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Any camera reccomendation?

ECLM
WCF

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I have just bough this (Still dont actuall have my sky vac waiting on delivery).

But here on German Amazon it was going for 80 euros with a voucher applied cant find it at the same price on UK amazon.  I have to say im impressed with the quality of the video and it connects very nicely to my phone, it even comes with a nice strap that will attach perfectly to the sky vac poles.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07Q7Z1QBF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 
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Pjj said:
I have just measured my silicon bend it’s about 60mm across the outside 
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Well now I'm confused then. As on the GVS site they only sell 2 mount options for gutter cleaning mounts and it's 44mm or 51mm so thought something with the same diameter would have been fine ?

 
To be fair Amazon has come through golden again. Works like a charm.....just trying to find a camera angle that's best to see into the guttering. ?

When I have it on top I just see mainly tiles. ??

IMG_20201122_150328.jpg

 
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Bongofish said:
To be fair Amazon has come through golden again. Works like a charm.....just trying to find a camera angle that's best to see into the guttering. ?

When I have it on top I just see mainly tiles. ??

View attachment 22456
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You'd be better off with having the camera angle of attack on top looking down as you'll fowl the field of view having it underslung and will scratch the housing on gutters and clips 

 
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Bongofish said:
To be fair Amazon has come through golden again. Works like a charm.....just trying to find a camera angle that's best to see into the guttering. ?

When I have it on top I just see mainly tiles. ??

View attachment 22456
Click to expand...
My set up is like this. Its not the angle that you need to change to avoid tiles, it's how you're using the vac, if you go in straight you will only see tiles, if you work along sideways you'll see what you're clearing.

 
I found with the cheap action cameras that it wasn't the actual camera that was the problem, it was the software.  It would only show the picture in portrait mode on the phone, so the picture was tiny.  I got a gopro as their app switches between portrait and landscape which means you get a much larger picture.

However I really don't rate these action cams.  I've been out with mine today, all day.  Despite only turning the camera on to check that they were clear the second battery died mid afternoon, so the last job I just had to go off feel and couldn't inspect them.  Even when it was working I had problems though, the camera wouldn't always connect to the phone meaning I spent a few minutes rebooting everything to get it to connect.  It's very annoying, it's just unnecessary delays.

I'm now going to look at powered camera's.  Mains power isn't a problem as to do the job you have to have it, so running a camera of the mains stops the faffing about with batteries.  I also suspect that a mains powered camera will be a lot more simple, no software issues and no wifi issues.

One thing I'm going to do, whatever camera system I go for I'm going to get the brightest ******* light that I can possibly find.  Today I could hardly see anything, it's too dark, you're peering the camera from bright sunlight into a gutter that is in the tiles shadow, it's near impossible to see anything.  So I think a super bright light shining into the gutter would make it a lot better.

 
Chris34 said:
I found with the cheap action cameras that it wasn't the actual camera that was the problem, it was the software.  It would only show the picture in portrait mode on the phone, so the picture was tiny.  I got a gopro as their app switches between portrait and landscape which means you get a much larger picture.

However I really don't rate these action cams.  I've been out with mine today, all day.  Despite only turning the camera on to check that they were clear the second battery died mid afternoon, so the last job I just had to go off feel and couldn't inspect them.  Even when it was working I had problems though, the camera wouldn't always connect to the phone meaning I spent a few minutes rebooting everything to get it to connect.  It's very annoying, it's just unnecessary delays.

I'm now going to look at powered camera's.  Mains power isn't a problem as to do the job you have to have it, so running a camera of the mains stops the faffing about with batteries.  I also suspect that a mains powered camera will be a lot more simple, no software issues and no wifi issues.

One thing I'm going to do, whatever camera system I go for I'm going to get the brightest ******* light that I can possibly find.  Today I could hardly see anything, it's too dark, you're peering the camera from bright sunlight into a gutter that is in the tiles shadow, it's near impossible to see anything.  So I think a super bright light shining into the gutter would make it a lot better.
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I have yet to do my first gutter clean ( got 5 booked in for next week). So I may be wrong, but I would have thought a wired camera would be super annoying being attached to the gutter Vac?

Like you say we have to have power , so instead of buying another camera , I would buy a battery charger for the GoPro and charge your second battery at every job and just vice versa the battery. I have the GoPro hero 9 and the battery can easy charge 50% of a battery within half an hour. 

I think I would get alot more frustrated with a dangling wire coming from top of gutter Vac. 

 
Bongofish said:
I have yet to do my first gutter clean ( got 5 booked in for next week). So I may be wrong, but I would have thought a wired camera would be super annoying being attached to the gutter Vac?

Like you say we have to have power , so instead of buying another camera , I would buy a battery charger for the GoPro and charge your second battery at every job and just vice versa the battery. I have the GoPro hero 9 and the battery can easy charge 50% of a battery within half an hour. 

I think I would get alot more frustrated with a dangling wire coming from top of gutter Vac. 
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When you're working it's different, it's not straight forward.  Changing the batteries is a pain in itself, then once you change them you have what seems like an age to reconnect to the smartphone.  Then you have the connection issues, sometimes they connect sometimes they don't and you have to go back to the beginning to reconnect it all, all while the customer is looking at you wondering if you're up to the job.

