Dash Cameras

Author
Discussion

gmaz

4,382 posts

209 months

Wednesday 31st July 2019
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thebigmacmoomin said:
No idea what 12+live / acc is but I have power from the camera into the fuse box tapped (??) into one that has permanent power.

Starting to think that its the hard wire kit. Over Christmas, the car didnt move for 8 or 9 days, come to start it .... dead, couldnt do a thing. Phoned Ford Assist who sent out AA to investigate. Quick charge of the battery & a long drive later, all ok. I though that it was supposed to cut off power when the voltage dropped below a certain number.
Have you checked if your alternator/battery is providing enough voltage (over 12v) when your car is ticking over? Perhaps the cut-off is kicking in?

Edited by gmaz on Wednesday 31st July 15:04

hyphen

26,262 posts

89 months

Wednesday 31st July 2019
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Recommendations for an Iinstakler company? (London/Surrey area or anyone who travels, don't mind driving to someone near-ish neither.

Also Blackvue, thinkview or something else? (Small, discrete)

Want front and back, hardwired with parking mode. How much roughly is the going for it installed?

Edited by hyphen on Wednesday 31st July 21:58

M4cruiser

3,550 posts

149 months

Monday 5th August 2019
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I have just bought a hardwire kit for the Nextbase (always used the 12v socket until now). Any advice from you please, i.e. those who have installed one?
Many thanks.


DuckSauce

390 posts

66 months

Monday 5th August 2019
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M4cruiser said:
I have just bought a hardwire kit for the Nextbase (always used the 12v socket until now). Any advice from you please, i.e. those who have installed one?
Many thanks.
I located an ignition fuse in the fuse box and out mine in there, if you want it on all the time, then you'll need a permanent feed.
Took me 20 minutes to install mine once I found the fuse

M4cruiser

3,550 posts

149 months

Wednesday 7th August 2019
quotequote all
DuckSauce said:
M4cruiser said:
I have just bought a hardwire kit for the Nextbase (always used the 12v socket until now). Any advice from you please, i.e. those who have installed one?
Many thanks.
I located an ignition fuse in the fuse box and out mine in there, if you want it on all the time, then you'll need a permanent feed.
Took me 20 minutes to install mine once I found the fuse
Ok, thank you, I'll give it a go. I seem to have 2 fuse boxes, one inside the car and one under the bonnet. I guess the inside one is easier.


ninjag

1,827 posts

118 months

Wednesday 7th August 2019
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Have a read through this which gives the basics. I'd recommend add-a-circuits instead of wrapping around fuse legs though.

untakenname

4,953 posts

191 months

Thursday 8th August 2019
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Pesty said:
ninjag said:
untakenname said:
This is one of the best quality dashcams currently available in low light and it's pretty cheap https://www.70mai.com/en/
I had a look at some night footage from this and it is very good, especially at not overexposing the central area where number plates reflect. Only downside for me is the 64GB max. capacity as I like to run 128GB cards, but quite often many of these dash cams will accept high capacity cards than specified. I also prefer capacity cams but not a deal breaker. For £80 it's worth a punt!
Just ordered one @ 47. Seems to be very good for price.

Damn it £40 on bang good

Edited by Pesty on Sunday 28th July 20:02
I've been running mine for a while now and it's worked fine so far, I have a 256GB card in mine and it asked me to format it the first time I used it.

There's a couple of minor things that annoy me with it, the quality is really good but it seems to be in 4:3 format at the highest resolution which is a bit silly as it captures a lot of the sky and also the footage seems to be split into 1 minute chunks, there was a firmware update recently my phone app prompted me to carry out so perhaps they've fixed these flaws.

One feature I didn't know the dashcam had was built in parking mode without being connected to external power, I left my car two weeks in that time a small branch fell on the the car hitting the bonnet which activated the dashcam and recorded the incident which was pretty impressive considering it had been in standby for so long.

Overall it's still a pretty decent dashcam.
Some footage here showing the 4:3 aspect ratio, quality is better in the source footage, youtube degrades it a bit (rear cam is an A119s which was a decent cam in its day but lack of WiFi is annoying for transfer of footage).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqqaVhTVko

Need to fit a CPL filter as the car reflects quite a bit as it's set quite far backin the car so reflects the plasticy dash and also the bonnet intake.


Edited by untakenname on Thursday 8th August 10:13

Pesty

42,655 posts

255 months

Saturday 24th August 2019
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Well it’s just arrived

I like it looks quality for that money but...

I’ve ordered the Russian version doh


Luckily wifi is the same in that fked up letters they use so I managed to turn that on and configure using the app. It talks a lot ....in Russian lol.

The app was incredibly easy to use, these things have come along way.

Yeah the parking mode looks good but I won’t use it

Ordered one of these so it will be on permanently looks interesting.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GKS9V36/ref...

