Xeeban’s Musings

Today a nifty device arrived, the Oregon Scientific ATC3K.  It is a small battery powered video camera that stores video on SD cards.  It takes full color digital video at 640 x 480 VGA at 30 frames a second.  It is also waterproof up to about 3 meters, so it is good for all sorts of outdoor activities.

My friends and I have been taking some low quality video with my Sony Cyber Shot during our weekly rides, but the quality of the video is very poor even for uploading to YouTube.  This new camera at VGA resolution should be much nicer.  Not as nice as a real video camera, but not bad.  Plus it’s small enough to mount to a bike helmet and is relatively cheap so destroying it in a crash would not be too much of a loss.  The camera will hold up to a 4GB SD card and uses about 2 gigabytes per hour, so this should enable me to capture 2 hours of continuous footage before having to swap out the SD card.

It comes with several attachment accessories so you can mount the camera to a bicycle or to a helmet.  I’ll probably be helmet mounting the camera to get a little more stability.