Portable Audio Recorder with Cycle Buffer Option?

Question

@SteveOBrian's comment over on the Russian Meteor Explosion Question

"One should have set up a recorder with half an hour pre-rec all the time"

Got me thinking about looking into such a recorder. There's a whole bunch of car dash cams out there that start recording video either based on motion or in a continuos ring cycle buffer recording mode. (Apparently these dashcams were the main source of these meteor videos to begin with.)

I would love to have something like that for audio field recordings. These dashcams tend to have pretty poor audio fidelity. Does anyone know of any portable audio recorders with a cycle buffer mode or remote control record option (to trigger via a motion sensor)?

I'm aware of the recorders with the pre-buffer option. I'm more thinking about a recorder that's continuously recording to the SD card, but instead of stopping when out of room, it starts to overwrite the beginning of the file.

Thanks! ~Stephen (longtime reader, first time poster)

Answer 1

Hi! Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_recording. Endless tape recording is based upon, or it is, the same principle as surveillance systems. I've been looking for something like this myself but haven't found anything portable or affordable.

So I'm in the process of building a system like this with a raspberry pi, pure data and a usb sound card. Might work, might not. I'll scream if it does!

Good luck!