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Named after Inou Tadataka, who mapped Japan in the early 1800s, the Cat-eye Inou creates geo-tagged videos and photographs on the move. A prototype was first shown at Interbike late last year. The real product, and its packaging, was shown to UK journalists and dealers today at the Zyro trade show held at Rudding Park, near Harrogate.
Designed with cycling in mind, the Inou has vibration dampers and easy to click stills and video buttons.
The size and shape of a cigarette packet, the Inou can shoot 640×480 VGA footage, at 30 frames per second. Still pix can be taken manually or in auto mode at intervals of 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes. The camera does not record audio.
Video footage is YouTube-friendly and the GPS geo-tagging allows for plotting of the videos – and pix – on Google Maps.
A new website has been created to store and share in one place all of the ride data, videos, photographs and mapping. InouAtlas.com is not yet live and is in Japanese-only at the moment but was shown to journalists and dealers.
The Inou Atlas website – created by Cat-eye – offers optional linkage to Facebook and Twitter.
The Inou launches in Japan in February and globally in April.
While there are other geo-tagging cameras on the market the Inou is a small package and almost half the price of similar products.
The £200 camera can be fitted to handlebars or helmets. It’s best for long-distance shooting of personal rides or regular daily commutes rather than shooting video or pix for professional use. And, unlike affixing a front-facing iPhone to handlebars – which could also shoot geo-tagged video – the Inou looks as though it could take a tumble without inducing a heart attack.
For bike commuters who like to record the transgressions of motorists, the Inou is tough, waterproof, compact and relatively cheap.
The Inou is compatible with both PCs and Macs. The product ships with a 1GB micro SD card and can accept cards up to a maximum of 32GB, allowing all-day video recording: the batteries last for five hours when in video mode.
The Inou is also compatible with the Cat-eye’s Strada analogue wireless speed sensor computer.
More pix of the Inou can be found here.
In this video, Ellen Hall of Cateye in the US gives a walk-through of the Inou at Interbike:
