Davide Di Cillo

Use your iPhone as a GoPro HD replacement

Ever since I got my new bicycle, I wanted to find a way to record videos of my rides. I’m planning to make a video with a bunch of stuff I’ve done here in Miami and I thought that my bike rides could be a great source of footage.

The first thought of course was to buy a GoPro HD camera, but I didn’t want to spend that much money, and I wasn’t really planning to do anything extreme that involved water or mud. Since I already own a small device capable of taking awesome videos–my iPhone 4S—I tried to figure out a way to use that on my bike.

Most bike supports for the iPhone are made so that you could use the phone as a bike computer, so they weren’t ideal for my purpose. After some research, I came up with the following setup:

• 1 Bicycle Handle Bar Mount for Cameras with 1/4 20 Screw Thread
• 1 Canopy Jumba iPhone 4 Case

Here’s a picture of the final result:

While I already had a Glif, I was afraid that a bump could throw the iPhone off the track with a tragic outcome. That’s why I opted for the Canopy Jumba, which I was able to find on Amazon for $20 (apparently that store doesn’t carry the case anymore). Another alternative could be the XShot case, but I’ve never tried it so I’m not sure on how secure the tripod adaptor is.

Here’s a video made mostly with this setup:

Tags: Bike, Camera, iPhone, Video