CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

Affordable rear camera options?

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  1. Yodhrin
    Member

    As I ride more on the roads, I begin to feel the need for a rear camera(and one of those lovely neon "you are being filmed" icon signs I've seen floating about cycling twitter), but frankly I'm not rolling in spare cash at the moment - are there any affordable options?

    From the various listicles and reviews, my first impression is that the cheap options either don't provide enough resolution to guarantee catching a license plate, or have teeny-weeny batteries that will last 90 minutes if you're lucky; then there's a jump up into the multi-hundred-quid range without much in between. Am I missing something?

    Posted 2 years ago #

  2. Frenchy
    Member

    Earlier versions of the Cycliq Fly6 would probably have fit your criteria, at just under £100 and with ~6 hour battery life.

    Unfortunately the new version added a load of bells and whistles like Bluetooth connection and a Smartphone app, and the price went up considerably. They're now £200, although I think they do fairly frequent sales - I bought mine in a "Black Friday" sale at, I think, a 40% discount.

    I realise this didn't exactly answer your question, but it might be helfpul anyway.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  3. Yodhrin
    Member

    Yeah the Cycliq stuff is nice but pricey. The Fly6 is also only 720p IIRC, that seems like it might cause issues pulling number plates from the footage.

    The idea occurred to me - do any of the more affordable/older(so bought secondhand) action cams allow you to film while "charging"? You can get pretty compact reasonably high capacity battery banks for ~30 quid these days, and I'm sure I could rig up some shonky mounting system for both.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  4. ejstubbs
    Member

    @Yodhrin: The Fly6 is also only 720p IIRC, that seems like it might cause issues pulling number plates from the footage.

    This is a screenshot of footage from my Fly6:

    That's about as close as the following vehicle* had to be for the registration plate to be adequately visible (it's actually easier to read in the video, rather than as a still). I think it's OK if you want evidence of being harrasssed/close-passed. Maybe not so great if the vehicle was passing in the other direction (in which case you might have blur issues as well anyway) but that's why you also have a front-facing camera, n'est ce pas?

    I like the spinning red light around the lens that subtly reminds drivers that they are being videoed. The actual rear light functions are pretty good too.

    You may be able to find second-hand Fly6s on eBay, especially if you don't actually want the latest all-bells-and-whistles version.

    * The vehicle in question in this case having followed me through the Braid Road closure (before it was opened up southbound), including mounting the pavement in order to get past the barriers. It was an Interserv van, for what that's worth.

    Posted 2 years ago #

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