Autosport Labs

This might be slightly off-topic, but I am looking for a way to use hard-wire GoPro for integration with RaceCapture MK2. With the wireless on and recording, I can barely get 1 track session (20 mins). Anyone able to hard-wire the GoPro in their car?

If GoPro still make a skeleton case, that lets you access the USB port for charging. Obviously this only works either inside the car or in dry weather. Otherwise, you need the piggyback battery adapter and a lot of charged spare batteries.

The older go-pros have a backpack for turning the gopro on/off. If you set the GoPro to auto-record when powered up, then that could be a way to do it. Note, there's a few seconds lag between power up and recording.

brentp wrote:The older go-pros have a backpack for turning the gopro on/off. If you set the GoPro to auto-record when powered up, then that could be a way to do it. Note, there's a few seconds lag between power up and recording.

That wouldn't help. He's only getting about 20 minutes of continuous recording time, which seems a little short even with Wi-Fi on. Maybe a new battery would have more capacity.

If you're using the WiFi integration then you'd simply need a decent 2A charger to keep the battery topped off. Should not affect the WiFi operation this way.

I use products from Cam-Do to auto power up my hero 3 and hero 5 cameras.

For the Hero 3 I use the battery eliminator to let me use 12V power input and never deal with charging a battery:
https://cam-do.com/products/battery-eliminator-h3

as well as the time lapse intervalometer which when power is given via the eliminator will auto power up the gopro.
https://cam-do.com/collections/all/prod ... rvalometer

I then use a startup script on the sd card (autoexec.ash I think is the name? you can google it) to make sure wifi is on so that my gopro remote can always connect. My remote is the only thing I charge regularly which just gets velcro'd to the dash and turned on manually. Once on I can start/stop recording as well as see status and confirm both camera are on/connected.

For the Hero 5 I use one device, the expensive BlinkX:
https://cam-do.com/collections/all/prod ... o5-cameras

Officially an immediate turn-on isn't really supported, but if you put it in Bullet mode which is for use with a motion sensor, but with no motion sensor plugged in the input is floating and due to the circuit design makes the device think it should be turning on the gopro and then it will never turn it off. The hero 5 will turn on wifi if that was how you had it set up (it doesn't need a startup script), and so it will turn on, and then the remote can connect to it from start/stop.

Not cheap solutions, but they make my track days that much easier and to me that's worth it when I'm often a one-man race team.