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Therefore, this review won’t deal with sound quality. While that may be true, the interesting noises from a car come from under the bonnet or out the back, neither of which are interesting places for a camera. Garmin claims their microphone “…records clean and clear audio that cameras in cases just can’t pick up”, which is an implied bash at GoPro, I suppose. The camera is attached to the front of my car (along with a lot of bugs!) using the Tug View.

An Audio-Technica ATR3350 microphone and Zoom H1 audio recorder.

A Raceseng Tug View - a tow hook with an integrated GoPro mount.

An OBDLink LX - a Bluetooth OBD dongle for interfacing with the car.

As well as the camera itself, I’ll be using it with the following equipment: This review focuses on the experience the VIRB XE gives when using it to create driving videos, typically on a track day or on a road trip. Compare the photos above with my equipment list below and you’ll see just how far we’ve come! Strapping all that stuff into your car was just not fun, and the marshals at most track days I went to weren’t desperately happy with the thought of that amount of stuff flying around the car if I crashed. Perfectly acceptable (despite the hilariously slow data acquisition rate), but I ended up abandoning the project. Here’s an example of what all that would get you when combined with my prototype software: I had well over £3,000/$4,500 worth of big, heavy equipment. This thing ran full-blown Windows XP and cost a fortune.

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Since there was nothing like the iPad back then, I ended up using a tablet PC designed for outdoor use - it had a digital pen for input, and a special display that was readable outdoors and terrible everywhere else. It read data from the CAN bus of my car at roughly 5Hz, which meant if you wanted to record multiple properties at once, you rapidly lost nuance in your data.

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In 2007, no camera came close to the tiny action cameras of today (particularly in the consumer space) so I ended up using a HDV camcorder strapped into the car.įor recording data from the car I used a reasonably high-end (in the consumer space) OBD to Serial dongle that was advertised as being “high speed”. In particular, the Windows Mobile devices used at the time didn’t have accurate enough clocks to reliably time the data, warranting a whole section in my dissertation discussing interpolating timestamps. iPhones and iPads were just beginning to arrive, and the other smartphone platforms at the time weren’t quite suitable.

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However, while the software was ready, the hardware for gathering the data just wasn’t there. It was just a prototype, but it worked great and I was really proud of what I’d made - enough that it still gets a space in my abbreviated life history.

Check out this recent one of mine - even if you’re a car nut, I bet you won’t make it through more than a lap or two before getting bored.īack in 2007 I was bored of my dataless videos, and as part of my final year at university, I wrote a prototype Mac application to add graphical overlays to my track day videos. As my skills and enjoyment grew I wanted to record videos of my driving to show my friends and catalogue my improvement over time, so I started to record my track driving.īut! Without data, track driving videos are boring.

As soon as I had a car more interesting than my Mum’s 1.2L Vauxhall Corsa (SXi!) I started going on track days. If you don’t care, you can scroll down a bit to get to the real review. Note: For the first part of this review, I’m going to ramble on a bit about my history with this sort of thing and why I’m so hopeful that the VIRB XE isn’t crappy for use on track days. Parts of the review that are now incorrect are still here but are struck through so you can see what’s changed.

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Update January 2016: I’ve updated this review to reflect the camera and its software after a few months and a few software updates. August 16th, 2015 Garmin VIRB XE for Automotive and Track Days: A First Impressions Review

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