Tracking and Recording Device

. . wrote:

unconstituted wrote:

Just download an app on my phone and on my kid’s phone.

Any recommendations? 

Yep, Periscope is the easiest. Virtually no setup at all. Download app and press broadcast. Done.

Any phone with a camera will do and a cheap mount from eBay/Amazon is as good as any to mount on his chest. 

Garmins already livetrack and

Garmins already livetrack and record GPS data. 

What would you be offering on top of that? Live video feed?

If you were doing live video feed then that could be something, although you’d have to justify the cost as Youtube and Periscope allow you to post live video feed for free. Basically if I want to be able to watch my kid ride around the city, live, on my mobile phone, wherever I am – I can do that now, without a subscription or any hassle. Just download an app on my phone and on my kid’s phone. 

Can you beat a free app? That’s the question. Or are you going to play on the ignorance of the market who aren’t aware of free options and pretend you’re the main player here? That can work, you can pretty much trick people into paying for a product they can get elsewhere for free.

There’s just no information here to know what exactly it is you’re offering, at what price point and how discreet it is.

Here’s what I would buy – a GoPro session sized camera, that recorded at 1440 x 60 FPS and had a removable battery, was waterproof, and had a free app to livetrack and post live streamed video to either Periscope, Youtube Live or less attractively – to their own custom app which you’ve created. That said.. the network still isn’t really ready for this sort of data transfer in real time. You’ll get cut-outs on the stream and the stream quality will be crap.

HTC RE can broadcast and there are some other options too, but they aren’t spectacular yet. The market is just sort of teetering along at the moment waiting for it to happen. GoPro are experimenting but nothing market ready yet.

Take a read of this:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/01/understanding-streaming-options.html

That said, if you’re not thinking about video streaming and just recording some data, then forget it. Everything does that already. Phones, head units, even cameras record GPS data as they go along.

You don’t have the investment to make the form factor light and beautiful either. It’ll be clunky and cheap looking (you’ll think it’s the dog’s nads, as it’s your hard work, but the rest of us will go.. no thanks mate, that’s pants).

Second what Mr Trilby says.

Second what Mr Trilby says.  A Garmin can already do everything you suggest, either analysis after the ride (how far/fast etc) or when paired with a mobile phone you can use the livetrack to see where someone is in (nearly) real time.

Even without buying a dedicated GPS head unit there are already a lot of mobile apps that do just what you are suggesting.