The British safety tech company Techalogic - makers of the DC-1 dual recording helmet camera that it claimed was a world first when it launch two years ago - has now launched both front and rear lights with integrated cameras. With full HD 1080P wide angle cameras, they attach to your bike with simple Go Pro-style mounts, and have a claimed four hours of battery life with the LED on and seven hours without.
> Review: Techalogic DC-1 Dual Lens Helmet Camera
The CF-1 has a 400 lumen beam, weighs 120g and has dimensions of 80mm x 47mm x 27mm. The mount is included, and it's a simple press of a button to start the recording. A wide angle 120 lens captures everything, and is capable of capturing licence plates with ease according to Techalogic.
> How to buy the best bike camera — plus 6 of the best
The largest 128GB memory card can record up to 12 hours of footage, and as with most bits of cycling tech nowadays there's a companion app to alter settings. You can also download your footage and share on social media through the app. All recordings are date and time-stamped, and IPX5 water resistance with an airtight construction should ensure the elements don't mess up your footage.
The specs are largely the same at the rear, except for the light is 60 lumens, and you get six rear light settings as opposed to three on the front. You'll also get six hours of battery life out of the rear with the light in flash mode, and around seven hours with just the camera running.
Other features of note include the internal mic to record sound as well as video, and a photo mode that auto captures a photo every second. The 'G sensor option' also makes the camera recognise an impact, auto-locking the file so it can't be overwritten.
Both the front and rear light/camera combos are available to order now, priced at £99.95 each or £179.90 for the pair. You can also add 64GB or 128GB memory cards for a premium
Head over to the Techalogic website for more info - in the meantime, we'll be requesting a set for review...
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Techalogic?! Everything about this company is hilariously bad. These look like they're straight from the 80's, and not in a good way. I mean look at the state of that front camera
I see Aldis next cycling special buys has a very Cycliq looking front light&camera for only £99.99, does "Full HD up to 1920x1080p".
https://www.aldi.co.uk/bikemate-front-bike-camera-%26-light/p/7130615122...
It's also on alibaba with some sample video footage. If it's actually from this device, then it looks quite good.
https://szvanci.en.alibaba.com/product/1600106590830-825278769/Vanci_Ful...
Someone needs to design a decent looking and slim seatpost GoPro mount... Those are awful
As others have pointed out these are basically the same as the Teentok cameras.
I've been running a rear Teentok since the start of the year and it's worked flawlessly. Image quality is really good and I have had prosecutions from video taken with the camera. The app is a bit buggy tbh, but i just pull the card and bang it in a pc. I have a 64gb card in it with no issues. Also it's good that it uses go pro mounts so I have mine mounted below the saddle.
I made a short comparison video between the Teentok rear cam and a Drift ghost on the front which is here https://youtu.be/PTq_MsFqgps
Thanks for the comparison. The Drift looks good, but the Teentok has got some horrendous rolling shutter 'jellyvision' going on. It's very blurry too - can barely make out the licence plates of parked cars.
I do not think the Teentok is a true 1080p sensor. More likely a VGA sensor that's been upscaled.
Front design is bizarre, no logic in having a big square frontage. Cycliq still a better option for front but this might be competitive for the rear option
No mention of image stabilization.
Front camera is fugly and lacks the sleekness of the Cycliq.
I'd need to see raw footage before I'd even consider changing from the Fly 12
Personal choice, of course, but even before I got the GoPro I decided I wasn't interested in any camera without GPS. My main concern was that the GPS would be unreliable, but experience has shown that it is extremely accurate. Battery life is no doubt reduced, but it's good enough for me.
Loads of suspiciously similar items on alibaba. Not sure everyone is buying them to 'record all the beautiful moment' though!
These are identical to lights for sale under the Teentok brand on Amazon. The reviews for those seem pretty mediocre...
I have them (the rear facing ones) - they are actually pretty good.
Cycliq had better quality footage, but terrible app, terrible reliability, terrible fixing and twice the price.
Eh? So there's a light sequence that can actually extend battery life by up to a couple of hours compared to no light at all? How does that work?
I suspect the missing wording of "when recording" for the first paragraph. So 4 hours of life with the LED and camera on, 7 hours with no LED and camera on, and if you have it is low brightness flashing or some other setting, 8-9 hours life. Obviously that might not be with camera on though.
Ah, ok - that makes more sense now. Although it would seem an odd choice to buy a dual use device like this on battery life without the camera.
They don't look as slick as the Cycliq ones, but the proof is in the pudding so to speak. My replacement Fly6 is heading back to Australia for "inspection" after also randomly failing like its predecessor, so if these actually work they could be onto a winner.
The ability to take more than 32GB cards without faffing is certainly a major draw, along with the price. Not very 'aero' though
I've got 64gb cards in my Cycliqs - doesn't require any faffing as I remember.
That front camera is an ugly design and I can imagine it might be tricky fitting it onto a dual computer/camera mount.
You need to be careful. The fly6 only officially supports 32gb. Mine was flaky with a 64Gb until I replaced it with a 32gb. Having said that SD cards are a minefield at the best of times.
Running 128GB cards in both my Fly6 and Fly12 and both work fine. Issue is finding good cards with the right writing speed - I'm using SanDisk Extreme Plus
Funnily enough my replacement Cycliq came pre-installed with a 128GB card provided by Cycliq.
I'm using Samsung EVO Class 10 cards: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BCQ1164
I'd recommend going for a big name brand as SD (SDXC) cards can vary in quality.
I've had the occasional issue with my very old Cycliq 12 (first generation KickStarter model) with it needing a reset, but I've had it do that in the past with a 32gb card as well. (It's also started beeping periodically at me during a ride which may be to do with it getting confused over settings)
I'm using Scandisk Extreme 128gb in my 2nd Gen Fly 12 CE without any problems.
I tried a 128 and a 64gb in my 2nd Gen Fly 6 and it wouldn't work, so I'm back with a 32gb card.
Only problem I have had with the Fly 6 was after I'd mixed up the cards and the Fly 6 was trying to read the Fly 12 config file and failed.
File formats can be interesting; my Fly 6 records as an avi file - and DaVinci Resolve doesn't accept avi.
The Fly 12 records as an mpeg4 ... however Dashware is unable to read them ... But it can read the avi files ...
Garmin's Virb Edit is pretty good for adding metrics from the GPX file, but it can't do picture in picture.
Snap! My Fly6 even trashed the 64GB cards somehow. Back to 32GB now and no problems since - I just need to remember to use the 'incident' button in time because it only - despite the write-up - saves current segment, not the previous one.
(Caveat: if you trigger the automatic incident detection by rotating on its side for 5 secs, it does save the two segments - useful if you think a new segment as started since you captured the incident)
'Faff' in this context means needing a third-party application (FAT32 formatting in device or standard Windows tool is limited to 32GB). I admit, it's not the most faffy faff around, but it does make it less friendly for complete novices.
Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) is my go-to tool for formatting cards in Windows.