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In the new year I'm involved in releasing an iPhone app which turns the phone into a dash-mounted photo and video recorder.
Originally the app was conceived to capture those "what the hell?!" moments, maybe when an accident occurs, someone's driving like an idiot etc, however I can see much wider potential use having shot many, many hours of in-MINI footage for MINI2.
I can see a range of uses, especially for runs and track days, here's a quick sample video I shot with a £9.99 Maplins holder and an iPhone 4s.
Already included are a nice clean UI, voice record, video quality options, save to Dropbox, geolocation information overlay.
So, my question really is three fold.
Might you be interested in such an app? If so, in what scenario might you use it? And finally, what features might you consider "must have" for such an app?
Are you able to tap into the iPhones accelerometer and log braking and acceleration events? That's the only thing I see as being missing from products such as the road hawk.
Also may be see if you can record from the front facing camera too and making it an option so you can record cabin activity at the same time.
Insurance companies may love some thing like this :-)
Already mentioned in another forum that you should not make it rely on GPS so that iPod owners can use it too
How is the video stored? What's the maximum length video?
My concern would be how long the video can be, and if it overwrote the earlier ones - so making ones involving heavy braking to not be overwritten is a bonus
Thanks for this so far, I'll see if I can rustle up some screen grabs of what happens at the moment and answer questions properly.
One thing I do know is iOS wont allow front and rear camera operation at once, it's a technical restriction you cannot apparently bypass at this time.
Accelerometer feedback concept is interesting, I know that some parts of this have been played with. What are folks thinking, like a full on performance tracking app and video recorder in one, triggered recording (hard braking etc) or a bit of both?
We appear to have some sun today, so will try and get a daytime shoot done and some photos of various screens etc.
Any more ideas and feedback gratefully received.
As this is being created on literally no budget we are relying quite heavily on a clean UI and reliability to help stand apart from other apps, but the more (genuinely useful) features we can add over the time, the better for all.
If it has the same functions as a road hawk I'd be interested, probably a bigger market for that than for track use, although you could have both a street and track modes.
i would buy this app, im looking for a screen mounted camera but have not got one yet as the size of them and the sucker's are way to big for a mini windscreen and you would have to remove it when oarked up otherwise some kind person will smash n grab it for you, the only camera that i am looking to buy is about £200 and that's a bit too much for one, so yer, get me the app and i will use it and test it for you,
just a quick edit, in my car i have sat nav, radar detector in the window and an iphone4 sat in the cup holder, if i could get rid of tom tom and have my iphone do the camera thing and my WAZE sat nav at the sme time, that would be really cool, so can you have the recording camera working in the background and have the screen still be doing the sat nav ?
Recording should continue even when talking on the phone
Hi Paul,
One of the biggest issues I face is that most of the apps do not record when you receive the call and then resume once the call is disconnected. This should be taken care of.
Apparently this is due to how iOS handles Apps when they're in the background, and can't really be worked around.
With CarCamApp it stops and saves what you're doing, then returns you to the app when the call is terminated, however it wont auto-resume recording. Perhaps some sort of trigger/condition to do this could be baked into a later version, I will ask and put it on the wish-list.
It's in the final stages of App Store approval, which I'm told is averaging at one week just now, so hopefully will be out at a introductory price within two weeks.
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Recording should continue even when talking on the phone 
