Night vision motion-triggered cameras.

[carpetsoiler]

A friend of mine keeps having her car scratched by someone in her road. She wants to get hold of a decent, standalone camera that will catch someone doing it so she has something to give to the police.

Just one that works like a dashcam would be great- anyone with experience of them, your input would be appreciated.

[rich888]

carpetsoiler said:

A friend of mine keeps having her car scratched by someone in her road. She wants to get hold of a decent, standalone camera that will catch someone doing it so she has something to give to the police.

Just one that works like a dashcam would be great- anyone with experience of them, your input would be appreciated.

If the road is fairly well lit up at night then I would recommend your friend takes a look at hardwiring in a 0803 dash cam so it's on all the time, and set it to 'motion detect'. For the price she could buy two units, one facing forward and one facing back. I would recommend a 32 GB class 10 mini SD card for the 0803 due to the massive amount of data the camera will be dumping on the card. Slower SD cards will struggle to keep up with the data transfer.

I purchased the older 0801 dash cam a few months ago for less than £45 including shipping and can say that it is one of the best quality dash cams I've come across and i've purchased quite a few far more expensive units over the past few years!

Take a look at the Techmoan video review of the 0803 dash cam on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWOq62cY6U

[carpetsoiler]

rich888 said:

If the road is fairly well lit up at night then I would recommend your friend takes a look at hardwiring in a 0803 dash cam so it's on all the time, and set it to 'motion detect'. For the price she could buy two units, one facing forward and one facing back. I would recommend a 32 GB class 10 mini SD card for the 0803 due to the massive amount of data the camera will be dumping on the card. Slower SD cards will struggle to keep up with the data transfer.

I purchased the older 0801 dash cam a few months ago for less than £45 including shipping and can say that it is one of the best quality dash cams I've come across and i've purchased quite a few far more expensive units over the past few years!

Take a look at the Techmoan video review of the 0803 dash cam on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWOq62cY6U

Thanks Rich, will put this forward but I don't think the street is very well lit.

[rich888]

carpetsoiler said:

rich888 said:

If the road is fairly well lit up at night then I would recommend your friend takes a look at hardwiring in a 0803 dash cam so it's on all the time, and set it to 'motion detect'. For the price she could buy two units, one facing forward and one facing back. I would recommend a 32 GB class 10 mini SD card for the 0803 due to the massive amount of data the camera will be dumping on the card. Slower SD cards will struggle to keep up with the data transfer.

I purchased the older 0801 dash cam a few months ago for less than £45 including shipping and can say that it is one of the best quality dash cams I've come across and i've purchased quite a few far more expensive units over the past few years!

Take a look at the Techmoan video review of the 0803 dash cam on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWOq62cY6U

Thanks Rich, will put this forward but I don't think the street is very well lit.

Just depends on when the vandal strikes, is it late at night when it's dark, or early in the morning when it might be light?

If she is parking her car close to her house then perhaps fit a infra-red spotlight to illuminate the area in addition to having the front and back dash-cams fitted in the car to record the incidents. One of my friends owns a alarm/CCTV business so will ask the question as to whether this might work.

One other option is to fit a CCTV camera with infra-red lamps on her property to illuminate the car at night-time, unfortunately you will need to invest in a DVR recorder to record the events and these systems don't come cheap.

[carpetsoiler]

rich888 said:

Just depends on when the vandal strikes, is it late at night when it's dark, or early in the morning when it might be light?

If she is parking her car close to her house then perhaps fit a infra-red spotlight to illuminate the area in addition to having the front and back dash-cams fitted in the car to record the incidents. One of my friends owns a alarm/CCTV business so will ask the question as to whether this might work.

One other option is to fit a CCTV camera with infra-red lamps on her property to illuminate the car at night-time, unfortunately you will need to invest in a DVR recorder to record the events and these systems don't come cheap.

She's tried to stay up to see them doing it, but hasn't lasted long enough to see it take place... so my guess is very late at night or very early in the morning.

I personally thought that it's asking for the moon on a stick to expect something affordable that'll produce an incredible, identifiable image- seems I'm fairly correct in this respect, annoyingly!

Thanks for your input. I'll pass it on.

[rich888]

carpetsoiler said:

rich888 said:

Just depends on when the vandal strikes, is it late at night when it's dark, or early in the morning when it might be light?

If she is parking her car close to her house then perhaps fit a infra-red spotlight to illuminate the area in addition to having the front and back dash-cams fitted in the car to record the incidents. One of my friends owns a alarm/CCTV business so will ask the question as to whether this might work.

One other option is to fit a CCTV camera with infra-red lamps on her property to illuminate the car at night-time, unfortunately you will need to invest in a DVR recorder to record the events and these systems don't come cheap.

She's tried to stay up to see them doing it, but hasn't lasted long enough to see it take place... so my guess is very late at night or very early in the morning.

I personally thought that it's asking for the moon on a stick to expect something affordable that'll produce an incredible, identifiable image- seems I'm fairly correct in this respect, annoyingly!

Thanks for your input. I'll pass it on.

OK then, have contacted my friendly alarm and CCTV installer who has confirmed what I originally thought in that you can install a IR illuminator which will enable the dash cam (or virtually any other CCTV camera) to record the vandals in action even in total darkness, as to the cost, on ebay these are available for less than £40, take a look at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Weatherproof-80M-CCTV-Ca... though I hasten to add there are cheaper IR illuminators available.

As regards the 1080p video quality of the 0801 in the daytime:

Here are a few screen grabs of video footage taken last Sunday, where you can quite clearly read the number plates of passing traffic to demonstrate just how good the video quality of the 0801 dash cam is.

Sorry but I don't have any night-time footage because I rarely drive at night!

Click on the thumbnails shown below to view the bigger pics:

[mids]

carpetsoiler said:

I don't think the street is very well lit.

Google wildlife camera traps. I bought one a couple of years ago to watch foxes in my back garden and it works pretty well in pitch black using IR up to a range of about 20ft. It's only black & white footage but can record photos and video (720p) using motion detection and is weatherproof. Think it cost just over £100. Might be an option if the lighting is really bad.

[carpetsoiler]

Cheers guys, much appreciated!