Go Pro Hero 2 + WiFi Bacpac = very long timelapse

I've been playing round with doing a some short timelapse recordings on the GoPro Hero2, and it's great. The only limitations are the battery life and the memory card.

In most cases, shooting a short timelapse of a few hours, this is no problem. But if I wanted to record a timelapse over a couple of days, or weeks, or maybe months, then I hit some limitations.

There are various solutions. Running USB power (from a regular smartphone charger) solves the power problem. But the longest interval the pre-set timelapse menu offers is 60 minutes.

I spent a while searching for solutions, and there are many, but they all cost money that I don't really want to spend.

http://cam-do.com/GoProTimeController.html

Even using an Ey-Fi Wireless enabled SD card would cost money, and that's when I realised, the GoPro has a WiFi bacpac! The android app connects to a new hotspot broadcast by the GoPro and must communicate with it somehow. I thought: someone must have sniffed/hacked the protocol that it uses so they could control it via a computer, and they have!

http://www.techanswerguy.com/2013/02/capturing-live-stream-from-gopro-hero-2.html

or if you prefer a nice windows app (and I can't believe I didn't spot it, it's on the original website!

http://cam-do.com/WiGo/

So, I can power the gopro over usb (link to external power case mod) and mount it pretty much anywhere that the cable and WiFi signal will reach. I can add a WiFi connection to a spare linux computer (e.g. the Raspberry Pi used for Raspbmc in my bedroom) to link over WiFi.

A collection of scripts will enable me to remotely power up the camera, take photos, transfer them over to the Pi or my NAS, and then power down the camera.

Some use of lockfiles in the scripts will work as a quick and dirty status monitor, and if the lockfiles don't appear then a watchdog script running on the nas can email alert me that something has gone wrong.

Some more scripts, and some clever use of FFMPEG, and I could schedule daily timelapse video creations and uploads to youtube. In fact now I know I have almost full access to the gopro over WiFi, the possibilities are almost endless! I don't need to invest in any more hardware, just make some clever scripts to control it, and see what I record.


Of course, Becky want's to record some of her car journeys with it as a dashcam, but I have 2 cases (waterproof and skeleton) so can swap it between both.