Techmoan review: Sena Prism Tube

Richard Berg

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Sena has been making BT accessories for awhile. Looks like they've now created a line of dedicated cameras to match. As of 7/21/2017, Techmoan calls the entry level Prism Tube his favorite helmet cam:


Any real world experience?
 
Nice. I do like tube cameras over the regular box shape as you can do more with those as it is seldom the additional depth of them are a issue with a install, and you more often run into install or practicality issues with the box shaped cameras.

But i still think a camera on a helmet look just about as silly you can get, with the top mounted ones being the icing on the cake.
So no doubt i would go for a bike mounted camera system.
 
So no doubt i would go for a bike mounted camera system.
There are a few real world issues with that setup, that's why many motorcyclists would rather use helmet cams:
- You have to unmount the camera from the bike and take it with you everytime you leave the bike unattended or you can say bye-bye to the camera.
- The fixed position in a bike only works on some scenarios. If you want to record, let's say, your daily commute or a trip to a scenic place, you'll have a very limited field of view and you won't capture some interesting things unless you point the bike in their direction.
- It's more prone to vibrations (unless the camera has a gyro function).
- Can get in the way of your movements and get knocked off inadvertently, unless you have a naked bike or a sports tourer and you install it out of the rider's way. Most sport bikes don't have enough space underneath the windshield to install the camera and if they have, there's always a high probability that on one side the FOV will be reduced or even blocked.

Just to mention a few. ;)
 
I agree.
And yes a bike dashcam got to be installed well so it is not just something you rip off, and at the same time also stealthy so there are a less chance of people seeing it in the first place.
The helmet are also a fixed position, at least i do hope the bikers are looking forward when driving, but otherwise sure it is faster to turn head than bike.
Vibrations yes, at least on those large displacement / few cylinders bikes, more smooth running balanced engines should not be that big problem i think.
Placement will be problematic yes, and you will need a sturdy mounting bracket for sure not least in relation to theft too.

I am not totally ruling out helmet cameras, but its just tat most options you see in use are pretty silly to me ( and i am by no means a guy that bother much with looks of many things )
But a few interesting options we have seen on this forum as concepts / kickstarter things and existing products, but i will not be driving around on my Nimbus looking like some sort of teletubby.
 
Here was one thing i forgot, depending on your riding position the helmet mounted camera will be more or less well aimed.
Would be cool if some one could make a nice thin 1 axis Gimbal to make the the camera on helmet was always horizontal no matter the drivers stance.
I have no experience in riding a motorcycle, but i am sure i could do just as good a job as most Danish motorcycle riders i encounter.

Most cars just can not drive behind another car, not even at the speed limit or a little over, for motorcyclists here that are 100 % can not drive behind anything at any speed.

Not dissing bikers,,, at least not more than i do myself or other motorists, when i see a biker coming up from behind i just put on my indicator and pull right as far as i can so he can pass as quick as he can and i can relax again.

EDIT: the only bikers i have not see displaying the " pass and pass now" attitude are the riders of extreme classics, like the old Danish Nimbus, i am pretty sure one of those have never overtaken me, and it is not like a Nimbus cant do +80 Km/h
 
I agree.
And yes a bike dashcam got to be installed well so it is not just something you rip off, and at the same time also stealthy so there are a less chance of people seeing it in the first place.
The helmet are also a fixed position, at least i do hope the bikers are looking forward when driving, but otherwise sure it is faster to turn head than bike.
Vibrations yes, at least on those large displacement / few cylinders bikes, more smooth running balanced engines should not be that big problem i think.
Placement will be problematic yes, and you will need a sturdy mounting bracket for sure not least in relation to theft too.

I am not totally ruling out helmet cameras, but its just tat most options you see in use are pretty silly to me ( and i am by no means a guy that bother much with looks of many things )
But a few interesting options we have seen on this forum as concepts / kickstarter things and existing products, but i will not be driving around on my Nimbus looking like some sort of teletubby.
The vibrations I was talking about were the ones caused by the poor state of some streets/roads more than the ones caused by the engine. :)

I'm also in favor of side-mounted helmet cameras, even if the helmet obstructs one of the edges of the picture, like in @mac's video. If I ever buy one it'll have to be something like a Drift, or a Sony or something tube-shaped.
One option I've seen that works well for box-shaped or cube-shaped cams is the chin-mount.
 
Yeah streets deteriorate fast, even here in the worlds best country where they are made of gold. :p

On the full face helmets i always felt like on the chin guard would be a perfect place to put a camera, and there are lots of room for it, so you could make it reasonably flat, maybe even a partly flexible housing.
But the problem with at least the crotch rockets ( Japanese bikes ) are the often changing riding position that i might be obsessing too much about.
For the Harley riders with ape-hanger handlebars there will be no problem, though it seem they rarely ride with a helmet.

The Danish police are actually launching a new initiative to check and verify that the people that have a doctors permission to ride a motorcycle without a helmet ( that be your biker gang people ) and drive a car without a seatbelt actually have a valid excuse and not just some BS story. :cool:
 
I ride and have a couple opinions based on actual experience.

