dave wrote:
Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the police I'm
sure.

There are lots. They're 'free', if you haven't changed to a new model
within the last year (18 months with some places).

They're fixed to the back of mobiles these days, y'see. Just about every
phone with a camera will do video capture. Rubbish resolution, won't
store more than some tens of seconds (some will take addon memory cards
to let you store more).

Economics of mass manufacture and of handset subsidy by mobile-phone
operators mean that this is cheaper than just about anything you can d-i-y.

Stefek

Huge wrote:
dave writes:
Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the police I'm
sure.


There are cheap solid-state digital video cameras on eBay all the time. For example;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...9769 115&rd=1


There may be legal ramifications, though. Videotaping someone without their
consent may be an offence.

not in a public place it isn't


RT

dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the police I'm
sure.

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the rear
view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit the
"record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before* you
hit the button. That way you can record something that just happened.

It was being developed IIRC as a "black box" type system for accident
recording. The above manual record was a facility added on. Not sure if
it is in production yet though.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"Huge" wrote in message
...

There are cheap solid-state digital video cameras on eBay all the time.
For example;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...9769 115&rd=1


There may be legal ramifications, though. Videotaping someone without
their
consent may be an offence.

Surely you can in a public place? Otherwise cameras and video cameras on
holiday would be illegal?




a

In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful
yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened.
Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the
police I'm
sure.

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just
happened.

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

--
Mike Barnes

Mike Barnes wrote:
In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just
happened.

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

30m at 150kilobytes/second = about 256M of memory.
And, as you'd likely want not one, but several cameras (rear, front, sides),
it mounts up fast.
1Gb is available as flash, but it'll add a hundred or so quid onto the price
of the unit ATM.
30s however would only be a few tens of meg.

And you really don't want to use a hard disk, for various reasons.

In article ,
Mike Barnes writes:

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

Some engine management units record speed, throttle, breaking, etc
for post crash diagnosis. The recorded data has been used to
convict a driver in the US, where it showed he was speeding and
took no avoiding action when he killed someone coming out of a
side turning, contrary to what he had been saying in the absence
of any whitnesses.

--
Andrew Gabriel

"Huge" wrote in message
...
dave writes:
...
There may be legal ramifications, though. Videotaping someone without
their
consent may be an offence.

I recently asked the police about this, and they say that there are no
restrictions in public places. If mounted on your property, just ensure it
does not overlook a school or someone else's property. On the road, I would
guess it's free-for-all taping.

-- JJ

Ian Stirling wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:

In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:

dave wrote:


Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful


There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just
happened.

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.


30m at 150kilobytes/second = about 256M of memory.
And, as you'd likely want not one, but several cameras (rear, front, sides),
it mounts up fast.
1Gb is available as flash, but it'll add a hundred or so quid onto the price
of the unit ATM.
30s however would only be a few tens of meg.

And you really don't want to use a hard disk, for various reasons.

I don't think you could use flash memory for the fifo it wouldn't last
for more than a few months. There is a limit to the number of writes to
each cell in a flash card. It used to be around 10,000 but I believe
some modern cards are up to 100,000 (which might make it practical).
Computers that run off flash cards use write load balancing to even out
the ware on the card but that wouldn't be possible with a video device
that used the whole card as a buffer.

In uk.d-i-y, Ian Stirling wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just
happened.

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

30m at 150kilobytes/second = about 256M of memory.
And, as you'd likely want not one, but several cameras (rear, front, sides),
it mounts up fast.
1Gb is available as flash, but it'll add a hundred or so quid onto the price
of the unit ATM.
30s however would only be a few tens of meg.

Actually one front-facing camera would be just fine, for me, anyway. And
I think I've got a couple of 256Mb flash cards lying around. It would be
sensible if, like an ordinary digital still camera, the unit allowed the
user to insert any size card according to their budget etc.

And you really don't want to use a hard disk, for various reasons.

I didn't foresee using a hard disk, but I'd be interested to know what
those reasons are. The hard disk in my iPod seems to work quite happily
(read-only, though) in the glove box.

