[Gllug] CarCam

[Andy Farnsworth]

I would look at a simple low end "shoebox" or "bookPC" (NLX Motherboard)
computer in the trunk.  Much less expensive than a laptop and easy to power
with a good inverter.  A low end Celery should be plenty, 1 Ghz new or even
a 500 Mhz used.  You could go with one of those Cappuccino PCs that is
really tiny, but you would pay extra for that.  You might also look into an
MPEG encoder card, as that would really reduce the need for a fast
processor.  The Tivo get's by with a 50 Mhz (Yes, Fifty) PPC Processor with
hardware Encode/Decode.

Andy Farnsworth
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-----Original Message-----
From: gllug-admin at linux.co.uk [mailto:gllug-admin at linux.co.uk]On Behalf
Of maillist at glasgownet.com
Sent: March 17 2003 15:52
To: gllug at linux.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Gllug] CarCam


On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 02:31:48PM +0000, John Southern wrote:
> Having been in a small car bump on Friday, I would now like to add a
couple of
> web-cams to my car.
> I would like one rear facing - Think it maybe useful for reversing
> I would like one forward facing.
>
> The latter I want to use as a recorder of trips. The idea being - it films
a
> car journey on to hard disk and should anything odd happen (car accident,
> aliens land etc) I would be able to keep a copy to use (for insurance, to
> earn millions in the newspapers etc).
>
> Anyone tried this ?
Yes, i put a webcam in my car for similar purposes and just to mess
around with cool images of stupidity on the motorway.
> Any obvious problems?
i have a cpia usb camera, and a dell latitude notbook and couldnt get
any software to stream the capture to disk,google said my laptop was too
slow, but i suspect otherwise since i can view streaming from my camera
fine. The principle works well though, i mounted the camera in a few
places, the coolest place was underneath the front bumper as low to the
ground as possible, also behind and to the right of the driver works
well as you get the same view as the driver, and you can get the images
from the rear view mirror.

> Mounting points (inside or out) ?
> What would the min spec of a laptop be ?
Not sure, but nothing too hot i guess, i would imagine 300mhz is plenty,
you want to get yourself an invertor to power it, or a special in car
power supply too. Stay way from the cheap maplins ones, they blow on a
very regular basis.

Hope that helps.

David


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