GoPro has discontinued its developer program | Hacker News Reader

GoPro has discontinued its developer program

developer.gopro.com

115 pointsbyteCoder92 comments

GoPro could turn themselves around if they supported their customer community by opening up their hardware interfaces more and allowed more robust fine-grain control over aperature, shutter, iso, white balance via usb and wifi/Bluetooth with API support so we developers can create sale-generating software that makes their fantastic hardware more useful. It won't hurt them to open these controls up. Also make streaming to devices in real-time with as low latency as possible would be nice. Also lowering the price couldn't hurt but they do have one of the better waterproof systems out there so maybe that's not feasible? All of this would open up their market to tinkering enthusiasts as well without making things more complex for their existing market.

Except it's already clear they want customer lock-in on their products. You can't use the remote app without being logged in (which I can't even get to connect, but that's another complaint). Something about some cloud service that costs $5/month to use. Their remote app is clearly the funnel to sell this service, so why would they open up their API? At this point I'm just going to start buying Chinese knock-offs that don't make me create an online account to use the hardware.

FWIW, I can heartily recommend SJCAM -- their build quality is great for a Chinese knock-off and the resulting image/video quality is really really good for the price of the hardware. However, be careful when on eBay/aliExpress I've actually seen other vendors knocking off the knock-offs.

To get the best deal out of any of the knockoffs and competitors, though, you have to get a little bit knowledgeable about the camera tech. The SJ5000 is a large step up over the SJ4000 because it uses a 16MP Panasonic MN34110PA sensor rather than the SJ4000's 3.5MP Aptina AR0330 (which they upscale to call a "12MP sensor"). And that's just what a $25 bump gets you! This isn't something you're just gonna know, though--do your research.

Not too sure about the Panasonic, but the AR0330 is an ancient sensor, being about 6-7 years old now. Not the type of image sensor I'd be wanting to buy these days.

I agree. But the SJ4000 is $99 and the SJ5000 is $125 on Amazon, and that's a pretty big step for $25.

> However, be careful when on eBay/aliExpress I've actually seen other vendors knocking off the knock-offs.

Yes, I have noticed this. Do you have a list of some sellers on eBay that can be trusted to deliver real SJCAM?

This one for example is probably legit right? https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Stock-SJCAM-SJ5000X-Elite-WiFi-4...

How much should one pay for a SJ5000?

Sorry for the delay in replying. I bought mine from the Official SJCAM Store on aliexpress. It was a little cheaper on ebay at the time, but I just didn't want to risk it because shipping from China can take a while some times.

I think I was looking at SJCAM and also Wimius, which Amazon has a full camera, case, batteries, and accessory kit for $70 right now. I mean at that price point your biggest investment is going to be in class U3 micro SD cards.

I use a Wimius -- I have to say it's pretty excellent, and the price is hard to beat. Sure my need is not to to make 'production grade footage' but I'm still very picky on quality...

From what I noticed at other SJCAM isn't great in low light conditions.

Wow, I've been passively interested in getting a GoPro camera for a long time, but knowing their remote control requires a cloud service (I thought it was local wifi) is a total dealbreaker. Same with Hue lights. It is absolutely ridiculous for the customer to be locked out of their own hardware.

Now I'm confused,I thought the hue lights and Ikea knockoffs are one of the few smart lights that don't need internet and they never leave the wlan?

Most of the others are cloud enabled without a firmware upgrade, I'll give you that

The hue lights work fine over a standardized LAN protocol. I control them with both Google Home and F.lux on my desktop.

I agree. And I have the hue lights.

I can't remember having to sign in to any online account to use it.

You definitely do not need a user account to use your hue lights.

IIRC, they create an ad hoc mesh network and don’t actually need WAN to operate.

Hue lights do not require a cloud service. It is an optional way to control your lights from outside your local network (only the base station talks to the internet).

> only the base station talks to the internet

Exactly any part talking to the internet is a deal breaker. Why would I need my home to have that amount of attack vectors open?

