Saturday, 21 February 2015

I have a project!

What is winter good for if not to provide us with free time to do ‘stuff’ to our motorcycles? I have been pretty busy in the shop doing various things but I was beginning to think I’d make it through to spring without a bike project.  Then I came across this post over at Richard’s where he described modifying his GoPro case to allow the camera to be run off bike power.

Brilliant! No more missed opportunities because of a dead battery, no more pulling off onto the shoulder to dig out a replacement battery, and, as a bonus, no more having to pull the camera from the case to upload videos. All I needed was a spare case and a power point of some sort.

It turns out the case was easy as they already make them with an open side for exactly this purpose, and my eBay friends in Thailand will send one to me no problem, free shipping, for the princely sum of $13 (Cdn). Done! 691-657_BShould be here in a few weeks.

Now all I have to do is decide what type of power point I want to install. There is no shortage of options so I can see myself spending more than a few minutes navigating my way through online catalogues looking for that perfect solution. But there’s no rush as it feels like this winter will be with us for quite a while yet.

7 comments:

  1. RichardM21 February 2015 at 21:13

    I thought about the skeleton case but wanted to retain some water resistance. I'll be interested to see how it works for you. I finally settled on a dual USB port that gets installed into a panel which I still need to make. For initial testing, I just used the car charger that came with my Wasabi GoPro batteries. It worked fine but the power adapter kept vibrating loose from the lighter socket.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RichardM21 February 2015 at 21:14

    You can power the camera off of the Arduino board. Isn't there 5V available?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Canajun21 February 2015 at 21:23

      Richard - I could power it off the Arduino, but that's also battery powered. Might last a little longer, but not really a long term solution. As for the power port, I don't have an outlet other than the hookup for the battery tender. That would work in the short term but I'll do something more (semi) permanent I think. I like the idea of a dual USB port because then I could use it to power both the camera and the remote (I think).

      Delete
    2. RichardM21 February 2015 at 21:30

      Oh, I thought that the Arduino was already powered off of the bike (also USB!)

      Delete
    3. Canajun21 February 2015 at 21:55

      No, that's part of the next upgrade when I redesign the camera attachment. Right now it's just hanging off the servo shaft which isn't very strong.

      Delete
  3. Coop a.k.a. Coopdway22 February 2015 at 08:29

    I've got the 2 prong SAE connectors on every bike. Some terminate up by the bars for tank bags or GPS, some branch out in tank bags. On the Helix, there are 3, one beneath my hip under the seat, one up front and one in the trunk in back.

    From there I use the lighter socket pigtails, USB receiver or another SAE branch. There's power everywhere :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Canajun22 February 2015 at 11:53

      Coop - That's a reasonable approach, then everything can just plug into one of those connectors and you're not limited to USB only.

      Delete

Please feel free to comment, but any comments with commercial links will be deleted. You have been warned.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)