Dash Cameras

Author
Discussion

sidekickdmr

5,065 posts

205 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
Ok so looking at the mobius, as its not a dash cam, I'm guessing it won't automatically power on and record every time the car is started? would need a manual button push?

rich888

2,610 posts

198 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
sidekickdmr said:
Ok so looking at the mobius, as its not a dash cam, I'm guessing it won't automatically power on and record every time the car is started? would need a manual button push?
No you can set it to auto power on when power is supplied, you can do this by either editing the file in a plain text editor or by using the GUI which is much easier.

Have enclosed a few screenshots of said Mobius GUI:




TankRizzo

7,247 posts

192 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
sidekickdmr said:
Ok so looking at the mobius, as its not a dash cam, I'm guessing it won't automatically power on and record every time the car is started? would need a manual button push?
No, the camera can be configured with the GUI to auto-record on power-on and stop on power-off. This is how I have it set up, and it's fire and forget. You can also configure it to keep recording for a variable amount of time after the power is cut.

Blanchimont

4,076 posts

121 months

Monday 24th August 2015
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eltawater

3,107 posts

178 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
There's also a useful android config app available for the Mobius so you don't have to keep wandering back to the PC with it.

A short USB OTG cable connected to your phone, and then connected to a short mini USB cable to the back of the Mobius makes it simple to view and copy recorded files. I tend to find popping out the microSD card a bit fiddly and on more than one occasion have almost lost the card as it spring pings out into random parts of the car interior.

stavers

251 posts

145 months

Monday 24th August 2015
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I'm wanting a dash cam now I have a "new" car which I am quite precious about.

Been looking at the 0806 after reading this thread but it seems a lot of places have stopped selling it due to the quality issues. Also, would want the V3 but no idea how to tell if it is the V3 before buying one.
Not really sold on the Mobius to be honest - I do want something with a screen.

Don't want to spend a fortune but want something that will last quite well, with GPS and parking monitoring.
Any suggestions?

shandyboy

472 posts

153 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
I'd go with the 0806, but get it from somewhere with good returns policy such as Amazon.

Mine has been fine (v1 I think, maybe v2) - though later firmwares have removed the parking guard I haven't upgraded to them as I wanted the feature (after some bellend damaged my car whilst it was parked up outside my house).

I recently fit a Drivepro 200 to my other-half's car which is supposed to be good quality, and it doesn't hold a candle to the 0806, the 0806 is much clearer and looks a lot more 'hd'.

africanant

19 posts

205 months

Monday 24th August 2015
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Ryan. said:
Africanant,

Could you post a picture of your wrapped DP200? Think a few of us may give that a go!
Sorry Ryan, only just spotted this. Yeah, no problem, will take a couple of pics of it in situ and on its own for you tomorrow.

Blanchimont

4,076 posts

121 months

Monday 24th August 2015
quotequote all
shandyboy said:
I'd go with the 0806, but get it from somewhere with good returns policy such as Amazon.

Mine has been fine (v1 I think, maybe v2) - though later firmwares have removed the parking guard I haven't upgraded to them as I wanted the feature (after some bellend damaged my car whilst it was parked up outside my house).

I recently fit a Drivepro 200 to my other-half's car which is supposed to be good quality, and it doesn't hold a candle to the 0806, the 0806 is much clearer and looks a lot more 'hd'.
Following on from this, I have an early 0801, and that records in 1080p, and has a remarkable picture quality relative to its size, so I can only imagine the 0803,0805 and now the 0806 can be better still.

3 people in my office have 0801's, all of them had no issues (apart from one with a fake SD card, but that's hardly the cameras fault)

if you're on a budget, i'd recommend an 0801 (can be had for sub £50 on amazon), but if I were to buy now I would be looking at an 0806, or maybe an 0805 depending on price and availability.

I updated the firmware on my 0801, and it improved the speed and response of the GUI no end, so the first thing I tend to do with stuff like that is update the firmware.

David A

3,602 posts

250 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
How are folks doing with the higher resolutions. I've tried the custom firmware from: http://mini0806.com/update.html and the normal one but it won't go higher than 1920x1080 i.e if I try the 2560x resolutions it just hangs as soon as its selected.

