GoPro Wi-Fi BacPac and Remote – First impressions review

I’ve had a GoPro HD Hero 2 for a while now and done some cool videos and timelapses with it, there’s been a couple of times where i’d like to be more precise with the framing, or to set it somewhere and be able to trigger it when the bride walks down the aisle (the battery typically only last an hour so you you have to be precise with the timing). The Wi-Fi bacpac promises to change this. So how does it cope? Read on to find out.

Firstly what is the Wi-Fi bacpac? well it’s an accessory that fits onto your gopro video camera and lets you control it via WiFi (and Bluetooth later reading the manual). So you can shoot full 1080p video at 25fps and control it with the wi-fi remote. With a future app for the iPhone (and other smartphone presumably too) you can frame the video or stills and trigger from the app. At least that’s the theory. Also promised is live streaming via the internet via Facebook and YouTube. Though as of today that isn’t supported – you just get a ‘coming soon’ on the screen. I’ll let others give you the full technical run down but this is a light and small accessory.

My first gripe isyou have to update the software on the gopro, the Wi-Fi bacpac AND the wifi remote before you even start. This process is a bit fraught. Here’s what you need to do to get it to work.

1. Install cineform studio.
2. IMPORTANT ** REBOOT ** without this you’ll not be able to see the bacpac plugged in and it will download the update and hang updating it. I reboot fixes this.. come on this is 2012.. either say you need to reboot or fix it.
3. update firmware on your GoPro HD HERO 2 camera
4. update firmware on your GoPro Wi-Fi Bacpac
5. **IMPORTANT** leaving the bacpac plugged in also plug in the remote with the silly cable (why it doesn’t use a USB cable i don’t know) and update that too.

I like firmware updates they’re good. but the need to update it when you get it seems odd. It doesn’t happen with anything else I know. Not to get it to work at least anyway.

Second gripe. A large reason why I purchased this was to be able to control/setup via my iphone/ipad. This as of writing isn’t available so i can’t comment on this part of the equation yet. Had I purchased it without the remote I’d just have a way to drain the battery quicker.

That aside I can still use it for starting/stopping the video and turning the camera on/off in a hard to reach location which will be handy for my wedding video and anything else I can’t get access to it during the event. There is a noticable lag when taking stills, so you need to plan ahead quite a lot. I’d say it’s more suited for video and time-lapse usage than stills right now.

So my conclusion is that this has a lot of potential and can only get better. If you were buying for the smartphone integration then i’d wait for now, but if you want to experiment with remote locations and are happy to use the Wi-Fi Remote than it’s a good accessory to get.

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Thanks to GoPro for the following stock images of their product.