New tool in the kit
Yesterday the idea popped into my head to buy a cheap GoPro knock-off for recording video of my bike rides. That idea grew from reading Terence Eden's post, I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C. There are good enough smart watches and good enough wireless earbuds—surely the same can be true for action cams!
I found some options on Amazon, several for $80 or less. The ones I had my eye on were around $50, and the reviews were mixed. Either people loved it for the price they paid, and some complained about the poor image stabilization1. That's not so good for my use-case. So I looked around for low-budget alternatives, and the Akaso brand came up.
This was a brand new company to me. I'm familiar with DJI and GoPro but "Akaso" sounds like one of those cheap-o knock-offs just as much as any of the others I found on Amazon. Yet the folks at /r/ActionCam thought highly enough of it to suggest it as a decent alternative so I went looking on FB Marketplace.
I was lucky enough to find a used Brave 7 LE for $70! The seller bought it 2 years ago for ~$210 and used it once. The kit comes with a billion2 accessories and mounts, and a watertight case. It works great but I've barely tested it.
I'm going to set it up on my car dash for the drive home and see what I capture. I didn't bring any mounts with me so I'm going to get it done temporarily with masking tape.
Maybe my next test will be to try to get my dog to wear it.