I bought it a month ago from combi (as reccomended on here!) and its got a 32gb sandisk extreme c10 u3 card - which works great in the gopro...

Camera / card / something else?

africanant

19 posts

205 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
Ryan. said:
Africanant,

Could you post a picture of your wrapped DP200? Think a few of us may give that a go!
Right, Transcend DP200...

Pros:
Good quality video (although I'm yet to compare it to anything else!)
Easy to configure
LCD screen (I've hidden mine in front of the mirror so can't see it so a bit pointless for me day to day)
Wifi to access video from phone

Cons:
Much bigger than I expected it to be
Stupid chrome lens ring
Wifi is slow, it's quicker to take the sd card out

As mentioned before, I bought an A4 sheet of stain or matte black vinyl wrap and using a heat gun very carefully covered the chrome bits. I would have liked to have taken it apart to do properly but couldn't see how I would do this so did it in situ. I also stuck a bit over the logos, but they've started to bubble up a bit. Does the job though and you have to be looking for it to notice it.

I've 'hardwired' mine in using one of those add-a-circuit fuse holder and a 12v to 5v usb converter.

Think I'm going to end up installing mine in my wife's car and get myself a Mobius as I'd rather have something much smaller and discreet.

Here are some pics, sorry they're a bit st especially the outside one.











CoolHands

18,496 posts

194 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
does the mobius have a method of saving an segment easily if something occurs. Ie if you have it on a 10-min loop how would save an incident.

All that jazz

7,632 posts

145 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
CoolHands said:
does the mobius have a method of saving an segment easily if something occurs. Ie if you have it on a 10-min loop how would save an incident.
You press the middle button of 3 to save an event. Long 10 min clips are more prone to corruption than shorter ones and of course take longer to transfer, edit etc. I have mine set to the shortest clip length which iirc is 3 mins. The software is intelligent when you save an event and will also save the one before or the one after as well, depending on when you pressed the save button during the current clip.

iacabu

1,348 posts

148 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
Love my mobius. Great quality, looks smart and discreet and the fact it has decent battery life as an action cam when needed.

CoolHands

18,496 posts

194 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
All that jazz said:
You press the middle button of 3 to save an event. Long 10 min clips are more prone to corruption than shorter ones and of course take longer to transfer, edit etc. I have mine set to the shortest clip length which iirc is 3 mins. The software is intelligent when you save an event and will also save the one before or the one after as well, depending on when you pressed the save button during the current clip.
oh that sounds quite good. thankyou

rich888

2,610 posts

198 months

Tuesday 25th August 2015
quotequote all
Blanchimont said:
shandyboy said:
I'd go with the 0806, but get it from somewhere with good returns policy such as Amazon.

Mine has been fine (v1 I think, maybe v2) - though later firmwares have removed the parking guard I haven't upgraded to them as I wanted the feature (after some bellend damaged my car whilst it was parked up outside my house).

I recently fit a Drivepro 200 to my other-half's car which is supposed to be good quality, and it doesn't hold a candle to the 0806, the 0806 is much clearer and looks a lot more 'hd'.
Following on from this, I have an early 0801, and that records in 1080p, and has a remarkable picture quality relative to its size, so I can only imagine the 0803,0805 and now the 0806 can be better still.

3 people in my office have 0801's, all of them had no issues (apart from one with a fake SD card, but that's hardly the cameras fault)

if you're on a budget, i'd recommend an 0801 (can be had for sub £50 on amazon), but if I were to buy now I would be looking at an 0806, or maybe an 0805 depending on price and availability.

I updated the firmware on my 0801, and it improved the speed and response of the GUI no end, so the first thing I tend to do with stuff like that is update the firmware.
I have both the 0801 and the 0806 which I thought would be substantially improved and have to say that in the daytime the 0806 really isn't that much better. The twin SD card facility doesn't work as you would expect it too, as in when card in slot A is full it starts recording to slot B because it doesn't. Instead of that it ignores the card in slot A and over-writes the card in slot B. The parking guard gimmick has never worked. The only real advantage the 0806 has is that much larger cards can be fitted, ie 64GB and 128GB, and probably larger than that but I've not tested out any larger cards due to the high prices.

