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TECH NEWS
Just In: RoadHawk Ride High Performance Bullet Camera
Check out the new RoadHawk Ride helmet camera that we have in for review. It looks very, very neat and the footage it takes is high definition so you get excellent detail.
Anyhow, let’s start at the beginning… RoadHawk is a UK company, based down in Cornwall (or ‘up in Cornwall’, I guess, if you live in the Scilly Isles). They’ve been making cameras for cars for a few years and this is their first ride camera, aimed at motorcyclists and horse riders as well as cyclists. It’s small at just 85mm long with a diameter of 20mm.
The RoadHawk uses a wide-angle lens and records at 30 frames per second. One of its key features is that it records on a constant loop. The 8GB SD memory card that’s supplied will hold about two hours of high definition footage. You can upgrade to a 32GB card if you like, to save over eight hours. Once full, the camera automatically starts recording over the existing footage.
If you witness or are involved in any significant incident, you can save the relevant footage and download it to a Mac or PC via a card reader. It’s all time and date stamped, which is useful if you ever need to use the footage as evidence.
The built-in Li-Poly battery provides enough power for 90 minutes of recording. That might not be long enough for a big weekend ride but it’ll see you right for most commutes. You can connect the camera to an external battery supply for longer record times using the cabling system supplied with the camera.
Several mounts are included in the package, including a curved-base mount for helmet mounting. It all looks pretty straightforward. Operating the camera itself is certainly simple: you get an on/off button and that’s it. When it’s on it’s recording, you don’t have to remember to hit ‘record’ or anything.
RoadHawk say the camera is waterproof up to a depth of 10m, so your ride will have to go wrong in a big way before things get damp inside. If you find yourself 11m underwater at any point, you could be in trouble. You can install a non-waterproof cap on the back for better sound recording if you like.
The RoadHawk Ride is priced at £149.95. We’ll have a complete review on road.cc shortly. In the meantime, check out www.roadhawk.co.uk for more details.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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25 comments
If its intended for bicycle use why no handlebar mounting kit in the pack? A serious deficiency especially at that price.
Is it me? or am I the only one that has noticed that the loop is only 5mins long so implying that (god Forbid) you are knocked off you have to remember to turn the camera off to keep the crash footage before it is recorded over and then miss the comments from the idiot and his mates gloating over what they have just done.
It records 5min segments, not on a 5min loop.
"The 8GB SD memory card that’s supplied will hold about two hours of high definition footage. You can upgrade to a 32GB card if you like, to save over eight hours."
Looking at the site it seems the external power supply is a 6 or 12V supply such as a lighter socket. Shame, only USB os really usable on a bike (I guess possibly an E-Werk might do it, but that's not exactly a common setup...)
it comes with a cable to attach it to an external USB battery too
Now I always get a roasting for this from people in the motor trade.....Apparently its no longer a lighter socket, most cars you have to ask for one of those lighters.
Its now known as an accessory socket....weird how things have changed since I was young.
It used to be a lighter or an emergency tyre pump....then came portable cd players with a car socket...
Now you can put anything into a car socket
arrieredupeleton don't worry I didn't think you were belittling what I and other cyclists have to go through. I hope you continue to cycle trouble free.
The DogCam camera and the RoadHawk Ride might look the same, but that doesn't mean they are the same.
They use the same 720p 30fps video resolution but the RoadHawk Ride records time/date stamped video files in 5min lengths on a constant loop. Once the memory card is full it will start to overwrite the oldest file.
The RoadHawk Ride can be powered by an external power source in addition to the 90min internal battery, so with a maximum 32GB card you can get 8hrs before the camera starts overwriting.
The RoadHawk Ride also comes with a cradle and pro-mount mounting kit that isn’t supplied with the Dogcam camera.
Out of interest, as someone who doesnt have a cam, the loop recording function seems a great idea. But how do other cameras without this feature currently work?
You record until your memory card is full....or the battery runs out, which is always before the card is full.
I've never been able to fill a 16gb card, but daily commutes you would be able to, but if you are like me, I do my ride, check the footage and then delete what I don't want to keep and put the rest on the computer
I use a camera just to record my whole ride, then just cut out the boring parts and put them together for my vlogs to keep people upto date with my progress using the trike.
Neil, I never thought of it as a deterrant and in no way was I belittling the shit we have to put up with from non-cyclists. I guess I'm lucky that I haven't experienced a lot of that. Safe riding.
arrieredupeleton, I'm in the market for something like this because over just the last month of commuting I've nearly been knocked off my bike twice, had abuse hurled at me twice and had someone lean out of a van and try and whip me with an electrical cable. This sort of thing has happened from time to time over the last few years but has gotten a lot worse lately. It only seems to happen when there aren't any witnesses about, hence me wanting a camera. I've just got fed up with it but I'll be damned if I'm going to stop commuting by bike. I'm also hoping that having a camera visible on the side of my bike helmet will also act as a deterrant to abusive drivers. What makes this camera appealing to me is the continus loop facility. All I would need to do is keep it charged up and only have to faff with files if an incident happens.
Serious question: What is the motivation for buying a camera? Is it only as an insurance policy if a car driver starts behaving like a dick (or worse) or do people ever play back favourite rides - say an trip to the Alps or Ardennes. I know they are popular for MTBers for that reason but lets be honest, unless its a race, watching yourself ride along a road at 20mph isn't exactly like watching Senna is it? No trolling, just curious...
arrieredupeleton, camera footage might be useful if you were trying to explain non-aggression problems, too. Drivers have bad habits that they don't realize are bad, and the roads (or their maintenance) can be bad in ways that drivers take for granted. Or drivers expect us to ride in the gutter, without realizing what the gutter looks like.
So for example, from a few years ago: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2007/05/27/road-crap/
^ Can you give us a clue to the name?
Any further details on where from Veseunr? Would like something to perform this task, but would also like cash left in my pocket.
I bought an almost identical unit from China for £38. HD, longer battery life, 16Gb card. Judging from position of button, card holder, etc it is exactly the same insides.
Someone is making a profit
Yes - we need details! I too could do with something like this - but don't have £150 to burn.
(I've reluctantly finally accepted that perhaps, I need a camera. I don't want to accept this, as it implies the roads are pretty nasty, but there it is).
Various options on ebay just search for 'Bike Camera'
Just to get this straight...
Dogcam site sells the above 'ride' model for the same price (£150) as an evolved dogcam (£100)... better mount, diff cables, permanent cable, what else?!
http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/roadhawk-ride.html
You can see them both on this page:
http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/mtb-bmx-bullet-cameras.htm
DogCamSport and RoadHawk are the same people. Don't think that's a secret.
It's certainly similar but the same website also sells this camera, and the differences seem to be that the dogcam doesn't do loop recording, nor support external power source.
That was also my first though, its just a Dogcam....
Sure there's more to it than this, but that looks rather like this with an extra £50 of logo...
http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/dogcam-bullet-hd-camera-WIDE.html