Powering Gopros

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James
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G'day all.

I have an event coming up in a few weeks. It's a five or six day conference, with one of the venues being a huge exhibition centre.

I've got the stills covered, but the organisers are also keen to have a timelapse of the week in the exhibition centre. They already have about half a dozen Gopros they're wanting to use (Hero 3+ black I think, or whatever the top of the line one is called) and they're asking me to manage them.

So they'll be rigged up in the roof, etc. around the place. Is there an easy way to power the cameras? I know you can run them off a computer/laptop which would also be handy for dumping the images to. Unfortunately I don't think they have 6 laptops, or the space to fit them near the cameras (plus then you'd have to run power to the laptops anyway).

I feel like I'm being stupid and missing something, but it looks like a complete pain to run for a week. Firstly in powering the cameras, and secondly in collecting the images. I wouldn't want to be taking cards in and out every day, as it will of course move the cameras, which would mess up the final video.

Any tips?

Cheers,
J
 
Other then running from USB which you've already said won't work you could try either getting battery bac pacs for them which about double the battery life, but you'll still be talking hours rather then days. Ideally run them from a mains charger but not sure how possible that is.

To collect the images, go pros support wireless transfer so enable this. With 6 you may get interference depending on set up. Wireless will also be a battery drain
 
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You'll get about 1.5 hours from a black edition recording 1080p. It may be worth looking into an intervalometer for the Go Pros, as taking a still every 30 seconds or so will be kinder to batteries than recording video. You'll need one for each though, so could be expensive.

The BacPac battery pack would help a great deal, but again... you'll need one for each Go Pro.

Depending on how many Go Pros there are, that cold be expensive though.
 
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You can run them from USB type phone chargers but you would need to get power to the 13amp plugs, extension leads? The external casing will need to be modified to accept the USB lead but you may not need to if inside and dry.

Pop a 32GB or a 64 GB card in them, depending on how many shots per hour and that will save you having to retrieve the images every day, just collect them at the end of the show.
 
Thanks guys. This will be stills at whatever interval, to be compiled into a timelapse video.

Guess I need to do some proper testing with battery life. I've only ever really used Gopros for video before now - when even with a batpac it feels like they last about 12 seconds.

Client has already gone and bought a bunch of cameras before talking to me, so I'll see if they picked up batpacs or any other handy gizmos with them.
 
To keep battery life up you could connect this up to it, just a thought!

http://www.accessoryhero.co.uk/Portable-Battery-Packs/Veho-Pebble-XT-5000mAh


I don't think it will be a easy task keeping the gopro in the same position all week without it moving while being charged/cards changed!
You could sticky mount it to ceiling with a solid mount,so if you do need to change battery it will go back same angle Dave place!

Be interesting to see the end result of it if you do manage to do it!

Good luck with it
 
To keep battery life up you could connect this up to it, just a thought!

http://www.accessoryhero.co.uk/Portable-Battery-Packs/Veho-Pebble-XT-5000mAh


I don't think it will be a easy task keeping the gopro in the same position all week without it moving while being charged/cards changed!
You could sticky mount it to ceiling with a solid mount,so if you do need to change battery it will go back same angle Dave place!

Be interesting to see the end result of it if you do manage to do it!

Good luck with it

Thanks for that. Not a bad idea to get a bit of extra life out of it.

Yea, my first thought when they mentioned it, was that it's going to be impossible to not move them. Unless they are all mains powered, and dumping images via wifi.

Then I have to think of a way to make a week's worth of people wandering around a conference look interesting. But that's another topic.
 
You'll get about 1.5 hours from a black edition recording 1080p. It may be worth looking into an intervalometer for the Go Pros, as taking a still every 30 seconds or so will be kinder to batteries than recording video.

No need for an intervalometer. The Hero 3+ has inbuilt time-lapse that can be set to shoot one frame every 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 and 60s (from what I recall). Here's a good tutorial - LINK.

A 32GB card should hold around 16,000 7MP images (at about 2MB each) which, at 6 frames per minute, would be around 44 hours of video. You should be able to use the WiFi app to switch each camera on at the start of the day, and off at the end. If you can power them using a battery pack (dunno if 22400 mAh will last a week, especially with the WiFi on all the time) then you've got a workable, totally portable, solution. Otherwise mains power with long cables may be needed.
 
I'd either use a battery pack per camera or buy a few cheap mains charger from eBay with mini usb heads if you have access to power
+1 for the battery packs. Have got a couple that I use when away for charging phones, camera etc. have used it to charge gopro when biking all day as well.
 
Yep, I used to use one back when I used a GoPro. You can get a 20,000Mah batter off eBay for about £12-£15 which is about the equivalent of 12 batteries (assuming none of them are lying with capacities). I just used a bit of velcro to attach the battery pack to the light stand
 
No need for an intervalometer. The Hero 3+ has inbuilt time-lapse that can be set to shoot one frame every 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 and 60s (from what I recall). Here's a good tutorial - LINK.

That's surely the way to go for time lapse then. Shooting video seems very wasteful, regarding power... and storage for that matter.
 
Yep, I used to use one back when I used a GoPro. You can get a 20,000Mah batter off eBay for about £12-£15 which is about the equivalent of 12 batteries (assuming none of them are lying with capacities). I just used a bit of velcro to attach the battery pack to the light stand
This is the way to go. You will also need skeleton housings to connect the leads to.
 
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