Action Camera Travel Companion

[shawn13]

I recently bought a new device to take with me on my trip to Guillermo next week that seems like a solution for my action cam backup (2x 64gb micro sd cards) and DSLR backup.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1330

Its called the My Passport Wireless by Western Digital, a battery powered hard drive with built in sd card reader. I got the 2 TB options, you can adjust the setting so that when you insert the sd card, the files are automatically transfered to the drive. Theres also a manual setting. I use a sd card adapter with my action cam micro sd cards and so far my tests have worked well. I wanted to eliminate the need to carry a laptop, and had an unsuccessful attempt of using a usb adapted on my android phone last time. The drive has built in wifi so you can check from your phone or tablet to see if the files transferred okay and review.

It also has built in streaming so you can stream 4 different media files to devices at once.

I will give a full review of how the device handled after my trip.

[POACHER]

Shawn that looks like a very cool and usable device for storing kite footage. It seems we're in the same boat looking for better travel solutions. I'm also trying to find the right mix of equipment to avoid bringing a laptop. Not that a laptop is tough to travel with really, I just don't want to risk ruining an expensive computer knocking around in an often wet or sandy bag. Plus a tablet weighs nothing, is a quarter of the price and gets very good battery life. If only there was a decent editing program for them....

Last fall for our Hatteras trip I just brought my Android phone, an Asus tablet and one of these.
http://www.juicedsystems.com/5-in-1-mhl-adapter

It works really well. I could actually get away with just using the Juiced adapter, a large capacity thumb drive and my phone. The adapter let me dump all the GoPro footage for the day onto my phone (128gb micro sd card) I could view the files and delete what wasn't useful. Then I could offload all the good footage to the tablet or a thumb drive. The Juiced systems adapter will even let you connect a mini HDMI cable to the TV to watch in full HD. (if your device supports HDMI out!)

Not a knock on the WD drive you bought, but my concern has always been the reliability issue with normal hard drives. Solid state drives are slowly coming down in price thankfully, as with no moving parts they are proven to be more rugged solutions. I found a 1TB thumbdrive on Amazon......it's $900!

Keep me posted on how you like the WD long term. At $200, that is much easier to slip past the warden.

[shawn13]

Thats a cool adapter. My issue is that having my two cameras running hd all day, plus my buddy's, we would fill standard thumb drives in a day. I think between two-three cameras and a dslr, after a week ill have over 1gb of data on that drive. I am also bringing my micro usb to usb adapter incase the reader fails so i can transfer from my phone to my harddrive if needed. It worked great with the battery powered drive.

Check out powerdirector for android for your tablet. Its very close to the desktop software UI. Might be the editing solution you're looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erecvp_gdoY