in car cameras

What country are you in? Probably illegal as data protection (number plates etc). beleive there is other issues with CCTV with regards to other privacy laws.

And why would you want to do this?

Steve

You can film what you like in a public area for private use.

How about a Mini ITX motherboard

, add some memory and a hard drive, 12V PSU and a decent webcam?

Hello,

Firstly there are many systems on the market that can record, taxi drivers use them and they can be set on permanent record. The other thing about the data protection act is rubbish - they would all need to be covered up ! They are put on cars for a reason, and anyone with friends can get a full trace done anyway to give keeper details. I've done it myself when a scumbag taxi driver crashed into me and used friends as witnesses, but also injured passengers. Two are in prison now as they did it one time too often. The camera systems are not hard to find if you really want one. You know how to find this group!

inverter, video recorder and cheap CCTV camera few wires n stuff.. prob be able to do whole thing for about £100 brand new (wont need more than a 150W inverter I don't think)

I suppose it really depends more on how good the pictures are you want from it!!

Loopy

You describe a camera + stand-alone digital video recorder. (DVR)

I guess you will need a budget around 400 UKP. Ebaying and some luck will cut the budget in half. Check however when buying on ebay that the item is in the UK and not in Hongkong.

Most of the printcameras and some of the DVR's are 12V-powered. Monting a camera in a lamp is a piece a cake. Images can be transferred by swapping harddisks, over the Internet or on some models burned immediatly on a CD.

Who/what are you planning to film?

Tom De Moor

Done this.

One way is to get a spy camera, the sort that is half an inch across, and transmits over a short distance to a receiver that you would plug into a VCR on long play with a long tape, running on an inverter in the boot.

I say this because I have all the kit here and it works very nicely.

The other is to just buy a camcorder, although the lens would be damaged / dirtied quite quickly (the pinhole sort is a very much smaller target.)

The basic spy cameras can be had for quite reasonable prices, this one is 85 quid but the price can be halved and better if you look around:

The other idea is dome cameras, these have the advantage that: a) it is protected from the elements b) people may well believe you have a blue light in it so will behave OTOH they tend to be wired rather than wireless, which limits where you can put the camera / vcr. Probably perfect if you can live with it on the parcel shelf.

Turning the VCR on and off is a pain, the obvious thing is to wire it through the ignition so the inverter comes on when you are driving and goes off when you aren't. This suggests finding a VCR that can be set up to automatically revert to LP recording when powered up. Mine requires being told to record on the remote. Then you probably will find, like I did, that you basically also need a small TV screen to monitor what's happening, again these are easy enough to find and the price is fairly reasonable, e.g. 40 quid up to 100 or whatever else they add on if they think you won't look around for a better price:

Basically it is easy enough to do depending on what bits you can fnd and afford, and would be 100% easier if you can find/buy a VCR that automatically went into record mode when you powered it up.

How confident in your electronics are you?

item SH69A (will need a little weather proofing)

and

item 64115 (you will probably want a memory stick as well)

Those should see the basics are small easily removed but the quality isn't fantastic for TV work and the small cameras tend not to be too good in low LUX conditions.

the track in front of me :)

Aha, then there is a cheaper option.

Get a friend, owner of a good digital camera, and strap him in the passenger seat.

It has 2 advantages: obviously you get a copy of the film and ever more important: you feel a bit responsible for him. Believe me : it's better for your car and you'll notice his reactions when you overdrive the car ;-)

A German friend does that on all tracksessions which are for testing. He even sells "Mitfahrten" (for 100 Eur you can be in the passenger seat of his GT3 for

1 lap at the Nurnburgring). On an afternoon he does about 10 laps but there is no profit: the Ring eats tires and fuel :-)

If you want racing pictures, you can bolt a digital camera to your dashboard or fixe one on a bracket on the rollcage.

Tom De Moor

If it's for PC use why not use a webcam?

I use a "bullet cam" with a 9" monitor with an analogue input as a rear-view camera on the 4x4 Ford when it is full to bursting with "stuff". The camera was very cheap, can be mounted using Velcro. It gives analogue composite output which means you need some A/D conversion but I can do that using a Haupage WinTV USB which has an S-VHS/Composite input.

no can do mate no passengers allowed and seeing as i don't have a roll cage, i can't bolt a camera to it :( so i got to do the sneaky thing :(

I know a couple of people using the mustek unit in race cars but normally as a

2nd camera as the quality from the small cameras and the digital system isn't really upto full TV quality so they use them for cutaway shots (say out the side, back or of the driver)

If its public quite often commercial use as well.

There are exceptions but you cannot say numberplates are anything to do with data protection as they are so visible EVERYWHERE.