DMC Highlight Cam Project

For Fed Ex Day 2014 Devon, Otto, and I worked on the DMC Highlight Cam Project.

The end goal of the DMC Highlight Cam project is three-fold:

1. Have a camera mounted so that it can continually record all activity at the ping pong table (or any other place where interesting things *might* happen)
2. Have the ability to press a single button when something AWESOME/EXCITING/FUNNY/MEMORABLE happens to capture and archive footage of that awesome event
3. When a “highlight” is identified by the user, automatically transfer the video files for the last X seconds (say 60 seconds, adjustable) off the camera and archive it in some centrally accessible location so that it may be watched as a “replay” (slow mo, etc.), posted on the website, or compiled into a highlight reel (“Best of DMC Ping Pong 2014”)

Fed Ex Day Accomplishments Included:

• Selecting GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition as camera
  • Reason 1: About as high of resolution and high frame rate recording as you can get for the $
  • Reason 2: Supports a Wi-Fi interface that allows control of camera and access to data remotely over Wi-Fi
• Figuring out how to use natively supported automatic “looping” recording mode that breaks video into one minute segments, and only keeps the most recent five segments (exactly what we needed for this application to prevent memory card from filling up)
• Implementing a .NET application that leverages the available Wifi interface to do the following:
  • Power up GoPro Camera
  • Apply desired video resolution, frame rate, looping mode configuration settings to camera
  • Start video recording
  • Wait for a user to press a key to identify an AWESOME highlight event
  • When highlight event is identified
    • Gather a listing of the available video files on the GoPro and identify the two most recent video segments
    • Transfer those video files from the HTTP file server hosted by the GoPro to a local disk (archive) location
    • Continue recording and wait for user to identify the next highlight event
• Implementing an Android App with similar (slightly limited) functions to interface/communicate with the GoPro

Our team created a successful proof of concept for all required GoPro camera integration functions. We made a clear path toward a refined version that will be hosted somewhere on the DMC network and can be controlled through the existing DMC ping pong app.