To be fair to hue, the REST JSON API to the local hub is well documented by Philips and you can disable it contacting its cloud infrastructure via this API (and many apps) if you wish - all without hacks.

In your self-righteous rush, you neglected to consider whether or not the base station would function without being able to talk to the web.

It does so.

Again, it's optional. It does not have to talk to the internet, but the option is there for people that want features requiring it.

Try LIFX.

Sounds like failed experiment. It's not too late to give it up. They should stick to making exciting hardware.

You mean they should convince their now large set of mostly incompetent managers to stake their careers on the long shot of actually successfully innovating ? (like, say, a quality gimbal, or even trying to miniaturize a gimbal ? That would be excellent). Instead of focusing on exactly what they've done before (at best) and "soft" initiatives, and producing more of the same marketing everyone's seen 100x before ?

Yes. They should.

Also: not going to happen.

> GoPro could turn themselves around if they supported their customer community by opening up their hardware interfaces more

Is it theirs to open up though? When I last looked at it, it seemed as if most of their tech was Ambarella SoCs. Doing a quick search now, it seems they went with Socionext for Hero 6.

Even if they could open it up, it would be a non-trivial cost to support. Multiple products, probably multiple breaking API changes between firmware releases, ... It would probably have to be on a partnering program basis, and for that you need partners willing to share the costs.

As for lowering the price... The market is becoming saturated, competition increased and cheaper alternatives have been popping up. Lowering COGS is hard. GoPro grew up and cornered the market for a while. In doing so, they grew in the environment they were in, but the environment changed and now they have to adopt to the new conditions. That's easier said than done.

I'd say they'd have to broaden their product portfolio in order to avoid/get out of stagnation and decline. I think that was their thought when going into the drone market, but it didn't go well from what I understand. There's other markets for products built around optical sensors (surveillance/security, "smart" sensors w/ computer vision, ...).

Supporting an open developer program is probably not a viable thing for them to do right now.

> The market is becoming saturated, competition increased and cheaper alternatives have been popping up.

And Nick Woodman 'a sleep at the switch'. I remember what I thought when I saw he was a guest judge on Shark Tank investing in (trying to) and giving advice to young entrepreneurs going for the brass ring.

They could use the API themselves which would avoid them making api breaking changes. They should save money by outsourcing much software dev to the open source community. I think they should use stripe API and documentation as a fantastic example.

> All of this would open up their market to tinkering enthusiasts as well without making things more complex for their existing market.

How much in sales will the tinkering enthusiasts generate?

If they allowed tinkering with the Hero4, I think quite a lot. Live action VR came to life from using Hero3 & Hero4 cameras right off the shelf. There were people that figured out how to control the hsync & vsync of the Hero3 to help capture stereoscopic recordings. This solution was broken with the Hero4. However the lack of this level of sync made the GoPro footage incredibly difficult to get good stitches in VR.

When GoPro teamed up with Google to develop the Odyssey, they created a back pack to communicate with all of the attached cameras to get the desperately needed syncing between all cameras. Not only did all 16 cameras start/stop in sync, all 16 were in hsync & vsync. It's as close to a genlock as one could get with a GoPro. However, this was a closed system as the only way to get these backpacks was with an Odyssey camera system. I tried to acquire additional backpacks to add to the existing 16 to add top and bottom coverage to complete the sphere, but GoPro said no.

There are many camera people that love/hate GoPro. Loved because you can put them anywhere, and the picture quality is actually decent for what it is on the Hero4. However, they are crap to work with interface and control wise. Allowing tinkering in this world would also allow camera techs to possibly do some cool stuff that GoPro might not care to invest time. The Canon firmware hack, MagicLantern, specifically comes to mind. The exact same hardware with different programming pretty much makes it a different camera. Canon can't incorporate it, as it would cannibalize their other verticals. GoPro could have embraced/encouraged this level of tinkering as they only really have one camera type.

