The GoPro Hero4 and new cheap $130 / £100 Hero

[reverend]

I just saw this article over at Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/29/...0602&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

There's an amazing video here:

Not only is the Hero4 on the way with great 4k specs (probably Ambarella A9) but they've announced a new low cost camera which sounds like it's waterproof and is going to probably cause a lot of issues for the clones as now the price is dropping a lot of people will just go with the name they've heard of already.

 

[jokiin]

the $130 price will put some heat on the new Polaroid model also

 

[Dashmellow]

I wonder what chip-set is in the low end model?

 

[jokiin]

I'd guess it will be A7 based going by the spec

 

[Dashmellow]

How long do you think it may take for the A9 chip to show up in a dash cam? The available frame rates seem like a natural for this use even if it would be expensive in the early models.

 

[jokiin]

How long do you think it may take for the A9 chip to show up in a dash cam? The available frame rates seem like a natural for this use even if it would be expensive in the early models.

I expect someone will at least announce some sort of 'world first with A9 processor' model before too long, I'd reasonably expect about a year after that before they actually work properly and be a viable solution though, they're always buggy as hell when first released and it takes forever to get sorted

 

[Dashmellow]

That's about what I was expecting you to say, I guess. Hopefully, people like you will start looking into doing something exciting and worthwhile with the chip sooner than later.

 

[jokiin]

I think the A7 is only just starting to become stable now and will still take some more time to mature yet, unless someone big and important comes along with an A9 project I can't see it developing too soon

 

[Dashmellow]

1080p/120fps would be pretty cool.

 

[jokiin]

I agree, for a sport cam though they get used for shorter periods of time which is much less of a challenge than what we need the cameras for

 

[Dashmellow]

I agree, for a sport cam though they get used for shorter periods of time which is much less of a challenge than what we need the cameras for

That makes sense. I think one of the things that obviously needs to be addressed in dash cams is the heat issue, especially if performance is increased. I often wonder if some of those really tiny 5 volt brushless fans I've seen available would be a viable solution.

 

[kamkar]

Really tiny 12 V fans for sure dont work, or they do work, but the sound of them is a joy killer.

I still think the best thing that could happen on the dashcam market is that we get way more light sensetive CMOS chips, so we can get night footage as good as todays day footage is in respect to reading licenceplates.

Not that i would mind seeing a 4 x 1080P / 30 fps dashcam with remote lenses and a SSD on the marked, but i dont expect to see that any time soon.

For the prize of the new gopro black i could build myself a whole drone and outfit it with a mobius and telemetry providing my 8 channel transmitter is of the useable kind the copter hardware can work with.

 

[jokiin]

I think the logical move will be remote camera solutions, keeping the processing heat out of the window will help a lot

 

[Dashmellow]

I think jokiin is right about the remote camera solutions but tiny fans make so little noise that the sound would be negligible in a typical vehicle environment. Probably the issue would be isolating the microphone from the fan noise inside the housing. Some of these 20mm x 20mm 5V DC fans have pretty low db ratings.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah the MIC would proberly allso have to go on a wire for remote install, and its allso true a slow moving fan run pretty silent.

My computer is watercooled and house 8 120 mm fans, and thats only possible with low noice fans and then the controller witch handle them never get over 8 volts to any of the fans.
Sitting idle most fans are getting less than 6 volts, and if i push the cpu and GFX card hard ( both watercooled ) the 2 fans on the rediator get to around 8 volts ( regulated by watertemperature so the fans need the water to heat up first before the controller react to that and spin up the fans )

Cant remember how many CFM my fans are on but its pretty low due to ther low noice nature, if i recall right i think they do around 900 - 1000 RPM at 12 V

Allso i think that if the heart of a dashcam system is large enuff to house a SSD and made from the right material, it should be possible to make do with passive cooling alone.
This offcourse mean that the hot parts on the PCB is in contact with the housing so it can absorbe the heat and dissipate it on the outside.

 

[Dashmellow]

There was some discussion here awhile ago about using Peltier Effect tiles to cool down the DSP in a dash cam. I think it could be a novel idea worth exploring but no doubt it probably wouldn't be practical. They are used for cooling computer chips in some installations though.

 

[kamkar]

Impractical, beside the peltier allso have a hot side and if thats not cooled its invane, and they eat up a lot of power, the ones i have is around 70 watt, and i quickly stopped playing with them.
Often watercooling was often used to remove the heat from the hot side of a TEC element.

Extreme cooling of computers is best done with some form of liquid gas, and its allso too expensive for my likeling, so i lowered my ambitions and proceeded with casual cooling for a moderate overclock but with a lower noice level.

 

[soundesciple]

A Water cooled Dash cam, with SSD storage, 4k video streamed to our smart phones via the cloud what more do we need. Ill have one of those please

 

[GJHS]

I just saw this article over at Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/29/...0602&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

Not only is the Hero4 on the way with great 4k specs (probably Ambarella A9) but they've announced a new low cost camera which sounds like it's waterproof and is going to probably cause a lot of issues for the clones as now the price is dropping a lot of people will just go with the name they've heard of already.

Everyone is anxiously awaiting the real SJ5000 with the A7 which should best the new GoPro basic Hero. Either way, the clones will have to step up their game and we will win.

 

[Dashmellow]

It will be interesting to actually do a comparison between the SJ5000 and the new Hero to see which one performs the best. As we know the firmware and overall general execution makes a big difference.