Sharing makes riding more fun, thanks Warren from Australia, He shares below,
After researching the
WWW for a suitable safety camera to install on my BMW, the INNOVV K1 weather
proof safety camera appeared to best suit my requirements; it has similar
characteristics to the Itronics ITB-100HD dash cam that I have had fitted to my
motor vehicle since late 2012 and is still functioning very well.
The delivery of the
INNOVV K1 from China arrived at my door in less than a week and all communications
with Rock at INNOVV has been prompt and positive.
I had seen
illustrations of the K1 installed on other BMW’s during my research where the
front camera is mounted in front of the oil cooler but this position did not
appear very practical to me because it interferes with the flow of air to the
oil cooler. This may not be of concern to people who ride in the cooler
climates of the northern hemisphere but it becomes very critical where I ride
in the land down under of South Australia (the driest State in the driest
continent on earth) where we can experience some sustained extremes of
temperatures during the summer months.
I decided to fit the
front camera behind the electric windshield that rises and lower’s at the touch
of a button meaning that it needed to be raised sufficiently so that vision
would not be obscured when the windshield was in the raised position, but it
also provides the camera with some protection from road grime during wet
weather.
Front camera on raised bracket, K1 GPS module to the right of camera,
remote button on lower left below the left grip
Top view of the front camera and bracket through the windshield
Close view of the front Camera and K1 GPS module.
The rear camera has
been fitted to the right side pannier frame which enabled the cable to be fed directly
into the area under the rear radio box where the power source is connected.
The recorder has been installed inside the former radio box at the rear
of the motorcycle where it is protected from the weather and allows easy access
by opening the locked lid of the radio box.
This is a much simpler procedure than installing it under the seat and
having to remove the seat each time you want to gain access to the recorder.
The Micro SDXC card is easily removed to download images or the computer
can be directly connected with the supplied USB cable
The position of the recorder in the radio box protected from the
weather.
Power for the K1 was obtained by connecting to the rear power socket
that is supplied from the secondary battery and that I have passed through a
waterproof on/off switch that I fitted on the opposite side to the power
socket.
The area under the radio box where I connected the power, using the
sockets supplied.
The camera on/off switch, with the radio box lid partly open.
The labels are not visible when the lid is closed
View
of Switch, rear camera and bracket
The
problems encountered during installation
Fitting the
cameras
The first problem I
had was finding a supplier that had ¼ inch UNC bolts to secure the cameras.
When I finally found them the shortest that I could obtain were ½ inch long,
which were too long to tighten the cameras to the brackets even with the
stainless steel spring washers that I was using. I got them to fit by grinding
then down to the necessary size. I can understand brackets not being supplied
because of the variety of methods and locations that customers will use to fit
their cameras, but I think it would be a good idea of one bolt of the correct
thread was supplied with each camera.
With the camera
housing being aluminium and the bolts that I used being high tensile steel I
coated the threads with some Duralac before tightening them. This is an anti
corrosive joining compound which inhibits electrolytic corrosion between
dissimilar metals. There are probably different brands available.
Channelling the
cables
Channelling the
cables from the front to the rear of the BMW so that they were out of harm’s
way required the lowering of the left crash bar, the removal of the seat, the
left side panels, and the left flashing turn indicator with fairing panel; by
following the procedures contained in the Riders Manual.
This facilitated the
channelling of the cables from the front camera and K1 GPS module down through
the top of the fairing behind the windshield, and then together with the cable
from the remote button (all taped together at 10cm intervals) under the fuel
tank and clear of the motor, along the left side frame to the rear. The 2 metre
length of cabling from the camera and the GPS module was just sufficient to
meet up with where I wanted to mount the recorder in the rear radio box.
Power supply
My BMW is fitted with
a secondary battery which feeds directly to the rear power socket, independent
of the CANbus electrical system, and was used for supplying power to radios. Unlike
the standard connection where the power to this power socket is active when the
ignition is turned on and becomes inactive two minutes after the ignition is
switched off, which would have made it ideal to source the power for the K1,
the power to my power socket is constantly active.
I intended to get
around this by connecting to this power source and passing it through a 12V
Relay which would be activated by power from the tail light that becomes active
as soon as the ignition is turned on and inactive when the ignition is switch
off. Simple as it sounds and would work
in the majority of cases, it did not
work on the BMW.
I started fault
finding using my multimeter and found that I was getting 12V from the power
socket but less than 3V from the connection to the tail light, which was
insufficient power to trigger the 12V Relay.
Nothing wrong with
the connections I had made, the problem was caused by a BMW method of providing
both the tail light and stop light by way of a single filament globe, where
only a low voltage power is provided to power the tail light and then that
power is boosted to the same filament when the brake is applied to brighten the
globe.
The solution was to
discard the Relay and to pass the power from the power socket through an on/off
switch, because as a novice I was not prepared to tap into the CANbus system to
find another ignition source and risk causing costly damage to the electrical
system as has happened to some people.
I have read about
another customer using the PDM60 (Power Distribution Module that can
accommodate up to six additional components) to avoid this danger but I could
not justify the additional cost to power just one addition component.
Some
things to be aware of.
When configuring your
settings on the K1 recorder, be aware that in addition to setting your local
time you must also set the GPS Time Zone for your area. This is most important
if you have your GPS connected to your recorder. If you fail to set the GPS
Time Zone, as I did, you will find that most of your video files will be filed
out of order. The reason for this is that until your GPS makes contact with the
satellites your recorder will record the time as per your local time settings,
but when the GPS has made contact with the satellites the recorder will record
times as per the Time Zone that it set.
By way of example,
Australian Central standard time zone is +9½ hours and the default time zone in
the recorder is + 4 hours. So the time
stamp on the video files recorded after the GPS kicked-in was 5½ earlier than
the actual time that I was riding.
One shortfall that I
have noticed with the K1 Recorder is that Time Zones can only be adjusted to
the nearest hour. Because of this, Time Zones that are at 30 minutes intervals
like mine will always have their time stamp showing incorrect times of 30
minutes. I think that this is something that needs to be attended to when the software
is updated. It is a feature that is available on all of my Garmin devices and
should not be difficult to correct.
