TECH SPOTLIGHT : Security flashlight records in dark
Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008
I’m always on the lookout for unusual but useful tech gadgets. I definitely found a humdinger last week.
Swann Communications, a company best known for its security products, offers up the FlashlightDVR. It’s a flashlight... and a digital video recorder, or DVR. Go figure.
Actually, this is a lot more than just a flashlight and a video recorder. The device has an LED flashlight with three levels of brightness, a set of infrared lights that can peer into the dark up to 13 feet, glow-in-the-dark control buttons, a camera capable of recording video or taking photos, a microphone to capture audio with the video, a power adapter to charge rechargeable batteries and a second charger to use in the car.
Not bad for a flashlight.
The FlashlightDVR isn’t a small light. It’s more than a foot long and rather heavy, especially when the three C batteries are added. The etched grip in the metallic handle makes it easy to hold and keeps a decent balance despite the heavy end that holds the light and controls. It reminds me of the heavy-duty flashlights policemen carry.
The device comes with 128 MB of built-in memory. The memory can be expanded with a MiniSD memory card. As you can probably guess, it’s smaller than a standard SD card but bigger than the MicroSD card. It’s also less common than those two, I found. It took a little work to track one down.
Once I did find one, it was easy to install. The card shows up as a separate drive when the flashlight is connected, and it’s just as easy to drag and drop the files from the card to the computer as it is to drop them from the flashlight’s built-in memory.
There are four buttons to control the device and a small amber display to show the functions. The power button doubles as the “enter” and menu button. It also allows you to set the onboard clock, an important step to help time- and date-stamp your photos and videos. The left button controls the video and the right one controls the photos. The center button turns the light on at low, medium and high brightness.
On the other side of the light, a rubber patch hides the memory card slot, USB port and power port for the flashlight. The batteries aren’t included, but it takes standard alkaline or rechargeable Ni-MH batteries. The power adapters will charge the rechargeable batteries, but they aren’t meant to be used if standard batteries are inside.
Aside from the date, time, length of video and number of photos, the small display shows the battery and memory-card capacity. It shows the status of the charging process with the rechargeable batteries. The display glows just enough to see, but not too brightly to tip your hand if you’re trying to hide the FlashlightDVR’s full capabilities.
The key to this device is the small, blue bulbs around the main light. Those are the infrared bulbs, which switch on automatically when the device begins recording. Being infrared, humans can’t see the light they emit. But the camera can, and they light the picture nicely. The lights are said to reach up to 13 feet, though after about 6 feet the picture gets pretty dark.
I ran several tests on the video and still images. I found that the video tended to have little skips in it when using the built-in memory. But it seemed to record fine on the memory card. Luckily, the device records to the SD card first if one is installed.
The images and video are adequate, but don’t expect top quality. For one thing, infrared distorts colors to produce a greenish gray. Also, it doesn’t allow for the sharpest picture. Still, it provides enough detail to get a good shot of that outof-control bar patron or that speeder’s license plate. In fact, I was fairly impressed with the quality. Even the audio did well in my tests.
Unfortunately, the USB port on this flashlight is a bit sensitive. A little movement jarred it enough that it disconnected from the computer prematurely. The memory shows up as a removable drive on the computer, and you’re supposed to eject such drives before disconnecting to prevent any possible damage to the memory card or chip.
On the PC, I had trouble getting the drives to eject at all. On the Mac, the drives would eject but would immediately reload. Unless you pulled the USB cord quickly, you end up disconnecting it incorrectly. Luckily, neither the built-in memory nor the card appeared to have any damage. As long as I left the flashlight alone after connecting it to the computer, everything worked just fine and files transferred quickly and easily. I must admit, I don’t know for sure if this is a problem with this particular flashlight or with all of them. Hopefully, it’s a one-time thing from too much use.
Despite that glitch, the FlashlightDVR proved to be an impressive tool. The product would be great for law enforcement and security officials, campers, ghost hunters... anyone who might need a good, portable surveillance tool at night.
It’s an unusual product, but definitely a useful one. Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e-mail at mljones 72 @me. com.
Where it’s @ Swann Communications ’ FlashlightDVR requires 3 size C batteries or size C rechargeables (to utilize the chargers ) and a USB port on a PC or Mac computer. A Mini SD memory card up to 2 GB is optional for memory expansion. The product retails for $ 399. More information is available at www. swannsecurity. com.
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