--
Mike Barnes

"dave" wrote in message
...
Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted ramming
by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature tv
camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or
a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful
yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of
the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the
police I'm
sure.

The problem is that a cheap system simply won't give you the quality you
need for an evidence quality video. Even some commercial CCTV surveillance
systems don't give a good enough resolution to be useful. There was a recent
case where the Police were able to recognise who stole a computer system,
because it was recorded on a webcam, but the evidence was useful mainly
because it got the crook to admit his guilt. It would have been difficult to
present a case in Court that relied solely on the video.

Most cheap systems give about 370 TV lines, which can be useful when viewed
live, but which gives very poor quality recordings. For evidence quality
monochrome videos, it is usual these days to work at around 570 TVL.

Colin Bignell

doozer wrote:
Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.
I don't think you could use flash memory for the fifo it wouldn't last
for more than a few months.

Why use any local memory at all? Just stream the video continuously into
the government's video traffic analysis computer, and every car becomes
a police camera monitoring the driving of the car in front.

Add a proximity ID card reader to the ignition switch to detect who the
driver is ...

Owain

Huge wrote:
Andrew Gabriel writes:
Some engine management units record speed, throttle, breaking
Braking.

Maybe not in the cited case ;-)

Owain

Huge wrote:

(Andrew Gabriel) writes:

In article ,
Mike Barnes writes:

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

Some engine management units record speed, throttle, breaking


Braking.

You're welcome.


They record breaking as well.

Ian Stirling wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just
happened.

Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.

30m at 150kilobytes/second = about 256M of memory.
And, as you'd likely want not one, but several cameras (rear, front, sides),
it mounts up fast.
1Gb is available as flash, but it'll add a hundred or so quid onto the price
of the unit ATM.
30s however would only be a few tens of meg.

And you really don't want to use a hard disk, for various reasons.

there are no problems using hard drives in vehicles.

unless, maybe, a rally car.



RT

dave wrote:
Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the police I'm
sure.

http://www.henrys.co.uk/cctv/dvr101.htm

for £299 it's probably cheaper to diy, as usual, with a sub £80 2 port cam card,
a SFF case running on in car 12V with a 80Gb laptop HDD with LitePC OS a
7" display (if required )and a couple of medium resolution bullet cameras.

sourced via the old scrapheap challenge of course.


hth



RT

Mike Barnes wrote:
In uk.d-i-y, Ian Stirling wrote:
Mike Barnes wrote:
In uk.d-i-y, John Rumm wrote:
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
snip
Actually one front-facing camera would be just fine, for me, anyway. And
I think I've got a couple of 256Mb flash cards lying around. It would be
sensible if, like an ordinary digital still camera, the unit allowed the
user to insert any size card according to their budget etc.

And you really don't want to use a hard disk, for various reasons.

I didn't foresee using a hard disk, but I'd be interested to know what
those reasons are. The hard disk in my iPod seems to work quite happily
(read-only, though) in the glove box.

In most of the car, it's going to get quite hot at times.
Vibration specs are generally OK, if mounted sensibly, the problem is
that hard drives fail rather often, in that a large fraction of them
will have stopped working in 5 years.

And will a hard drive that you buy in 5-15 years be electrically, physically,
and software compatible?

In article ,
Ian Stirling writes:
In most of the car, it's going to get quite hot at times.
Vibration specs are generally OK, if mounted sensibly, the problem is
that hard drives fail rather often, in that a large fraction of them
will have stopped working in 5 years.

Hum, not my experience. I've used a number of my own hard
drives longer than that, and never had a single failure.
If I think of the many hundreds of drives I've used at work
over the last 10 years, I can count failures on one hand,
and mostly there was either an obvious cause or I didn't
know the drive's history from new and it was probably
previously abused.

And will a hard drive that you buy in 5-15 years be electrically, physically,
and software compatible?

All the drives I bought 15 years ago are still usable in
current computers. However, at some point in the near
future, I expect parallel ATA interfaces to vanish from
motherboards, as SATA drive sales very rapidly overtook
PATA drive sales in middle of last year.

