Helmet cam power supply
 

My Drift helmet cam is annoying me. It eats its battery in standby in typically the time it takes to get along some rubbish bit of motorway and onto roads that might be worth filming.

I've dremelled a hole in the back door and siliconed a USB in the back. Yesterday I ran it off a UBS emergency phone charger pack thing using two AAA rechargeables. It still went flat and missed the bit I wanted (I fell off on the Hardnott pass due to frozen run off on a hairpin!). This maybe because the AAA's are knocking on a bit and I only wanted to use them to play. I won't help that it was only about 2 above freezing.

Questions then

Is anyone running a longer USB directly off the bike? Any issues with water? (I have a bike USB but keep is covered while riding).

Are there bigger or better battery packs? I don't mind four AA's or a palm sized lithium in a pocket on a short wire if such things exist.

Cheers

Andy

You can use the lithium battery packs that litter Amazon to run the camera - I've been using a large one (about 30k mAh and physically about thin paperback book size) for work running a video camera all day without any issues and also using a smaller one (10k) to run the sat-nav on my 6v bike.

If you've got a tank bag or somewhere to put the battery pack it's an easy option but it doesn't take that much effort to Pooratech a semi permanent solution. For my 12v CCM I stripped down a cheap cigar lighter style plug-in car charger, rebuilt the electronics into a small plastic box and wired it, via a switch + fuse to the bike battery.

It was originally intended to power the sat nav so the output was a mini usb cable but I've recently adapted it to power my Chinese GoPro copy as well as my usb tent light. With a bit of care over "bike proofing" the electronics (hot melt glue on the circuit board for vibration support + silicon sealant on cable exits, box seals etc) it's worked fault free for 6-7 years.

I've soldered up a couple of others from scratch using voltage regulators + support electronics (including the box they're only about £5 to do) but the car style ones are often pence in a charity shop or nothing from the back of a cupboard at home.

Don't know what model you have? - I have a Drift Ghost-S and find it very easy to turn on and off when fitted to the helmet mount on top of my head. For dull stretches of road I tend to leave it off completely, reaching up to turn it on,if something takes my fancy. It does have a beep which is easily heard in most situations.

Like yourself I too found it eats battery even in standby mode, thus adopting the method above. Overall it seems power hungry, never quite lasting long enough for all day shooting of interesting bits, not with one battery anyway. I like the cam mainly due to the waterproof feature and the remote, other than that I can't say its impressed me much so far. It's only "1 adventure" old and results are still in editing but certainly need to take extra power for it next time.

This is what I did for a GoPro thats powered off the bike USB


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv0i6OvjikI