Re: What to do with recordings of your entire day?

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH) Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

Ralf Ackermann wrote:
> 
> quite a number of interesting HW sugestions. Here is another one:
>  Archos PMA430 (PDA with 30GB Harddisk, running Linux / Qt)
> => has MPEG-4 realtime encoding using its integrated DSP
>  + USB host! port for extensions

Ah, yes, forgot about that one.  I seem to recall reading that custom 
development for it was a bit of a bear, though.  Have you done anything 
with yours?

For comparison's sake:

The PMA430 is more expensive than the Recorder2+media, although, 
granted, it has a lot more storage space.  It records at a lower 
resolution, 512x384, versus the Recorder2 at 640x480.  While it includes 
a battery pack, you can't use it to record all day long, as swapping 
batteries reboots the machine, which resets the date and time, which 
would ruin any sort of timing you were trying to do with your 
recordings, so you need an external all-day power source, just like with 
the Recorder2 setup.

If custom application design really is a bear, even if you could 
integrate a bookmark button and GPS logging, it might be more effort 
than with a dedicated external device.

That said, Archos does seem to have a device that would be more 
comparable, also reviewed at kevinboone.com, the AV500.  Its $500 price 
tag is closer to the ~$350 of the Recorder2+media than the PMA430.  It 
also records at 640x480.  There's a detailed comparison here:

http://www.kevinboone.com/pmaavgmini.html

It would only replace the Recorder2 and CF media part of our scenario; 
you'd still need a camera, GPS device and bookmarker.  You'd also need 
to make sure that changing the batteries wouldn't hose your date and 
time, or you'd still need your own battery pack.  But you wouldn't need 
to swap any media, you could most certainly record your entire day, and 
if you trusted rotational media, it could be just the ticket.

Thanks,
Vitorio Miliano

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