--
Andrew Gabriel

On Mon, 30 May 2005 14:13:12 UTC, "Jason Judge"
wrote:

I recently asked the police about this, and they say that there are no
restrictions in public places. If mounted on your property, just ensure it
does not overlook a school or someone else's property. On the road, I would
guess it's free-for-all taping.

If mounted on your property (for surveillance) it must be static and not
steerable...

Owain wrote:
doozer wrote:
Surely it can't be long before such systems become commonplace. It
doesn't seem unreasonable with today's technology to make it a 30
*minutes* memory, and to also record GPS info (location, speed, date and
time). I'd buy one.
I don't think you could use flash memory for the fifo it wouldn't last
for more than a few months.

Why use any local memory at all? Just stream the video continuously into
the government's video traffic analysis computer, and every car becomes
a police camera monitoring the driving of the car in front.

Add a proximity ID card reader to the ignition switch to detect who the
driver is ...

An episode of South Park comes to mind.

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2005 14:13:12 UTC, "Jason Judge"
wrote:

I recently asked the police about this, and they say that there
are no restrictions in public places. If mounted on your
property, just ensure it does not overlook a school or someone
else's property. On the road, I would guess it's free-for-all
taping.

If mounted on your property (for surveillance) it must be static
and not steerable...

I'm surpised to hear that - under what law?

Wouldn't the best option be to mount a mobile phone on your dash? Most now
come with a video option at a click of a button and what ever happens
presumeably you're going to have to activate it, unless you want something
set to constant recording.

On Mon, 30 May 2005 18:04:55 UTC, "Steve Walker"
wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2005 14:13:12 UTC, "Jason Judge"
wrote:

I recently asked the police about this, and they say that there
are no restrictions in public places. If mounted on your
property, just ensure it does not overlook a school or someone
else's property. On the road, I would guess it's free-for-all
taping.

If mounted on your property (for surveillance) it must be static
and not steerable...

I'm surpised to hear that - under what law?

Not sure of the law, but here's the guidance notes from the Information
Commissioner. I had cause to look at these when I put in CCTV after a
spate of vandalism.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?pg=SR&cID=5740

In message , dave
writes
Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a miniature
tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened. Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the
police I'm
sure.

But, would you have remembered to switch it on in the heat of the moment
?

--
geoff

In message , John
Rumm writes
dave wrote:

Have been involved with a road rage incident yesterday (attempted
ramming by two
lunatics) I just got to wondering whether there is perhaps a
miniature tv camera
system available with limited (say 1 minute) recording time available (or a
diy'able version) for a reasonable cost? It would have been useful
yesterday to
have simply been able to press a button and capture what happened.
Most of the
action was in front of me and the video would have been useful to the
police I'm
sure.

There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just happened.

Again, you have to remember to switch it off before you overwrite the
important bit

--
geoff

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2005 18:04:55 UTC, "Steve Walker"
wrote:

I'm surpised to hear that - under what law?

Not sure of the law, but here's the guidance notes from the
Information Commissioner. I had cause to look at these when I put
in CCTV after a spate of vandalism.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?pg=SR&cID=5740

Ah, fascinating. Many thanks for that, Bob.

It appears from my skim read that you can have steerable cameras, as long as
you don't use them to "pick up what particular people are doing". There's
a grey area in that which is wider than the English Channel, of course....
)

On 30 May 2005, RedOnRed wrote

Wouldn't the best option be to mount a mobile phone on your dash?
Most now come with a video option at a click of a button and what
ever happens presumeably you're going to have to activate it,
unless you want something set to constant recording.

Would it be legal to reach over and touch the phone to start recording
while you're driving, or would using the camera function fall foul of
the "must-not-handle" laws phones and driving?

(Just stirring the pot a bit, y'unnerstan'....)

--
Cheers,
Harvey

raden wrote in news
Most of the action was in front of me and the
video would have been useful to the police I'm
sure.

But, would you have remembered to switch it on in the heat of the
moment ?

I think you might find the police working on their prime directive of being
a total waste of space and all our taxes

mike

On Mon, 30 May 2005 21:30:10 UTC, "Steve Walker"
wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2005 18:04:55 UTC, "Steve Walker"
wrote:

I'm surpised to hear that - under what law?

