Problems with ATC 2000

[toontra]

I've just got an ATC 2000 from an ebay shop (new) and having tried it for the first time I got the following problems:

The sound is diabolical - hardly picks up any proper sound at all (i.e. me shouting next to it in a quiet room barely registers). BUT, there is a really loud distorted noise there all the time when it's mounted on the bike. Not wind noise, but a rough crackling distortion.

Also, the brightness of the picture seems to fluctuate from normal to quite dark, where it's hard to make things out properly. The test was 1 hour long and taken on a constantly overcast day (but still quite bright).

Anyone had similar problems with one of these?

 

[TimO]

The mike isn't particularly sensitive, but it ought to pick up moderate voices close to it. I find it's useless on the bike, since vibration directly through the frame and mount (mine is mounted on my handlebars) seems to pretty much swamp any sound whilst in motion.

There is a degree of automatic brightness control, so I have found that if half the image is a bright sky, often you can't see much of the road, building etc, since it adjusts to suit some compromise brightness level which is too dark for the bottom half of the image. Generally if the sky is a bit dull this doesn't seem to happen, so it doesn't sound like what you're getting.

If you bunged a short bit of footage up on YouTube the chances are those of use with ATC2K's could say whether it looked normal or not.

 

[magnatom]

As Tim says the mike is pretty poor. However, if you have a triangle headed screw driver there is a modification you can make that is supposed to improve things (Never tried it myself)

Look here (comment 85) http://tinyurl.com/29uzzh

Tim is also right about the brightness issues. I found by angling the camera slightly down it improved matters (i.e. slightly less sky and slightly more road). It can take a few attempts to get the best angle for the camera.

Remember the camera is quite cheap (relative to other types of helmet camera set up), so to some extent you get what you pay for.

Also bear in mind that as the nights (and mornings) get darker the camera will see less. It isn't the best at night filming! Thats why I have invested in my new camera.

 

[toontra]

Thnaks for the replies. I'll try angling the camera down a bit.

As for the audio problem, I'm in email contact with someone at OS and they suggested removing the two o-rings under the rear screw cap. That did increase the volume, but there is still a really loud crackling distortion when the incoming volume gets beyond a certain level (eg wind when going anything over 10 mph!). They say it's probably because of the way it's mounted, but I've used a rubber strip and a firm foam sponge strip on the bars to mount the clip on - that should be OK surely, and it's certainly better than their suggested method.