Totally agree with you. I bought a Hero a few years back, used it once and then tossed it in a storage bin. The UI on the camera was just too much of a pain. It was too easy to get wrong. I wanted good control software on my iPhone to make it easier and that just didn't exist. I just switched to using my iPhone for most stuff or my Canon 5DMk4 for the high quality needs. I think GoPro screwed the pooch by not opening it up. I would have the latest, greatest GoPro camera today if they were more open.

I think the "tinkering community" would include almost all active YouTube channels if they added all of the api features I mentioned. This is not a small community. The tinkerers would write the software which would inspire more new users to buy.

GoPro's IPO and initial success was inspiring because it didn't seem any kind of specialized camera/video hardware company could exist outside of the smartphone umbrella -- especially after Flip [0] got bought up not long after the first iPhone. But it seems like there was always going to be a hard ceiling for GoPro. Not just because of the continued improvement of smartphone portability and camera features, but because of the limited potential customer base of sports/travel enthusiasts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Video

I agree, but disagree there was a hard ceiling for GoPro.

Companies may have an initial success.. but the rest of the world never stands still while they rake in money. Especially not in tech, which gets cheaper every year and can be manufactured fairly easy by competitors.

GoPro had an initial success with their camera.. and it was their duty to expand beyond that into other lines of business and diversify their revenue streams.

When I hear GoPro, I think cameras (like everyone else).. and that was their failure. There's really nothing about the name "GoPro" that is attached to cameras--it only means that because of their marketing and failure to expand. I don't think there's a reason the name GoPro couldn't be put on a variety of high end outdoor gear--surfboards, snowboards, etc. GoPro could easily stand for pro-level/quality outdoor gear.

What's surprising is that they watched other camera manufacturers fail and disappear, and yet didn't pursue other lines vigorously.

Not only that, they haven’t kept up in camera tech, but still charge a premium price. Built-in mechanical stabilization, additional sensors such as gps and altimeter, color capture could have justified a premium price. Expansion into the drone market came as too little too late, and the recall hurt that effort immensely. Seems like there are video applicstions outside the ‘action cam’ domain - security, monitoring, etc that players such as nest have gotten into, granted that’s outside their X-treme DNA.

So yeah, a sale is probably best for them, but outside their brand, what kind of IP do they really have that boosts their value...

Yes, I agree.

Another great avenue for them would have been activity trackers (like fitbit), cyclometers, and/or gps gear for hiking/marine/air (like garmin).

They've really left a lot unexplored. Instead of more cameras, other gear, etc... they tried one version of a drone they had to recall for power issues, then almost immediately discontinued it. That's a pretty low-key effort for a multi-billion dollar 16 year old company

GoPro Hero5 Black has GPS.

> I don't think there's a reason the name GoPro couldn't be put on a variety of high end outdoor gear--surfboards, snowboards, etc.

GoPro is kept alive by the huge margins they can ask for on the basis of being the recognized inventor of the action cam market. The company knows absolutely nothing about operating on tighter margins.

The markets for "surfboards, snowboards etc" are even more brand aware, but that cuts both ways: GoPro would be seen as the outside giant trying to buy their way in.

That sort of lateral expansion is also a hazard. Many companies have failed at becoming lifestyle brands. For one random example, Evernote tried to launch a marketplace of physical items. Some were really nice. But after a year, they had to shut it down.

There was a hard ceiling for action cameras. People still buy them but, to some degree, they were a fad item. A lot of people realize that they don't actually base jump and after the fifth movie you've shot of an intermediate ski run it gets kind of boring. They could have designed better interfaces and the like but I'd argue there's still an upper limit.

They did have a great brand though and could probably have expanded that beyond cameras to other outdoor-oriented electronics. Of course, there's a lot of competition but there is everywhere.

>GoPro could easily stand for pro-level/quality outdoor gear.

The same could be said for pro-level/quality outdoor gear. Why aren’t Patagonia, Orvis, and Salomon making a run at the camera industry? Is that their failure?