Not sure of the law, but here's the guidance notes from the
Information Commissioner. I had cause to look at these when I put
in CCTV after a spate of vandalism.

http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?pg=SR&cID=5740

Ah, fascinating. Many thanks for that, Bob.

It appears from my skim read that you can have steerable cameras, as long as
you don't use them to "pick up what particular people are doing". There's
a grey area in that which is wider than the English Channel, of course....
)

Yes, the anti- "security man perv follows girls in short skirts" bit!

Yes, I remember that now (it's a while since I put in my camera...). I
was probably thinking that the only way you could prove that was to make
it non steerable...!

Hi Harvey,
I am not a lawyer, but isn't the issue about "hand held" devices?
So if it's in a cradle, it's okay?

Someone will know better (errr, Help!)

Mungo

Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
Would it be legal to reach over and touch the phone to start recording
while you're driving, or would using the camera function fall foul of
the "must-not-handle" laws phones and driving?

(Just stirring the pot a bit, y'unnerstan'....)

--
Cheers,
Harvey

On 31 May 2005, wrote

Hi Harvey,
I am not a lawyer, but isn't the issue about "hand held" devices?
So if it's in a cradle, it's okay?

Someone will know better (errr, Help!)

Certainly not me!

I understood from some marketing stuff -- about the lousiest authority
one can cite -- that to be "hands free", a handset had to be not only
mounted in a cradle, but also remotely operable. (That is, I was led
to believe that the law was broken if you had to touch the handset to
make it answer/dial etc.)

But IANAL either, so beats me....

--
Cheers,
Harvey

In message ,
raden wrote:

In message , John
Rumm writes
[...]
There is one I say demonstrated that was mounted in the back of the
rear view mirror, that also employied a 30 second fifo. So when you hit
the "record" button, it would start recording from 30 seconds *before*
you hit the button. That way you can record something that just happened.

Again, you have to remember to switch it off before you overwrite the
important bit

That's been known to catch out air investigators too, from both angles
because the "black boxes" are designed to stop recording when power is
removed.

In the case of a catastrophic failure this can cause problems if that
failure is loss of electrical power rather than break-up of the
aircraft. The plane may continue to fly for several minutes (at the very
least it probably has several tens of thousands of feet to fall) and
data vital to an investigation may not be recorded. The one the
investigators are often most keen to get is the Cockpit Voice Recorder
because the pilots may have diagnosed the problem but no longer be
around to pass on their knowledge. Latest models have short-term battery
back-up, which could once have caused problems with overwriting but
probably doesn't any more (see below).

In the case of a non-catastrophic failure the problem is the FIFO nature
of the CVR. Until recently it was only legally required to record the
last 30 minutes of cockpit sounds. In cases such as the 747 which lost
its tail yet flew around for three or four hours before crashing, or the
DC10 the pilots managed to fly back to an airport using just the
differential thrust from the three engines, data from the actual time of
the cause of the problem has been overwritten.

These days more and more airlines are fitting digital devices with much
longer memories just for their own use and it seems as though it won't
be long before this is mandated worldwide for the black boxes too. It's
possible they'll mandate that the devices should have enough memory to
store data for the whole flight, and possibly for the whole of the
previous flight too. They are also looking into externally-mounted
cameras so that the pilots can see the outside of their craft.

I don't think it'll be long before data/audio/video recording in and
from a car is both possible, affordable and probably legislated for.

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove: http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/
Two free issues: http://www.livtech.co.uk/ Living With Technology
.... Violence never solves anything, but it sure makes me feel good.

"Martin Angove" wrote in message
...

I don't think it'll be long before data/audio/video recording in and
from a car is both possible, affordable and probably legislated for.


IIRC there was a case in the USA where Ford (I think) kept a record of what
the car was doing.
This was used in a few cases where the driver had claimed the car did
something and it showed driver error in these cases.
I think it was deemed illegal as it infringed on the drivers rights (the
right to lie in court I assume).