Onboard camera review: Mobius Action Camera from JooVuu

Thanks to some excellent support from JooVuu, I shall be using their Mobius Action Camera to capture onboard footage from Formula Vee races.

I’ve been using a Mobius camera on my motorbike helmet for over a year and found them to be much better than the likes of Go Pro.  They are smaller, lighter and have a lower profile – so it’s less like having a brick stuck to the racing car!

In terms of reliability, the Mobius has never once let me down, despite being used daily in sun and rain and from scorching Summer temperatures to way below freezing in the Winter.

The only problem I had was the battery life went down from 80 minutes recording time to around 30 minutes.  This would normally mean buying a new camera if you’re not adept at fiddly circuit board stuff, but in this case I just got a new battery from JooVuu (for around £5), opened up the camera, and it’s literally just a case of unplugging the old one and slotting the new battery in!  Even better is that the latest batteries have improved to give over 2 hours recording time.

And it’s this kind of constant improvement that puts these cameras above many costing hundreds of pounds more – firmware is updated for free by a downloadable program that also allows you to fine-tune more settings than you’ll ever need.

It’s primary use was for radio controlled aircraft, so is small and light.  This also makes it perfect for use on a racing car or motorcycle.

JooVuu themselves designed and built a great quality waterproof case which I have put through some serious weather at high speed, and it’s been flawless.

The waterproof case does deaden the sound a little – there is no way to use an external mic with the Mobius, and whilst sound is good as it is, wind noise can be a pain.

I think for use on a single seater racing car, it will pay to use the case.  There’s too much oil and fluids flying about on a race track, and it will also offer some extra protection if I decide to get some close-ups of tyre barriers and gravel traps.

There are as many different mounts around as you can imagine, and more are being released all the time – so you should be able to find something to suit your needs.  I will be doing a separate blog exploring how and where I’m going to place my cameras on the car, so please check back for that, or give me any tips or recommendations that you have.

JooVuu also have top-notch customer support, and I’m sure will answer any questions you have through their website:

http://www.joovuu.com/?ref=2489

And please mention my name if you decide to buy anything from them!  I’m more than happy to shout their praises, or answer any other questions that you have myself.

Specs & Info

The Mobius Action Camera Wide Angle Version has a Field of View (FOV) of 131 degrees. It’s ultra compact shape means it is small and shorter than a credit card and is is only 15mm high.

Ideal for an Action Camera:

• 820mAh Battery
• Two user selectable video modes, toggled by the mode button after power up. Either mode can be set to record 1080p-30fps or 720p-60fps or 720p-30fps.
• Three movie quality settings (Super, Standard, and Low), which will vary the recording bit rates suitable for the user-selected frame size and frame rate. The Super setting with 1080p-30 fps video gives an approximate average total bit rate around 18,000 kbps. with a high level of detail and smoothess of motion. The Low setting with 720p-30 fps video gives approximately 5800 kbps at the low end.
• Lots of accessories: cars, bikes, and soon surfboards!

Ideal for a car cam:

• Auto-record when power to the camera is applied (useful for car recorder use – no button presses needed).
• Loop recording (5 min. clips with one sec. video overlap, so no lost video).Pressing the mode button while in Loop Record mode means that the current file cannot be overwritten and in turn protects it from accidental deletion or overwriting. However, it can be manually deleted.
• Movie flip (180 deg. rotation).
• Movie sound (off plus three volume levels).
• Photo capture mode with frame sizes of 2048×1536, 1920×1080, or 1280×720 (all native pixel sizes – no up conversion).
• Time lapse photos with delays between images. The targeted delay times range from 0.25 to 60 sec.
• Recording LED toggle.
• Movie/photo time stamp toggle.
• Power on button delay (to prevent premature activation while handling)

Other information:

• The video format is .MOV with H.264 compression codec. Furthermore, this camera can record sequential clips with a one sec. overlap, so there is no lost video and no need for an AVI firmware like the #16 to get that benefit.
• Four video recording cycle time settings 5, 10, and 15 min. plus “Max”, all of which stop/save/continue. The Max setting will record until the 4GB files size limit is reached, the card runs out of space, or the battery power is removed. The actual Max recording time will vary dramatically accord to the user’s settings for frame size, frame rate, and movie quality. The 4GB file limit can be reached in less than 30 min. with 1080p High quality video.
• Charging on/off toggle when plugged into a USB data port (useful for some external USB devices).
• TV out (PAL or NTSC), which will include a playback mode.
• TV display ratio (4:3 or 16:9).
• GUI program support for setting the parameters will be available.