Would love someone to devise a relatively cheap All Solid State recorder for a video camera (I talking about a bullet cam, not something you take video of a christmas morning with). I’d love to have one to take with me on my Off-road motorcycling trips. The only controls needed would be a start stop button. Setup (Resolution and FPS) and download should be from the USB port. Storage should be on the cheapest style memory you can get in 1GB size. External interface should only consist of the bullet cam and mic connector and the USB port. The ATC 1000 is about the closest thing I have found and relatively cheap, but the resolution is pretty small and the frame rate is also slow. I’m sure lots of people out there would like one as well, skateboarders, mountain bikers, snowmobilers, race cars, etc would be the target market.
I haven’t bought one yet, but for $99 (plus more for a flash card) it looks like it should be great as a digital camcorder:
wjbeaty:
I haven’t bought one yet, but for $99 (plus more for a flash card) it looks like it should be great as a digital camcorder:
Very cool, but it needs an AC power supply and it is still pretty low res (I’m thinking 640x480 would be the minimum). Thanks for the link though!
I think he’s looking for something smaller and more wearable. What would probably be perfect would be a single input (composite, S video, something) video decoder that feeds into an MPEG-4 hardware encoder that would feed into either an MCU or a GP logic that would format and feed the file into an SD card. I’ll keep my eyes open for something workable.
(Addendum) Actually, a small cell phone style camera and it’s associated DSP chip could probably replace the video decoder and input jack and be about the same size 
I found a couple of recorders that would fit the bill, but they’re expensive (I was quoted $3360 in January 
). We were going to use it on a rocket, and it’s cheaper than the alternate transmitter/antenna/power system.
I’m sure someone around here could make something similar (and probably for less) given enough time. This gives you an idea of a possible footprint however.
Programmable resolution up to 720x480.
http://www.ovation.co.uk/FlashBack/FlashBack.html
Other options (not sure of price, but includes an onboard battery):
http://rock2000.com/Company/Electronic_ … /STING.htm
This one wasn’t rugged enough for my uses, so I didn’t explore it any further.
Rugged unit for race cars (not sure of price, it was a little large for my use):
http://www.stackltd.com/dvrharsh.html
One last one:
http://www.ffv.com/documents/Recon_001.pdf
I was actually looking for recorders WITHOUT buttons. So at least some of these have lines on the connectors which start the recording.
-Matt