OpenStreetMap
Contributing to Mapillary with the Gopro MAX, helmet mount experience.
Posted by SherbetS on 11 April 2023 in English.I’d like to note a few things that are rather inconvenient when working with this setup.
Firstly, this causes neck pain! When I’ve got my camera mounted and recording, the combination of the extra weight plus the aerodynamic profile make this camera very cumbersome on the neck. you will notice right away a mild pain in the back of your neck.
Secondly, dropping. I’m pretty clumsy, and after a good ride I come home and start taking everything off, primarily the camera off the helmet right away to alleviate the pain. I haven’t got a good place in my garage to set the camera down, so I hold it awkwardly while I try to open my bike crate, camera box, etc. and put things away. Twice now I’ve dropped the camera on the ground, and the first time it scratched the main lens pretty bad, and the new mark is visible on the newest photos I’ve taken.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the tools for any superior camera mounts. My bike isn’t very conductive of temporary stick mounting, and all the selfie sticks I have are of a less than satisfactory length to use as a standalone system. I’ve thought about mounting it to a backpack like I used to do with my old LG360, but that suffers from lots of shake and insecure mounting. tying down all the straps on my backpack still made the stick wobble, and made it very inconvenient to work with.
I’ve also recently had an issue with the version of OsmAnd that I’m using, the latest version has a glitch that makes the currently recording track disappear if the start point isn’t on the screen. https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/16947
All that aside, it still is rather easy to set up, and it’s not difficult to ride around for an hour or so and get some footage quickly.
Discussion
Comment from mirror176 on 15 April 2023 at 22:16
If the lens covers are not replaceable, it’d get me to consider a cover for the lens covers such as maybe a waterproof housing hoping it minimizes any chance of pickup or distortion. If the (cover over the) lens is plastic, Novus makes a 3 stage plastic polish that would be my go to choice to help minimize visibility of the issue. Using it will grind down very bad scratches but causes smaller scratches, then grind down the smaller ones until you have a relatively clear surface again; all smooth surfaces aren’t technically smooth but look the part when you get close enough. I wouldn’t skimp and use paper towels and such as substitutes in place of their proper polishing cloths (or equivalent) as the average ‘paper’ cloths often start adding their own scratches if enough force is used for Novus to do its work. Before Novus, I used Future Floorwax to make a bad scratch in a multimeter face almost disappear and my sister has had good luck with chap stick rubbed into a cleaned CD/DVD scratch making discs readable again though photography grade optic repairs were not a goal there. If not satisfied with Novus final results, I’d likely consider ‘Fritz glass and acrylic cleaner’ as another option to Novus 1 as it also leaves a thin surface residue (=final scratch filler); not sure which would fill faster. Thanks for the OsmAnd bug report; I observed disappearing view of a live recorded track but don’t think it has been limited to when start is shown on screen. I have found it intermittent and had got it back to working when the start was many screens away but do not recall actions I tried to deal with it. Seems like showing tracks now makes screen scrolling annoyingly laggy but maybe it did that before as I haven’t done much with it. OsmAnd~ 4.3.8 from fdroid here also with no ‘Live updates’ map downloads at present. Thank you for sharing your experience. I’ve considered a 360 cam for this but between resolution limits, battery runtime, mounting, and general workflow, I haven’t brought myself to get one and had a basic action cam or cell phone camera as intended plans instead. Hope my ideas are wrong and it works out as a great experience.