Pit to car communication + in car video on the cheap?: Grassroots Motorsports forum: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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Aug. 1, 2008 8:29 p.m. Rigmaster New Reader

Anyone got any good ideas for cheap/DIY pit to car communication and/or incar video.

We just ran the LeMons South race at CMP and I REALLY wish I had some video of some of the action on track, and we really could have benefitted from some pit to driver communication besides frantic hand waving from pit road.

Has anyone successfully used one of those FRS 2 way radio systems with earbud or something similar?? Those can be had for cheap and should work OK if you could rig up a push to talk button in the car- I'm assuming the car noise would just be too much for the hands free operation to work well.

What about video? I'd like something simple and cheap- preferably something that records to an SD card or something similar. Don't need alot of bells and whistles on the camera- just decent quality and durability.

Thx, Rig.
Aug. 1, 2008 10:57 p.m. JThw8 Dork

I went on the cheap incar video quest for our BABE car this year and the best I could find is as follows.

Ebay surf...get yourself a color CCD camera (closed circuit bullet cam) you can pick them up for $50 or less. Then find a PHILIPS PMC7230 video player/recorder. These things retailed for around $400 but if you check ebay (seller cybershops) you can get a refurb unit for $99. Its got a 30 gb hard drive and will accept the inputs from the CCD camera, so for about $150 you've got a good in car cam setup. We ran 2 of them and when we ran through the dragon we had 6 different mounting points on the car, some really great video came out of it :)

If you have time for a lengthy download this is the camera mounted under our front bumper on a run through deals gap. http://www.jimthwaite.com/video/Deals Gap/front bumper.avi

Oh and the Phillips unit connects to your PC through a usb cable so you can download it to a computer. As a bonus you can connect it to a TV and use it as a DVR unit and record video to it to take with you as a travel. Dunno if I'd have paid $400 for it, but for $99 its a pretty cool little device.
Aug. 2, 2008 2:04 a.m. fiat22turbo SuperDork

Cell phone w/hands free and unlimited minutes.
Aug. 2, 2008 6:47 a.m. ww Dork

Bingo! We used a Chatterbox FRS PTT system last year at the Thunderhill event and it was marginal.

I really think the cell phone mounted with a wired ear bud/microphone would probably do a better job.

Again, unlimited minutes is a must in this case!

As far as video is concerned, I've been using my old Sony TRV730 Digital8 camcorder. It mounts to an IOPort Racing camera mount on our roll-cage, it has a 6hr battery and I can download it directly to my PC/MacBook Pro through the built-in firewire connection.
Aug. 2, 2008 7:19 a.m. problemaddict New Reader

In-car video on the cheap:

Go to CVS, buy one of their "one time use" video cameras ($35)

Go to ebay and buy the proper cord ($14): http://cgi.ebay.com/CVS-Rite-Aid-Camcorder-Camera-download-Cable_W0QQitemZ28025191...

Go to http://www.camerahacking.com and read the FAQ's and download the software to make your "one time use" camera into a "infinity use" camera.

Tape, screw, glue, mount them wherever you want on your car. If one falls off or breaks, oh well, it was only $35!
Aug. 3, 2008 10:49 p.m. kcbhiw Reader

We used a set of Midland radios which worked fairly well and are inexpensive. However, the single earbud and mic arrangement left a lot to be desired. Such can be corrected with dual earbuds and a helmet mounted mic.

In all, it proved invalualbe to the event. I'm not sure what we would have done without them.
Aug. 4, 2008 7:16 a.m. Jensenman SuperDork

We used a pair of CB radios. It actually worked pretty well, the CB's internal speaker could be heard over the car noise and through helmets. Next time I'll add an external speaker for the radio in the car for gits and shiggles.

I used my MotoCam 360 to record the racing. While it works very well, it ain't cheap and I had to have anoter ShockBox made to allow the system to be powered from the car's electrics. The best thing about that setup is that I was able to use two 2GB SD cards, swap them out at the end of each drivers' stint and then burn them directly to DVD. Vista is a PITA to do this with, but that's another story entirely.

Some time back I sold my I/O Port camera mount to a guy who has used it with a hard drive based camera and every time he launched his car at the AX the camera quit. I have been told the great majority of the hard drive based cameras are vibration and shock sensitive.
Aug. 4, 2008 7:24 a.m. oldopelguy HalfDork

With USB webcams so cheap, I've been thinking bout just mounting a laptop in a box with a slew of cameras all over and start it recording right before the event. Wonder if a wi-fi connection would hold through a race, then you could voice IM through the event too,cover all the bases?
Aug. 4, 2008 1:38 p.m. Nashco Dork

I've used both "regular" FRS radios and the Chatterbox FRS setup, both sucked. I don't know what we'll try next time around, probably a different set of FRS radios. The biggest problem we had with the regular FRS sets was getting good mic/headset connection (complete loss of mic), while the Chatterbox had major issues with mic quality (garbled mic, extremely finicky mic placement required). I plan on talking to the rally drivers to see what they use for in-car transmission to see if I can replicate what they're using or maybe even borrow somebody's setup to try out for the next event.

Bryce