computer using a USB 3.0 card reader. Since I have no intention of ever doing that and want to use it strictly as an 'evidence of incident' DVR it works fine.

I would like to see a firmware update in the future that would allow it to automatically connect to my wireless network when in range so I could write some glue to auto-archive data off to my NAS.

Here's a couple test clips, the raw video looks far better, Youtube's compression algorithm stomps all over the video quality even when set to HD.

Front cam:


youtu.be/-lwgWPeAkO4

Rear cam:


youtu.be/b2CxCi8AGU0

 

[Marcoose]

That's an awesome report. Thank you!

The sound quality is far superior than I would've expected.

Did you connect it on the ignition harness to auto-start/stop as soon as you turn the key? (It'd be nice to keep it recording even if the bike stalled after a crash. You know, more evidence of incident.)

Please update again with the looping set-up. It'd be interesting to see how the system handles the end of the card.

Thanks again. This is very nice.