Except those companies have multiple products. Salomon, for example, produces clothing, shoes, skis, goggles, and helmets.

Salomon originally was a metalworking company that sold saw blades. And they turned that into sporting goods equipment. They also own Mavic -- bike parts.

Patagonia originally sold rock climbing gear only.. and expanded into clothing.

Those companies are diversified stable companies, that have expanded into other lines of business... reducing their risk.

GoPro is like Salomon deciding to stick with saw blades.

I don't think GoPro necessarily needs to add outdoor gear.. it was merely an example. GoPro has quite a few options open to it... virtually all unexplored by GoPro.

> "GoPro's IPO and initial success was inspiring because it didn't seem any kind of specialized camera/video hardware company could exist outside of the smartphone umbrella"

Unless you mean specifically mean consumer devices this does not take into account the pretty large video surveillance industry.

People in here are talking like GoPro’s issues are market related. That’s not true at all.

If you know anyone who is or has worked there you know it’s because they are incredibly poorly run. They routinely waste development time on nothing projects, failing to ship code - even bug fixes - for literal years.

Their problems come from one of the most disfunctional managing cultures I’ve heard of in the Bay Area - and that’s a high bar.

Garmin beat them to the 360. My biggest complaint is that GoPro mounts are cheap and there isn't a high quality gimbal for the GoPro.

>My biggest complaint is that GoPro mounts are cheap and there isn't a high quality gimbal for the GoPro.

I went through two of GoPro's awful, plastic mounts before buying a metal, third-party mount, and never looked back. The two mounts that broke sent my GoPro careening down asphalt in each case, and I was lucky to both not lose it and to not have it be destroyed. So while the mounts are junk, the unit itself has proved to be very durable.

They used to do some metal mounts, back in the Hero2 days. Shame they stopped.

Define high quality? The Smoove is great for example.

I'm looking for a gimbal I can use while running.

I’ve used my Smoove Pro for that, and on a motorboat, so... should work. Also works for phones.

i can tell you one that works well: luuv gimbal

Gopro would’ve been a beautiful lifestyle business had they stayed private and only did cameras. The weight of scaling post-ICO sank them.

Do you mean post IPO? Internet funbux should have nothing to do with GoPro - they sell a real product that actually has value.

The investors didn't want standard returns, the valuation was based on them growing rapidly for years, which means new markets.

They could have made money from their drone product line by diversifying beyond 'toy'. But that would have required integration partners, different sales channels etc, and they didn't have the skills to build that.

Satoshian Slip

The saddest part of GoPro to me is that they own the Cineform codec. I love Cineform, and cried when GoPro acquired it. I liked it better than ProRes to be honest. Apple ProRes won because Apple. I worked for company (said company no longer exists) that was internally talking about purchasing Cineform way before GoPro, somewhere around 2008/09. However, this company was going to submit it for ISO standardization. It's a lovely codec, but it did not take off because it was always surrounded by questions of longevity. GoPro's purchase of it did not improve the longevity question, and made it seem Prosumer at best.

They have open sourced CineForm in October last year ( https://gopro.github.io/cineform-sdk/ ); also, "SMPTE has standardized the CineForm codec as the SMPTE ST 2073 VC-5 video compression standard".

Why would they do this?

They're finished as a company. They never were able to innovate beyond "it's an HD camera with wifi", and low priced competition ate them up.

Exactly, a hundred Chinese companies can pump out cameras like theirs. What they had going for them was their genericized trademark of a name - people calling all action cameras GoPros - which eventually would have or did come back and bite them. Their stock price is less than a tenth what it once was.

People are buying Chinese action cameras in such droves? Everyone I know with an action camera owns a GoPro. Something seems amiss to me, though perhaps things are different in California. But then why just these cameras? There are plenty of types of devices that have viable Chinese knockoffs for cheap, yet the non-Chinese brands thrive or at least sustain.

> People are buying Chinese action cameras in such droves? Everyone I know with an action camera owns a GoPro.

