HydraPro GoPro control.

[BugHunter]

About two years ago our little ski group here switched to using GoPro as a training tool and quickly realized that having a way to automatically start/stop recording a la Wakeye would be great to have for the newer GoPros. I'm a software engineer by trade, so I started this little project as a hobby project. It was not intended to grow into a real product, but with more interest coming from the waterski community and even more from the car enthusiast side, I decided that it was time to make it available in the mobile stores as a product.
Now after two years and hundreds of hours of testing/use later it is available for IOS and Android.

Features used for skiing.

• Start and stop recording at a configurable speed.
• Force the GoPro preset selection to a configured preset.
• Turn camera on/off from the app.
• Supports GoPro Hero5 to Hero12. Hero4 only on IOS. If your phone can control the GoPro with the GoPro Quik app through Bluetooth, HydraPro will be able to control it as well.

More info: www.lakeshorelogic.com/hydrapro

 

[03RLXi]

Awesome. It sounds like a more user friendly and more flexible version of the gopro labs speed activation discussed here. 

 

[Horton]

I am going to need this....

[scadwallader]

I have used the HydraPro app extensively for the last 2 years, given I was a primary tester during development and beta of the app.  (I water ski 4 days per week, year round, with the software engineer who built the app.  We used the app every time we skied in order to watch GoPro videos to improve our skiing.)  I continue to use the app extensively and highly recommend it, especially if you want to use a speed setting to start/stop your GoPro and/or if you use multiple GoPros at the same time.

Comments on the app itself:  The app does a terrific job controlling the GoPro.  

• 1) It recognizes my specific GoPro and changes the recording settings to the defaults I specified in the app.  This is very helpful to get consistent GoPro recordings, even when I use the GoPro with other settings for other purposes.  
• 2) It remembers the speed setting I entered and starts the video at that speed.  It stops the video when the speed falls below this set point, which is perfect for my application, water skiing.  
• 3) I have had 2 different Android phones with different screen sizes and different manufacturers.  The app display and functionality works perfectly on both phones.  (I don't have an Apple phone, but we tested a ton with IOS phones.) I have personally been in the boat with 4 GoPros being controlled by the app at the same time.  The app works seamlessly with multiple GoPros; it is easy to turn on/off individual GoPros using the app. 

Comments on the development process of the app:  

• The software engineer that built the app is a tinkerer and perfectionist.  He is passionate about solving bugs and creating a great user experience.  He spent an incredible number of hours tweaking the app based on feedback from our ski sessions, and continues to do so.  
• I was shocked at how challenging the Android/IOS development process was given so many factors you have to code for and test:  different Android/IOS versions, different screen sizes, different phone manufacturers, different GoPro versions.  During beta testing, we constantly changed phones and GoPros in order to ferret out bugs and quirks with the UI.

Lastly, I don't get any money from sales of this app.  I just love the app and wanted to share my positive experience.
-Shawn

[BKistler]

Sounds interesting. Any experience using this for tricks?  I GoPro every trick pass and this could save my wife a lot of reaching around to turn the camera on and off. We’ve been using an antique Hero3 that does the job but it might be time to upgrade. 

[BugHunter]

Most of the testing was done during slalom but we did some trick sets and it worked as expected.

It is very easy to adjust the trigger speed when switching to tricks.

The difference with slalom is that with tricking the boat does not stop at the end of the pass but turns around. At least that is what we do. As the boat is not going under the trigger speed while turning, the camera will keep recording. So you will not get the videoclip-per-pass as with slalom.

[03RLXi]

@BugHunter could a future feature be a GPS location based on/off? That'd work for many trick skiers, also for slalom course  

[swbca]

Do you have a slalom video that you could post here ?

Specifically,

Where ZOOM is set to have a 6' adult skier fill around 1/3 of the height of the video frame at 35 off when he is upright at the wake.

And showing that the skier doesn't ski out of the frame at 35-38 off when zoomed as above.

This zoom spec approximately simulates a 50mm equivalent "normal" lens on an SLR.   Not the usual way-to-wide angle seen on old GoPro videos.

I have been using an old android phone on SkiDoc.  There is no vibration problem and Individual frames are great quality, but the "rope shake" with short line skiers is bad.

Looking for an improvement on the stabilization of rope shake.    I just tried the Selfie camera on an iPhone-XS zoomed at 1.5 and every frame is soft-focus.  Not good enough.

Ready to switch to GoPro if it looks good at the 50mm-equivelent described above.

