Ride across America

[Skant153]

In July I'll be riding from Redmond, OR to Rochester, NY along the route shown. Wondering if anyone lives anywhere along the route and wants to meet up for a ride. I plan to stop at Rushmore for a photo op and visit the motorcycle museum in Sturgis. Probably get some photos in the Badlands along the way as well. I'll be riding with some cameras to document the journey and hopefully get a video put together if I can keep batteries charges.

 

[HippoDrone]

That looks like an amazing trip!

 

[LoneWolfer]

Get yourself a mattery tender harness and Battery Tender USB Charger Adapter and you won't have to worry about batteries. And pick up a bunch of SD cards so you don't run out of memory. Make sure to get off the high way as much as possibel, time permitting, to see the good parts of America. TBack roads were the best part for me when I made the trip.

 

[Skant153]

I've already got one with 2 2.1 amp connections. I want to have 2 cameras, a helmet mount and either one back at me or one looking backwards. It'll be hard to have those charging and my phone for gps/music. I was thinking about getting a 360 camera and putting it on a stick attached to the sissy bar bag instead but those things run a pretty penny and aren't what you'd call waterproof. It's a week long trip and i'm sure there will be rain.

In other news. I'm in contact with Wounded Warrior Project and the Gary Sinise Foundation in hopes to organize meetups / rides along the route to raise money for charity. As a vet of both Iraq and Afghanistan and having some injuries that impact my daily life, i'd love to be able to make this ride mean something more than a trip across the country.

If successful, that would definitely put me off the highway and add quite a bit of time to the trip but it would be well worth it. So if anyone lives near the route or knows people who do, it's be great to get some local help organizing and promoting any events.

 

[HippoDrone]

The GoPro Max and the Insta360 One R are both waterproof 360 cameras, on the sissy bar would be an awesome angle too!

 

[LoneWolfer]

I swap batteries at stops, not charge all at the same time. I use a 3 port gopro battery charger and have three charging first thing in the day off the bike in a sadlle bag and on my next stop I plug in my portable charger. I personally don't use visual navigation while on the bike, only audio with music and get pretty much the whole day out of my phone. If I need to charge the phone, I always do that off the portable charger in my pocket, never from the bike itself. My last 3 day trip I recorded with two cameras, my phone, secondary audio and had my Sena running bluetooth 8 hours a day and never had a problem with power. Only issue was not enough memory on my phone with all the off bike stuff I recorded. I persoanlly think my iPhone gives a better feel off bike than my gopro's and it is easier to hold with the popsocket so it filled up fast.

 

[Skant153]

That max is expensive, I was thinking the fusion. I haven't seen the one r, just one x. Is that new or something? I did find some waterproof housings for the one, though.

I swap batteries at stops, not charge all at the same time. I use a 3 port gopro battery charger and have three charging first thing in the day off the bike in a sadlle bag and on my next stop I plug in my portable charger. I personally don't use visual navigation while on the bike, only audio with music and get pretty much the whole day out of my phone. If I need to charge the phone, I always do that off the portable charger in my pocket, never from the bike itself. My last 3 day trip I recorded with two cameras, my phone, secondary audio and had my Sena running bluetooth 8 hours a day and never had a problem with power. Only issue was not enough memory on my phone with all the off bike stuff I recorded. I persoanlly think my iPhone gives a better feel off bike than my gopro's and it is easier to hold with the popsocket so it filled up fast.

This was pretty much my plan. My problem is I'm starting fresh so it's a pretty big expense to set up like that right away. I was thinking about going with chinese cameras to keep cost down the. Give them to my kids as I replace them. I imagine those sensors are pretty bad though. I'm not an av guy so I don't really know what to look for.

 

[LoneWolfer]

There are some decent , cheaper cameras out there. I would look for the best reviews on amazon and go from there and see which ones have muilti battery chargers available. Or the other option is to buy used gopros. The Gopro Hero 5 is a tank of a camera and can be found on facebook market place around the $150 mark. Or even go with two hero 3's or two hero 4's for the journey. Just don't think you can run a Hero 5 and one of the oder one's easily as their batteries are different. Hippo would be th best source for info on those as he has had pretty much every gopro produced!

 

[Skant153]

i've been scouring ebay, facebook, craigslist and the like looking for deals on older gopros. most folks are asking for more used than for reconditioned ones on amazon. reconditioned 4s are $80 with no accessories or case. the gopro fusion 360 camera is $210 new and you only need the one camera. Overall, the cost will likely be the same with accessories so it makes me wonder if the fusion is a better choice. plus it's a more unique angle for videos

 

[HippoDrone]

The Fusion ia very hard to work with to edit sadly. The Insta360 One R is their new camera, it has a similar form factor to GoPro Hero 5/6/7/8 but has the option of being a single lens camera, or a 2 lens 360 camera. Like the GoPro Max and Fusion it is also waterproof. I mostly prefer the Insta360 cameras as they have software you can use on PC which currently you can't with the Max to reframe the 360 vids down to a directed view. All of them can be edited on a mobile phone providing it is of a high enough specification though, and I generally do all my 360 editing on my phone as it is easier and has more features.

 

[Skant153]

i did see a video with the insta360 software. it looked pretty good. this stuff may be too rich for my blood, though. does the one and one x use the same software as the one r? i think the modular approach to the one r is pretty cool but kinda makes it difficult to figure out how to buy it.

 

[HippoDrone]

The One is an old outdated camera now, it would be the equivalent of uploading at 720p. The One X and One R have their own software, but apparently the One R software works with the One X, they just don't want folk to know that! ;-)

 

[FloridaMan]

Sounds like a fun trip and that would be awesome if you could turn it into a charity for veterans.

 

[Skant153]

Both WWP and the Gary Sinise Foundation have little create your own fundraiser websites where you can create a fundraiser page and link people to it. The Gary Sinise Foundation is a little picky about how it works though. I'm probably going to go that route to set up a fund raiser for one or both of them.

I've also got some questions about event organization if anyone has experience with that but I think I'll start a new thread for that just in case anyone in the future is searching the site (which I should probably do first also).

And also designing a graphic for the event...