At least in my circles of people who are relatively well to do, yes, quite a few bought Chinese knockoffs on online retailers like Amazon. Hell, when you search GoPro on Amazon Canada a Chinese knockoff is the first result and has over a thousand more reviews than the actual GoPro!

You live in a rich environment where people can afford gopros - where I'm from(Poland) for a lot of people even the cheapest Session camera is 1/2 of your monthly salary. I've got some friends who work as C++ programmers, and for them the Black 6 is 2/5 of their salary. It's just completely unaffordable for vast majority of people, but there's plenty of Chinese knock-offs around, re-branded by local companies(Manta for example), and those sell a lot. If you go to an electronics store looking for an action cam, 95% of their stock is gopro knock offs, if you want a GoPro it's not that easy to find.

If you own a GoPro, you probably have had to buy a second one. I personally do not know of a single GoPro owner that has not damaged/lost/whatever their camera. After you buy the first one at full price today, do you buy a second one or go out and buy something else? It used to be that you could only get another GoPro, so GoPro sales looked good. Now, for $70, why not try the something else? Based on sales, looks like a lot of people are choosing the latter.

For most people the latter option is most useful. I bought already 4 SJCams because I end up losing them. The pictures are acceptable. Sound is not needed if underwater or while driving. So all good.

The only reason I own a 4 is because it was bought for me. Otherwise, the price point was high enough, and my old 2 was "good enough", that I just didn't see the point to upgrading that often. It's not going to compete with my phone upgrades. And I suspect repeat customers would have to be a significant portion of their business sustainability.

I imagine now or sometime last year would have been about when I naturally would have upgraded, and I suspect if I had seen a ton of reviews favoring cheaper models from competitors, I probably would have jumped ship.

That's why I said would have. I don't know whether this has yet occurred to a significant degree or not. I just can't imagine any investor confidence in something that's so easy clones by generics, especially when people were using the trademarked name for the general product category.

I just don't think the company had the leadership or vision to move outside of their core competency. It should have been obvious that today you aren't going to get very far with a hardware product that is easily copied and difficult to differentiate. At the very least you have to build a whole ecosystem that sells the hardware for you.

Maybe that is just a hindsight is 20/20 situation since I work in a tangentially related industry that is also greatly affected by Chinese companies pumping out cheaper products. But they have had plenty of time to realize this and change course.

Can you show me a Chinese company that is making an action camera that can shoot 2K60 that is waterproof and small form factor like GoPro?

The Yi 4K+ action cam ... https://store.yitechnology.com/

I bought a Chinese 1080p action cam for $30 about 3 years ago... is there some kind of competition issue in this market? (and it came with the waterproof case and various mounts)

I'd say there's a competition problem in that there are too many very poorly made "me-too's" that aren't even worth the 30 bucks. The Yi's come pretty close quality-wise to GoPro, have excellent build quality -- and frankly I like the Yi optics better than GoPro's... but they ain't 30 bucks. Disclaimer: I used to design camera systems and used to work in Hollywood so I can tell the s* from the Shinola, so I consider myself fairly picky.

I'm fairly picky too, I tend to compare everything to my Nikon D5100 (maybe not as picky as Q. Tarantino). This $30 action camera has decent image quality but the physical build feels cheap... but it hasn't broke yet.

i assume you mean 4k60?

the yi 4k+ also does that but no it isn't waterproof by itself, however you can see the hero 6 got a $100 price cut because of the stiff competition

They have a Yi 4k+ kit with a waterproof action case, much like the GoPro Hero line does.

Maybe as a hardware company, but what if they just became a content producer? They already have a GoPro channel. Although, I think RedBull has them beat. RedBull uses lots of action cam footage, but what makes their footage great is that they take full cameras and rigging out to crazy places to get that cinematic look as action video. Yeah, maybe they are finished...

I had applied and interviewed with them right about when this was breaking, and it's on my list of "dodged a bullet". The manager even mentioned that there was the very real possibility that the budget requisition for why I was there might be pulled soon... and it's clear how that turned out.