David A said:
How are folks doing with the higher resolutions. I've tried the custom firmware from: http://mini0806.com/update.html and the normal one but it won't go higher than 1920x1080 i.e if I try the 2560x resolutions it just hangs as soon as its selected.

I bought it a month ago from combi (as reccomended on here!) and its got a 32gb sandisk extreme c10 u3 card - which works great in the gopro...

Camera / card / something else?
If the 0806 keeps crashing when you select 2560 resolution then have a chat with Lee at Combi because it should operate at this resolution without any problems. Having said that, apart from recording slightly more width there isn't a great deal of improvement over 1920.

I've been using my 0806 for several months now on 2560 x 1080, using the firmware upgrade provided by Nigel as per the link you used, which has further improved the video quality.

With regard to the cards, I'm currently using 64GB Kingston cards which I purchased in Feb 2015 in the 0806, and have in the past also used a 128GB Sandisk Ultra card without any problems, have formatted both of these cards FAT32 using the pre-installed Disk Utility app on the Mac.

The 0806 is a fantastic dash cam but it does seem to suffer from more reliability issues than it ought to, which is a shame because the video quality is pretty exceptional. The Mobius is nearly as good in terms of video quality, but seems to be far better designed and manufactured, with considerably more thought gone into long-term usability and reliability. Plus with the Mobius being an action cam rather than just a dash cam it can also be used outside of the car.

Have been well pleased with both the 0806 and the Mobius, but there is always an element of doubt over whether the 0806 will be reliable enough.

FoxtrotOscar1

712 posts

108 months

Wednesday 26th August 2015
quotequote all
Afternoon all. Quick question. I am looking to buy a dash camera for my works van. Ideally I would like one that can be configured so that it can log real time and possibly journey times etc. Is this a possibility on any models?

Not wanting to spend hundreds but it would be useful feature to have. Any recommendations?

arcticfire

1,827 posts

118 months

Wednesday 26th August 2015
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I would think you would need something more like telematics for that. We use TomTom for our fleet but it involves trackers, software and subscription. There may be dash cams that do it though.

CoolHands

18,496 posts

194 months

Wednesday 26th August 2015
quotequote all
All that jazz said:
You press the middle button of 3 to save an event. Long 10 min clips are more prone to corruption than shorter ones and of course take longer to transfer, edit etc. I have mine set to the shortest clip length which iirc is 3 mins. The software is intelligent when you save an event and will also save the one before or the one after as well, depending on when you pressed the save button during the current clip.
by the way does it records numerous 3min clips and only record over the first ones when the card is getting full? If so how long does a card last ie in nor al daily use would you be able to download footage from yesterday if say my missus told me late something had occurred?

All that jazz

7,632 posts

145 months

Wednesday 26th August 2015
quotequote all
CoolHands said:
All that jazz said:
You press the middle button of 3 to save an event. Long 10 min clips are more prone to corruption than shorter ones and of course take longer to transfer, edit etc. I have mine set to the shortest clip length which iirc is 3 mins. The software is intelligent when you save an event and will also save the one before or the one after as well, depending on when you pressed the save button during the current clip.
by the way does it records numerous 3min clips and only record over the first ones when the card is getting full? If so how long does a card last ie in nor al daily use would you be able to download footage from yesterday if say my missus told me late something had occurred?
Yes it loops and will overwrite the oldest non-protected files in chronological order when the card is full. Whether you still have footage from the previous day will depend on

1. how big the SD card is.
2. what recording quality you have the camera set to.
3. what length of time it's been recording since yesterday.

I have a 16GB card in mine which is quite small by modern day comparisons now and I record in 1080p 30. If I recall correctly that usually gives me access to around the past 4 hours of footage.

Once the initial novelty has worn off from saving every clip of poor driving you witness, you won't bother about any of that stuff and just leave it to do its thing. I drive for a living and do about 1500 miles a week and I can't remember the last time I had the card out to download some footage. You see bad driving so often these days that it's just not noteworthy anymore.