Would I buy a camera from Sena (I use their BT comm on two of my helmets)? No, probably not. AFAICT there is no way to remotely turn them on and off. Can they be run by external battery power? Does it have built in GPS and image stabilization that works?

Here's some recent footage from the helmet cameras I use (Sony HDR-AS20 w/wifi remote):

(Youtube compression introduces lots of artifacts).

I also have Mobius cameras mounted on the bike that are always running (i.e. "dash cameras"): https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/mobius-c2-test-video.12996/page-2#post-182905

There is no substitute for using a helmet cam, when appropriate.
I ride bikes since 1989 and for the past 2 years I've been thinking about buying an action cam for my helmet but I can't decide on what to buy or whether to buy or not. I only ride occasionally, so I don't know if it's worth spending that money and not taking advantage of what I bought. I thought about buying a good action cam that could double as a dashcam but the hassle of having to switch the camera back and forth between the helmet and the car, not forgetting to charge the extra battery before I go for a ride and, most importantly, not forgetting the battery itself :rolleyes:, have been putting me off buying it. Then there's the helmet, that is in need of a replacement for more than 3 years (I'm waiting for a b€tt€r tim€, if you know what I mean), so if a buy a camera I'll have to stick with this helmet for a couple of years more and I don't know if it'll last that long, if a buy a helmet I can't buy the camera, at least not right now.

Do I overthink things? I guess I do. :D
 
But the problem with at least the crotch rockets ( Japanese bikes )
You're forgetting that there are also German and Italian crotch rockets. ;)
 
i still think a camera on a helmet look just about as silly you can get, with the top mounted ones being the icing on the cake.
Someone really should come up with a phrase to describe people with those ugly knobs mounted over their heads. ;)

When I get back on a motorbike, you can be sure I'll have a camera of some sort. But I won't have a gopro or lookalike on my crash helmet. I don't really care what people think about how I look ... but come on, you have to draw the line somewhere!
 
Of the bike vids I've seen I like the top or chin mounts best, but I'm with Kamkar1 on not liking the 'teletubby' look of top-mounted box cams :p A Mobius or tube style cam doesn't look so silly there. I'd prefer a chin-mount myself.

On side-mounting I saw a vid where a guy got clipped from the left rear by another rider and fell but you saw nothing from his cam but the fall :( Vids from his buddies behind him showed what happened. I'm not sure that anything would have shown had his cam been mounted on the left instead of the right. but then you might have saw something in his mirror on that side. Or not. Maybe no forward-facing cam could have caught that, I dunno, but a side-mount does have the least FOV of helmet-mounted cams regardless ;)

I recently got an idea for what could be the perfect helmet cam but I want to look into what it would take to make it then get a design copyright or patent before I give away any details. All I will say for now is that there is not yet anything like it, it could be competitively priced, and my idea is so radically good that I might even take the helmet-cam market over :cool:

Phil
 
p.s. I'm fairly sure the OP doesn't appreciate the thread crapping. Seems like a widespread phenomom on this forum, which is why I don't post here too often.

If you don't have anything useful to contribute to a thread... don't.

/I'm out.
I don't see any post talking about anything but helmet cameras, including yours. There's nothing off topic on this thread, in my opinion.

Anyway, I only got around to watch the video now and I have to say that this camera fits probably more than 50% of the riders' needs: simple to use, no fussing around with settings, the 3 mins seems to be an adequate loop time and the fact that it comes with an external mic and an external speaker is something unheard of in a "budget" action camera. Another plus that caught my attention was the fact that it comes with a removable, non-adhesive mount, which is a good option if you have multiple helmets or you don't want a permanent mount stuck to your helmet.
I really like that they didn't put in a crazy wide lens. This one has a FOV that covers the road from side to side and gives you a more real perception of the distance. After all, why do you need a wide angle lens in a helmet camera when you can move your head to capture what the lens doesn't capture, right?

All in all, much better than many people might think.
 
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If you don't have anything useful to contribute to a thread... don't.

Negative opinions ARE a positive contribution. The form factor of the standard go pro camera and its imitators is appalling for many of the uses they are put to, especially for helmet mounting. They may have great functionality, but hanging on to the traditional camera shape to appeal to the "pros" (don't make me laugh) was incredibly blinkered.

I'm not saying they aren't fit for any purpose - clearly they serve some purposes perfectly. But on a crash helmet they are very clumsy.

I saw a camera designed to go on a horse rider's hat the other day. It was very discrete and practical. I expect the technical spec was poor, but that's the kind of thing bike riders deserve, and I find it hard to believe nobody's stepped up to the plate yet.

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
 
They may have great functionality, but hanging on to the traditional camera shape to appeal to the "pros" (don't make me laugh) was incredibly blinkered.
Not to mention that road bike helmets, even the ones like Techmoan's, are designed to be aerodynamic. Sticking a "brick" on the side or on top goes against that principle.
 
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