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Comment by radium3d | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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