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The Rideye looks great. Is that based off the keychain cams widely used in R/C video? Like the 808 #16 or the Möbius?



That was the original design intent, since the 808 camera provided all the video recording functions I needed. I thought I would just buy a bunch of cameras and make some carrier boards for them. I was just out of college at the time, and my coworkers recognized my naivety. They suggested I contact the 808 manufacturer for a custom board spin, and that opened my eyes to the world of mass manufacturing in China. To make a long story short, I completely redesigned the product for scale [1] and that's the version I shipped to my backers.

In retrospect, the original version which I presented on Kickstarter would have been a miserable failure of a product. I was lucky to have backers who supported me and provided invaluable feedback through a few months of delays while I finished the redesign.

[1] http://www.rideye.com/


Oh, your first plan was to actually build a board to frob the buttons on the 808? If so, it was a good idea not to do that. I've used 808s in R/C and they're very finicky, they will just error out for no reason sometimes. The Mobius is more robust but throws off a lot of heat.

So did you end up using the 808/Mobius manufacturer in the process at all, or completely do everything from scratch? Is at least the lens module + camera controller chip a self-contained module? Would be interested to hear which vendors you used.


You could make this a dashcam? AFAIK most dashcams have terrible battery life and so have to be plugged in to the car charger




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