GoPro Announces Third-Party Developer Program With Over 100 Partners (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: GoPro quietly announced its Developer Program on Thursday as it looks to incorporate its action sports cameras into third-party products. The GoPro Developer Program provides toolkits, technical information and support to enable companies to add GoPro camera connectivity into their products. There is a camera toolkit for iOS and Android apps to control a GoPro camera and manage media, along with a mechanical toolkit to attach GoPro cameras to third-party products. It announced there are more than 100 companies partnering with GoPro, including brands from BMW, Fisher-Price, and Polar. GoPro showed off potential third-party integration ideas in a video showing a gesture-based camera control system.

Comments

Third party development? or number two?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Go pro product. People laugh at it and snicker at it or grossed about it. But really the western toilets are very unsuitable to promote efficient elimination. Indian, Chinese and Japanese style toilets allow us to assume the posture evolution designed our anatomy to take for this purpose. This product gets you get at least half way towards that posture, quite cheaply too.

Wait, this gopro is not the gopro they are talking about right?

Re:Third party development? or number two?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's an overpriced cell/web cam marketed to the 'extreme' sports bandwagon.

Re: Third party development? or number two?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that lady's feet and red shoes included? Disappointed there are no used offerings. Used toilets OR feet, that is.

Re:Third party development? or number two?

[NotAPK]

I've never understood the GoPro fetish. As you say, it's a camera attached to storage in a shockproof/waterproof box with a high price tag.

Does no one else make anything similar for much less?

Are they really as good as the hype claims?

Re:Third party development? or number two?

[Half-pint HAL]

I've never understood the GoPro fetish. As you say, it's a camera attached to storage in a shockproof/waterproof box with a high price tag.

Does no one else make anything similar for much less?

Are they really as good as the hype claims?

No. There is not a single decent action camcorder on the market. When you're doing something that makes your camera shake, what you don't want is a camera with rolling shutter, because you'll get the "jellification" of things squashing up and stretching out, and if you're moving quickly, you might well also end up with horizontal sheering of the image.

Just look at any GoPro sponsored professional videos on YouTube. Or don't -- they're often unwatchable. A mountain biker skipping down a rocky slope at stupid speeds just becomes a wobbly, blurry mess that you can't really process.

If GoPro can't even supply their sponsored sportsmen with a jelly-free total shutter camera, there really is no point in the whole exercise.

oh goody

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of an industry standard usb with mpeg4 stream it'll be some proprietary hardware with proprietary garbage api.

GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Harlequin80]

Their Hero 3 was simply too good a product. They sold a cubic butt load of them, but these things just don't break. So their market went from a new market to a saturated market in a very short space of time. The market has matured, those that wanted a GoPro type camera already have one, but investors are looking for the same level of growth / return. Because that is impossible GoPro's share price has tanked.

Re:GoPro are a victim of their own success

[rdelsambuco]

There must be a way that they could engineer a new product to be both more sexy and less durable. Educate people on how much they want it, and that only douchebags don't have it. Couple that strategy with stock buy backs, and they'll have a bold, world-class business strategy for the new millennium.

Re:GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the "good enough" clones. A Hero 4 goes for $560 CAD at bestbuy (or $300 CAD for the v3) whereas I can get a sjcam sj4000 from bhphoto for $86 CAD. Guess which one I bought?

Re:GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's great a producing overpriced, under-powered pieces of junk

Re: GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Anonymous Coward]

The one with the shittier quality would be my guess

Re:GoPro are a victim of their own success

[ConfusedVorlon]

It looks like the developer program is aiming to help deprecate the Hero 3.
The one app currently listed has support for the Hero4 only (it doesn't even support the session). I'm guessing this means the sdk only supports the Hero4. Without applying and paying $99, I can't be sure...

Re: GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the one with 85% of the image quality at 15% of the price.

Re: GoPro are a victim of their own success

[Half-pint HAL]

As a cyclist, I say it's six and half-a-dozen quality-wise -- sensor sizes and codecs are a minor issue compared with the interaction of rolling shutter and road vibration. If GoPro were to release a total shutter model, I'd probably by the first in the queue, but I'm not going to pay all that money if I'm still going to have video that gives most viewers headaches.

$99 for an SDK?

[ConfusedVorlon]

It seems odd for GoPro to expect to charge for access to their SDK.

I have an app which could certainly benefit from GoPro integration, I imagine I'd be making a positive contribution to their ecosystem as well.
I'm not going to pay $99 for the privilege though - particularly when there is an unofficial SDK already available on Github.