HEAT is your Enemy
When electron flow is resisted, some of the energy in the electrons does not travel through all the way. Because energy is conserved, the energy that was moving the electrons forward is converted to heat energy.
You Can’t Replay the Day
There has been nothing more frustrating and more gut-wrenching than to get your camera home, pop out the micro SD card only to find that most of a game didn’t record. I’ve been there multiple times and for multiple reasons. I’ve spent hours and hours researching message boards, watching YouTube videos, trial and error, and on the verge of asking for a refund or warranty exchange, only to come to same conclusion. Some days it just works, and some days there’s nothing you can do. But there are some proactive things to give you the best chance of success every single time. Ultimately, the limiting factor in all of this has been the camera operates within a certain temperature range. Exceed that range: GAME OVER. No warning, no error, no beep. It shuts down and you are done. Or worse, the camera looks like it’s recording (happened to me multiple times), the timer is counting up on the camera display, the app says it’s recording, the remote control shows it’s working, but the memory card is not storing anything! You can’t even troubleshoot at the field at that point because there’s no indication anything went wrong. And when you miss recording a game, you can’t replay the day.
Once you understand what causes heat, you can begin to eliminate those things. The weather is what it is. Playing baseball in late July and early August in NC gives you an ambient temperature that reaches triple digits. Add in the midday sun beating down on that little camera and it barely stands a chance. Testing with a temperature gun in my house that showed 71 F, I had the camera running off it’s own battery while charging and shooting 4K video at 30fps and after about 30 minutes the camera body right below the front screen (where the memory card is) recorded a temperature of 147 F! Now imagine if it wasn’t sitting in the house but outside where it was 100 F, then add on being in direct sunlight. Some of these turf fields in the south register over 150 F. So you have the sun beating down on the camera, the turf radiating up, and little to no wind or shade. It’s truly amazing this thing doesn’t catch on fire. What the actual ‘safe operating temperature’ claims to be I have no idea. I just know what I’ve seen and I know when it fails.
Heat be Gone!
(In 3 Easy Steps)
Remove the battery: I came from a GoPro Hero 4 and that camera required the internal battery to be in the camera body in order to work and to utilize an external battery pack. The way I understand is it runs off the internal battery and when it gets low, it would recharge itself while being used. With the Hero 8, I ran it the same way. Little did I know, starting around the 7, GoPro made the cameras able to run off external power exclusively. This is a game changer for us who are pushing this camera to its upper limits. You can remove the battery leaving a giant hole in the side of the camera which allows heat to escape and/or cold air to blow into the body. Is there concern with dirt or rain getting in? Sure, but the reward outweighs the risk. And so far, so good…
Reduce the resolution: The easiest and quickest way to reduce heat is to reduce the recorded image quality. Running at 4K 60fps (resolution of 4K and 60 frames per second) is going to run the hottest. Even dropping down to 4K 30fps will help a lot with overheating. Recording at 2.7K 60fps is one of the sweet spots I found that allows for higher quality but if done correctly, won’t overheat on those really hot days. Going down to 1080p at 60 or 120fps will still look decent on YouTube but don’t count on zooming in at any of the bases and seeing if the tag was there or not for that crucial out. Check out the software page to see a comprehensive breakdown of all the settings I like and at what temperature I record them at. Also see my reasoning why I push the upper limits every chance I get.
Airflow: The beautiful thing about the GoPro is it’s waterproof right out of the box now. But no water in also means no air in. And no air in means no heat out. No heat out means the camera shuts down to protect itself. I’ve tried mini USB fans, I’ve tried a heat sink make for a personal computer, and I’ve tried various other fans blowing away and towards the camera. My final variation, I feel, works the best using two 80mmx80mm brushless cooling fans. Check out the blog page to see what you need and how to build something similar.
Other Heat Reduction Measures
Turn off everything you don’t need on the camera. I turn off all the red blinking lights on the front and back. They’re unnecessary and they could be distracting to the pitcher. Turn off the GPS location. Turn off hypersmooth if the camera is mounted on a chain link fence. If it’s mounted on a mesh net, you may need hypersmooth on especially on windy days which must be taken into consideration when choosing your recording quality. Turn off wifi if you’re not going to be monitoring the game. Turn off the rear screen. The more features you use the more electrons that are flowing and the more heat that will be produced. Again, heat is the enemy. On really hot days I will keep the WiFi on and use it to stop the camera from recording between innings to give it a break and a couple minutes to cool down. This also allows you to see the framing of the camera in case a foul ball has inadvertently hit around it.
Still not enough and still overheating? Check out the blog to see what can be built to further reduce the heat mechanically.
Everything I learned was from trial and error. When I lost the first footage it was because the battery was installed and I had put the battery door on that made me able to plug in an external power source simultaneously. Initially that setup worked fine even shooting in 4K using a crappy memory card because it was early March and the weather was in the upper 40’s. When I tried that same setup in June the camera failed in royal fashion. In fact, it failed after less than 30 minutes. It was in the 80’s and in direct sunlight. What I discovered is the camera runs off the internal battery if it’s installed. Once that battery begins to get critically low it starts to recharge itself (producing heat) while still running off the battery. So it’s hot, in direct sunlight, and trying to charge itself while recording in 4K. A recipe for disaster! But if you want to record quality like seen here, you have to push to the limits and you only discover those limits when everything fails.