streaming from cheap HD "sport camera" ?

[jbeale]

I have noticed a new category of compact "sport camera" similar to the GoPro, with high resolution, such as 12 Mpixel. Some of these are sold under $50. One example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WiFi-4K-ULTRA-H ... 1878303985

This type of camera generally records video and stills to SD card, but many offer wifi streaming of some kind. Has anyone had any experience trying to record a wifi stream from this type of camera with a RPi (or any other computer)? The price seems much lower than I would expect for a real 12 Mpixel camera so I assume the performance must not match the specs, and no doubt any wifi stream would be at a lower resolution, but I'm curious.

[jbeale]

Let me know what you find out! I don't have one of those cameras and I don't know how good they are, but yeah, the price is low enough it's tempting to just try it and see. I'm just worried that the "wifi control" may only work with some proprietary cellphone app, so it's not easy to control it from some other computer.

By the way, here's another one, with a 360x220 degree lens (seeing in all directions at once), twice the price of the other one. It uses a 8 Mpixel Sony IMX179 (1/3.2 inch format sensor) and actually specifies that the camera itself runs Linux on Allwinner V3 ARM @ Cortex-A7 1.2GHZ. I can't remember seeing a consumer camera device that actually calls out the internal OS.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/4K-360-Wifi-Pan ... 2101965316

[jbeale]

Right now, without having one myself I suspect the cheapest cameras are not very good. I haven't seen any convincing stills or video from them. The "YI 4k action camera" looks like a better bet for image quality, of course much more expensive.

[Goraxium]

I got one of the super cheap sport cameras a while ago to play around with. Supposedly 1080p (has it in the options), but only records in 720p, and the quality isn't great. BUT, and I must make this point: you could buy 16 of these cameras (that come with accessories) for the same price as a single GoPro. If you'd prefer an average all-around view, over a quality single-sided view, this isn't a bad way to deal with things. As for streaming, mine doesn't have wifi, so I can't offer help with that. But put simply, the quality goes like this: GoPro > (Official) Action Sport Camera > (Unofficial) Action Sport Camera. There are obvious price differences, and you need to be weary of model numbers (the cheap sport cameras have the exact same model numbers as the not so cheap ones).