A new idea…

I’ve just thought of something useful for once.

Purposing an arduino to maintain logs of speed, brake pedal (on / off), camera facing front, camera facing rear with 150 degree (or higher) viewing angle.

What this can be used for is two fold.

We see a lot of stupid things locally, it’s likely emphasised with the Sydney and Queenslanders on holidays here, we see no indicators changing lanes, tailgating, mobile phone usage…

It’d make for a good YouTube channel I think.

The other purpose is reviewing driving, i.e. recently I had stopped at a stop sign, and started to proceed after stopping and looking. My partner in her usual ‘stop, stop, stop’ manner, said Stop. As I was taking off.

I noted a car pulling out and turning, so I can’t know how I missed that – reviewing the video would have helped.

There was also another carpark incident last year, where we proceeded and someone hit the drivers side rear – I still have no real idea how that happened, I did and still do suspect someone parking illegally, which meant I still proceeded without having a deep enough look – but only video footage would show that clearly.

The other purpose, in the event an accident happened, for example, someone rear ending us, we’d have their plate on camera, and the state of their head (on the phone for example), recorded.

Two SD cards recording the data means one copy to the police, one for my own purposes.

The setup, couldn’t cost a great deal with 170 degree wide angle cameras on ebay going for about 15 a peice. I’d mount one at the dash, facing forward, and one at the rear, facing well, backward.

The data from the speedometer is accessible via the dash, and brake via the brake lights, which are tied up to the brake pedals. The indicators can be also checked from the lights on the indicator panel, and using unity buffers, can ensure they don’t interfere with their operation whilst gathering the necessary data (no different to a multimeter).

The car stereo can provide the necessary on / off functionality so it’s only on when it should be, off otherwise (i.e. parked).

Needs a bit more thought before diving into it, but it sounds like it’d be useful.

I might even add a GPS chip in too, to log location from satelitte.