Yesterday I didn't use the camera while I was working with the vac, you can't realistically see what you're doing in bright sunlight.  What I did was to attach the camera to my wfp and used that to inspect the gutters before and after.  Doing the same with a wired camera wouldn't affect the work as the wire is not on the gutter poles.

Also the lag between what the camera sees and what shows on your phone is unacceptable, it's about 1 second meaning what you did 1 second in the past shows up on the screen.  I would expect the wired cameras to be instant but I could be wrong.  It would help loads if it was instant.

You will see what I mean when you come to use it.  What I would say is allow 3 hours for each job, you will probably do them in 2 hours or less on your first attempt but they are really hit and miss.  Some are a doddle some are a nightmare.  Just allow plenty of time for all eventualities until you get the hang of it / get the camera working etc.

 
The really cheap action cams can be poor. Get a genuine sj4000. It has good low latency, has good wide dynamic range and the app is good and fast. 

Latency is the delay from camera seeing an image to you seeing it on phone. Using WiFi will never create a perfectly live view but 1 sec is way too slow. You can easily get 5.8ghz transmitters and very small decent analogue cameras like runcam swift micros. Then a monitor with built in receiver and dvr. That would give you probably 10-15millisecond level of latency. You would need to sort battery power and have soldering skills to put it together. 

Might be worth looking at dedicated system. I think guttervacsystems do a good one at reasonable price. 

 
Chris34 said:
When you're working it's different, it's not straight forward.  Changing the batteries is a pain in itself, then once you change them you have what seems like an age to reconnect to the smartphone.  Then you have the connection issues, sometimes they connect sometimes they don't and you have to go back to the beginning to reconnect it all, all while the customer is looking at you wondering if you're up to the job.

Yesterday I didn't use the camera while I was working with the vac, you can't realistically see what you're doing in bright sunlight.  What I did was to attach the camera to my wfp and used that to inspect the gutters before and after.  Doing the same with a wired camera wouldn't affect the work as the wire is not on the gutter poles.

Also the lag between what the camera sees and what shows on your phone is unacceptable, it's about 1 second meaning what you did 1 second in the past shows up on the screen.  I would expect the wired cameras to be instant but I could be wrong.  It would help loads if it was instant.

You will see what I mean when you come to use it.  What I would say is allow 3 hours for each job, you will probably do them in 2 hours or less on your first attempt but they are really hit and miss.  Some are a doddle some are a nightmare.  Just allow plenty of time for all eventualities until you get the hang of it / get the camera working etc.
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Could I ask a question seen as you seem to have plenty of experience. 

What would be the night are situation you find yourself in and how do you get around it/do it? 

So far I've asked all my customers if they know the downpipes are blocked to let me know as I don't deal with blocked downpipes and it's just a general gutter clean. I really don't feel confident enough to start taking downpipes off walls. 

 
Bongofish said:
Could I ask a question seen as you seem to have plenty of experience. 

What would be the night are situation you find yourself in and how do you get around it/do it? 

So far I've asked all my customers if they know the downpipes are blocked to let me know as I don't deal with blocked downpipes and it's just a general gutter clean. I really don't feel confident enough to start taking downpipes off walls. 
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I've not got plenty of experience, I'm learning just like yourself, I've done about 8 jobs so far but you quickly learn what does and doesn't work.

Downpipes had me concerned a little, however I've not come across one that is blocked.  When I do the quote I just tell them I'm going to clear the gutters and the top of the downpipe, non of them have said 'what if the downpipe is blocked'.  If the downpipe was blocked I think I'd just be honest and say 'it's blocked but that's not something I can do with the kit I've got, there is no way of knowing how big a job that would be...'  might seem unprofessional but it's best to know your limits, nothing worse than trying to do something you can't do.

 
Just to add, yesterday on the 3 [it was actually 4 houses but 2 were next door so 2 long stretches of gutter] jobs that I did, 2 of them were nightmare jobs.  The first was full to the top with compacted mud.  I've got the Atom and I had to use the metal cutting attachment and had to really dig at it, you have to be really aggressive with it to dig it out and it was virtually the whole gutter on one side and half a gutter on the other.  On top of that the gap was only just big enough to get the pipe in.  On top of that, the customer still hasn't paid me and now I'm feeling anxious.

The second nightmare job had like a carpet type of plant growing half the length of the front gutter.  It was lined with mud that was compacted with this crawler type plant growing on it.  For the first 20 minutes or so I thought I wasn't going to be able to do it, I just couldn't get the suction to lift it out, it was really rooted in.  I tried a few different attachments and eventually I used one with a small diameter, this created more suction and it was just enough to lift a clump of it out.  

Once I was able to have a look at it I could understand what it was I was dealing with and I just had to lift it out piece by piece with the small diameter attachment.  It was after that when the second go pro battery died so there was no way to check that it was all gone.  The rest of the house had gutters with about an inch clearance, luckily the owner had already been up there and done them and just wanted any remaining sludge vacuumed out.  If I they had that same plant in them I really don't think I could have done it, it would have tested my resolve to the limit.

I'm going to have a look to see if there are hook like attachments to get stuff like that plant out.  

 

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