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New installation of K6
Hi All,
I’ve was inspired to fit dashcams to my 2004 Yamaha Fazer 1000 by seeing them on other bikes at rallies, and by watching ‘adventure’ videos on YouTube. I mainly use my Fazer for trips from my home in the UK to watch bike races in continental Europe. I was attracted to the Innovv K6 because of its simplicity and its compactness, allowing it to be installed discreetly – I’ve done lots of useful mods to my bike, but if possible I like them to go unnoticed.
Because of a lack of free space at the front of the Fazer I decided to reverse the fitting of the cameras, with the larger camera containing the DVR (which I’ll call camera/DVR) facing rearwards, and the small camera facing forwards. Even before I’d finished the install it occurred to me that it would be nice, if possible, to have a third (small) camera in the cockpit, showing me as I operated the bike’s controls. I bought one, hoping that it would be possible to switch between its output and that of my front-facing small camera camera using a 3-pole single-throw ON-ON switch. However, I couldn’t get that set-up to work so contacted David at Innovv UK, who was kind enough to refund me for the second small camera, bill me for another complete system, and send me all the other parts that I needed to make up the second system, such as camera/DVR, DC converter, cables and brackets. So I’ve ended up with four cameras on my bike, two operating on one system and the other two operating on a second, independent, system. Initially, for one system I had a rear-facing camera firmly mounted under my rear rack, and its forward-facing partner mounted under the Fazer’s fairing, cable-tied to the plastic housing of my air horn; for the the second system I had the camera/DVR facing forwards as Innovv intended, mounted on a bracket that came with an aftermarket belly pan, and its small partner cable-tied into a space above the Fazer’s clocks, pointing rearwards.
I didn’t want the DC converters to be drawing power constantly so fitted a double pole switch to their earth wires so that they can be isolated when the bike’s not in use, and I also wanted to be able to operate the cameras independent of the bike’s ignition, so fitted another double pole switch between two constantly live +ve supplies and the yellow ‘trigger’ wires; the latter switch is on the outside of the bike but is hidden away, and is unlikely to attract much attention. Because both systems are activated with one switch, they turn on at exactly the same moment, meaning that all four output videos are synchronised, making their combination into a single video (in a grid arrangement, for example) very straightforward.
I have had some issues in getting everything to work as I intended it to, but perhaps I’ll describe those in another post – if anyone’s interested in hearing about them?
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3 Replies
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Hi Tim,
Thanks for explaining your installation. Perhaps you could add some photos? The idle power consumption is so low that you can leave both K6s powered without any problems.
With all the switches, be sure to properly disconnect K6 by first de-energizing the trigger wire. Forcefully de-energizing the K6 can corrupt the SD card and cause video loss.
With two K6s, you can also test more easily with different settings. This way, you’ll have equivalent test videos. I sometimes do this with the K3 and K5 I have mounted on my motorcycle.Enjoy your K6s!
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Hi Hans, nice to hear from you and thanks for your advice.
Yes, I must take a some pictures. That wouldn’t be worthwhile just yet though, as I’m having to change how some of the cameras are mounted and the re-installation’s still very much a work in progress. I’m hoping that I’ve successfully uploaded a video with images from my first set-up that will illustrate why that’s been necessary: a wavy effect in the two lower images (both cameras rubber-mounted), and vibration in a specific band of revs of the plate steel bracket carrying the camera down by the front wheel. The only one of the four cameras to give a rock-steady image is the rear-facing one bolted to one of the luggage rack mounts. That suggests to me that I should mount all of the cameras as firmly as possible (the Fazer’s engine is very smooth), which is what I’m currently trying to achieve. The issue with resonance of the bracket supporting the camera down by the front wheel I’m going to attempt to solve by damping it with some form of restraint under tension, or possibly by adding some weight to it. BTW, the image from this camera is cropped because I’ve cobbled an acrylic cover to protect the lens against stone chips, whose opaque edge limits the field of view a bit.
As a compromise between image quality and recording time before looping commences I’ve set all four cameras to 1920 x 1080, though the quality of this video must be far below that because I’ve had to compress it below 50MB in order to be able to upload it. It’s not very obvious in the video because of the low speeds involved, but, inevitably, wind noise was initially an issue. I’ve managed to significantly reduce its effect by recording at volume setting 1, and tying a soft braided cord, similar to a shoelace, over the microphone aperture in the dvr/camera 🙂.
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Hi Tim,
Nice to see the video.
You can see that the K6 wants to control the light intensity well. The front camera with the lens protector in the picture produces a brighter image than the other front camera. This is due to the ratio of darker to brighter areas in the image.
The wavy effect is because the camera vibrates at a higher frequency. Experimenting with the mounting to prevent this rippling effect is necessary. It’s even possible that if you can remove the rubber, the wavy effect will disappear.
I’ve been using Innovv cameras for many years and haven’t had any problems with stone chips. Either it’s a coincidence that a stone has never hit my camera, or the lenses are made of strong material that can handle some stone chips.
And as for the sound, the K6 doesn’t have the best microphone. I’ve put a piece of foam over the microphone opening, and that works reasonably well as a dead cat. But it’s never going to be completely free of wind noise. Good luck with adjusting both of your K6s
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