They're getting ready to sell themselves.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gopro-shares-pare-huge-los...

I've got my money on Redbull buying them.

GoPro has a huge professional market as well; you might be surprised at the amount of footage you see on TV and in movies that's shot on a GoPro. If I had to guess on an acquisition I might look at Canon or Nikon, but the reality is probably PE.

I wonder if quiet negotiations are already happening and this shutdown was to court a potential offer.

My money is on DJI buying them.

I wouldn't be so sure DJI already makes better cameras. For whatever reason, DJI made a decision to go their own way. Maybe irreconcilable differences with GoPro, maybe GoPro unwilling to work with them, whatever the reason, DJI cameras have long since marginalized the need to a GoPro on their gear.

Any recommendation for alternative camera with good API?

Off topic, but if anyone from their marketing team reads this, one of the activities[1] on the HERO6 Black sales page[2] is a surefire way to crack your skull open.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/ZuOmIrV.jpg

[2] https://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/cameras/hero6-black/CHDHX-601-ma...

Which one? The one with the guy skateboarding without a helmet? The guy on the edge of a rocky cliff? The guy standing at night on a rock formation on the beach? The women biking without helmets without their feet on the pedals? Or the kayakers going over a waterfall?

If I didn't know better, I would think filming yourself cracking your skull open is exactly what they're selling.

That promotional video is fantastic. Beautiful scenery, photogenic people, shots of pristine nature, even the family visiting a theme park inspires a primal kind of longing and deep pride in how awesome it is to be an incarnated human.

The score--Odesza's "A Moment Apart" from the album of the same name--contributes to the emotion in no small way.

Given the discontinuation of the developer program is in line with the gradual decline of the GoPro brand, the video is at once sublime and forlorn and I can't help but feel GoPro's fate is to be lamented.

One can almost read in the GoPro's plight the unavoidable fate of humankind and the planet on which we live.

OK, I know all of that is a bit overwrought, and this is my first exposure to Odesza. But I was so affected that I decided to buy the album and, I know, I'm going to put it on repeat for the next month or so.

Thanks for the link.

Odesza's other albums are great too!

The vocal sample from "Intro" on Odesza's album "Summer's Gone" is from a 1957 BBC Radiophonics workshop [1] - it's a remarkably simple explanation, but must have been amazing to hear at the time:

"You take a sound. Any sound. Record it and then change its nature by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds. Play it backwards. Add it to itself over and over again. You adjust filters, echoes, acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape. By these means and many others you can create sounds which no one has ever heard before."

[1]: https://boingboing.net/2012/05/21/bbc-radiophonic-sound-expe...

I actually think gopros gorgeous videos may have contributed to its downfall.

They’re all shot on GoPro, and they make a big deal about this. So everyone who buys one assumes they may be able to make videos that are also awesome.

Then reality comes crashing down, and you realize theirs was shot on 5 continents with tens of thousands of dollars worth of extra gear, and days of work on high-end editing rigs, and yours looks like you should’ve just shot it on iphone.

I don't know about contributing to their downfall. But GoPro with all their videos and so forth definitely create this aspirational branding that a lot of people like to see themselves being associated with.

Then they shoot a few videos skiing down an intermediate ski slope and realize this is all pretty boring and they don't kayak off waterfalls or jump off cliffs themselves.

Personally, I feel the same way about drones. Every time I think about getting a good one I realize I'd shoot some videos around my house and then... I dunno. Maybe I'd take it out somewhere but really they're sort obnoxious so probably it would sit on the shelf.

Yeah, I think you nailed it.

I remember taking the footage from a mountain biking trip and excitedly looking through it only to realize it was painfully boring. I forgot for a moment that I’m not a professional mountain biker, and can’t even do a double backflip. Even I didn’t really want to watch it; why would anyone else?

Nah, it's a tricycle!

i ride my bike like that all the time

Reply on news.ycombinator.com