Couple of nifty items
Item 1: Hot Wheels radar gun. Similar to what police use but can be set for 1/64 scale. Selling on ebay for around $20-$30 + shipping. Beyond my budget.
item 2: horizontal mini-cam. Similar to the vertical ones I use but lays flat and could be attached to the top of actual racer instead of cam car. About 2 inches long. Needs SD card. Loads to computer via USB. AVI format imports to Windows Movie Maker for slo-mo and titles, etc. About $17 shipped. Have one on order. Takes 6 weeks. 30 FPS cams are sketchy on violent Gravitywerx track but would be fine for straight-line footage.
Discussion
Sorry, it was also ebay. Tried to copy and paste link but didn't work. Don't bother with the cig lighter cam because they are are much longer (but cheaper). I also scored a radar gun for $15.
I wonder if the angle is critical to accuracy. I'll be doing some serious testing with mine when and if it comes. I'll be using it to qualify cars for my races.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eex0h9PU1pg Got my U8 cam today. Only took a week and a half. Not bad from China. Attached it to my flatbed car aka "Worlds Fastest Gravitywerx Car". Cam does not affect handling. Did some solo footage that needs editing. Shot some footage with rubber-tired cars to slow action a bit. Still kind of sketchy with fast bunch but definite improvement over stand-up cam in bed of 1/32 scale truck. Need to try natural lighting and also repaint track corners to prevent streaking. Cam might work better at front of pack, facing backwards. Also might try elevating cam to see whole pack.
I did a quick search and found this for the U8 camera, is this similar to the one you got?
http://www.pandawill.com/u8-mini-dvr-di ... 40283.html
It doesn't say much about it, so I'm assuming it has an on-board flash memory that stores the video directly, then you offload it to your PC via USB...yes?
Mine is black, but otherwise identical. It costs 90 cents plus $16 shipping on ebay. It's easy to find being about the only lay-down cam on the site besides the cig lighter cam which I initially ordered but never received. This one has a feature that vibrates when you work the switches because it's difficult to see the tiny LED when you're outside. You don't know what you've captured until you've downloaded it. It has a USB extension (which I use so I can keep the cam attached to my camcar) or you can just plug it right in to a USB port. At the opposite end from the lens there is a cap to remove (similar to a card reader) that exposes the USB plug. Once you have the clips on your hard drive, you can import them to Windows Movie Maker and edit it, clipping, slo-mo, titles, credits and probably captions.
The ebay unit looks like the best deal even with the outrageous shipping. Something I forgot to mention: This cam has a feature that will start recording when it senses motion, so you don't have to edit out your hand placing the car on the track. My old one used sound, which was okay for this purpose.
Where did you see/find the mini cam?