Thanks

 

 

    

[BugHunter]

5 hours ago, swbca said:

Do you have a slalom video that you could post here ?

Specifically,

Where ZOOM is set to have a 6' adult skier fill around 1/3 of the height of the video frame at 35 off when he is upright at the wake.

And showing that the skier doesn't ski out of the frame at 35-38 off when zoomed as above.

This zoom spec approximately simulates a 50mm equivalent "normal" lens on an SLR.   Not the usual way-to-wide angle seen on old GoPro videos.

I have been using an old android phone on SkiDoc.  There is no vibration problem and Individual frames are great quality, but the "rope shake" with short line skiers is bad.

Looking for an improvement on the stabilization of rope shake.    I just tried the Selfie camera on an iPhone-XS zoomed at 1.5 and every frame is soft-focus.  Not good enough.

Ready to switch to GoPro if it looks good at the 50mm-equivelent described above.

Thanks

 

 

    

I will get some sample videos and post them. I do not ski at 35off (I wish) but my ski pals are so I will make the video this weekend.

[swbca]

12 minutes ago, BugHunter said:

I will get some sample videos and post them. I do not ski at 35off (I wish) but my ski pals are so I will make the video this weekend.

Great!   thanks alot . .  I don't know the difference between GoPro models . . what would be the best option to work with your APP ?    

[BugHunter]

5 hours ago, swbca said:

Do you have a slalom video that you could post here ?

Specifically,

Where ZOOM is set to have a 6' adult skier fill around 1/3 of the height of the video frame at 35 off when he is upright at the wake.

And showing that the skier doesn't ski out of the frame at 35-38 off when zoomed as above.

This zoom spec approximately simulates a 50mm equivalent "normal" lens on an SLR.   Not the usual way-to-wide angle seen on old GoPro videos.

I have been using an old android phone on SkiDoc.  There is no vibration problem and Individual frames are great quality, but the "rope shake" with short line skiers is bad.

Looking for an improvement on the stabilization of rope shake.    I just tried the Selfie camera on an iPhone-XS zoomed at 1.5 and every frame is soft-focus.  Not good enough.

Ready to switch to GoPro if it looks good at the 50mm-equivelent described above.

Thanks

 

 

    

 

Just now, BugHunter said:

I will get some sample videos and post them. I do not ski at 35off (I wish) but my ski pals are so I will make the video this weekend.

 

44 minutes ago, swbca said:

Great!   thanks alot . .  I don't know the difference between GoPro models . . what would be the best option to work with your APP ?    

Hero 9, 10, 11, 12 all work great. Hero12 will have the best video quality. Older models will also work with the app but their battery is the old model, so I do not recommend those if you have to and buy one.

23 hours ago, 03RLXi said:

@BugHunter could a future feature be a GPS location based on/off? That'd work for many trick skiers, also for slalom course  

I have a test version that is actually doing that already. But only for slalom. You idle the boat through the course and hit a button in the app to record the coordinates of the pre-gates on each end of the course (only once, a la Sure-Path). The camera will be activated when coming to speed before the pre-gate and will stop recording when going through the end pre-gates. The advantage of this is that the videos are shorter (no use seeing the end of the pass after the gate) and if a skier falls and is picked up in the course the camera will not start the recording when the skier is pulled back to the start of the course for the next pass.

The reason it is not included in this first version is that the logic got confused if more than one slalom course was entered (by entering multiple pre-gate sets). We have two lakes with a peninsula between them and the logic could not handle the intersecting activation "bubbles". I decided it needed more testing and disabled it for now.

The problem for tricks is that you have to enable the camera at the set course boundaries as well instead of relying on a speed trigger. The combined latency of the app and the camera make it harder to get the logic right. Also, one of our lakes is wide enough, so we have the trick course running almost along the side of the slalom course in that lake. The logic went bonkers trying to figure out where the boundaries are.

In the end it will require UI changes and it will be released once the testing is satisfactory. 

[swbca]

@BugHunterThis is the view I get with my 8 year old Android phone at 1.5 zoom.  The shake when the rope is snapped tight by the skier is bad.  Can a GoPro ZOOM get close to this view ?    (the skier fills about 1/3 of the frame height - close to a 50mm-equivalent "normal" focal length on an film SLR. )   

This is Paul Chapin a week before he skied in the last over-35 World Tournament .   He's not in course, but he is skiing full width - there was too much wind in the course this day.   Thanks for your help with this ?

Edited April 25 by swbca