Where to get a filter?

Edited by Pesty on Saturday 24th August 01:04

EarlofDrift

4,636 posts

107 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
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Does anyone has any experiences of this dashcam got it months ago but connected it up a few days ago and thought I'd got it working well but I must be missing something.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaiser-Baas-R40-Dash-Came...

Downloads the app and synced the dashcam which allows you to view photos and video through the app, however it only works when connected to the dashcam via wifi when in my car. When my car is switched off and the 12v socket is pulled out the app will not work.

So basically every time you want to use the dashcam you have to get into your car and sync the app on your phone to the wifi on the dashcam to get it to work. Now after a few days it's getting right on my tits if you have to do this every time you stop to pop into a shop.

Surely not all dash cams are like this?

Should I have just went for a basic Nextbase 212?

R Mutt

5,882 posts

71 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
quotequote all
EarlofDrift said:
Does anyone has any experiences of this dashcam got it months ago but connected it up a few days ago and thought I'd got it working well but I must be missing something.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaiser-Baas-R40-Dash-Came...

Downloads the app and synced the dashcam which allows you to view photos and video through the app, however it only works when connected to the dashcam via wifi when in my car. When my car is switched off and the 12v socket is pulled out the app will not work.

So basically every time you want to use the dashcam you have to get into your car and sync the app on your phone to the wifi on the dashcam to get it to work. Now after a few days it's getting right on my tits if you have to do this every time you stop to pop into a shop.

Surely not all dash cams are like this?

Should I have just went for a basic Nextbase 212?
I thought the whole point was that they weren't permanently on so as not to drain the battery. Mine will activate when parked if it detects a knock. You could hard-wire to a fuse which is always on but I don't know how much power that would use. To be honest I'd like to have mine always on or at least be able to be woken by WiFi so I can use it to capture people hanging around the door to my block.

untakenname

4,953 posts

191 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
quotequote all
Having the dashcam permanently on as a wifi hotspot would drain the car battery pretty fast, all dashcams should start recording automatically as soon as the power is turned on to the device so you should only need to use the wifi hotspot to get footage off the device.

Pesty said:
Well it’s just arrived

I like it looks quality for that money but...

I’ve ordered the Russian version doh


Where to get a filter?

Edited by Pesty on Saturday 24th August 01:04
Over on dashcamtalk forums people have successfully overwritten the Russian and Chinese firmwares with the USA/English one.

I used this CPL filter, it's slightly too wide so wrapped a bit of self amalgamating tape over the barrel of the dashcam, had to trim a tiny bit of the filter housing off to make it fit flush but body of the CPL filter screws on then the lens itself rotates so wasn't an issue, the thread screwing into the tape holds it securely.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MIO-MiVue-CPL-Filter-Reco...



Makes a big difference when the sun is lower in the sky, took this comparison pic just now but the suns directly overhead so glare from the dash was minimal but you can see the reflections been minimized at the top and also can see through the car infronts windscreen a lot better
No CPL

CPL fitted


Edit: Had to reduce the quality quite a bit and crop the images to get it under the file size limit for uploading.

Too Late

5,092 posts

234 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
quotequote all
Hi all

What are people's thoughts on
Aukey DR02D or the ThinWare dash cam F800 PRO

Any other recommendations?

Ideally want recording when motion is detected
Front and rear cameras

Thanks
Nick

R Mutt

5,882 posts

71 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
quotequote all
untakenname said:
Having the dashcam permanently on as a wifi hotspot would drain the car battery pretty fast, all dashcams should start recording automatically as soon as the power is turned on to the device so you should only need to use the wifi hotspot to get footage off the device.
Yeah although having power when doors are unlocked for example would be a good middle ground so it can be activated with the fobb, although I don't think anything in the car turns on until the doors are actually open.

EarlofDrift

4,636 posts

107 months

Tuesday 27th August 2019
quotequote all
R Mutt said:
EarlofDrift said:
Does anyone has any experiences of this dashcam got it months ago but connected it up a few days ago and thought I'd got it working well but I must be missing something.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaiser-Baas-R40-Dash-Came...

Downloads the app and synced the dashcam which allows you to view photos and video through the app, however it only works when connected to the dashcam via wifi when in my car. When my car is switched off and the 12v socket is pulled out the app will not work.

So basically every time you want to use the dashcam you have to get into your car and sync the app on your phone to the wifi on the dashcam to get it to work. Now after a few days it's getting right on my tits if you have to do this every time you stop to pop into a shop.

Surely not all dash cams are like this?

Should I have just went for a basic Nextbase 212?
I thought the whole point was that they weren't permanently on so as not to drain the battery. Mine will activate when parked if it detects a knock. You could hard-wire to a fuse which is always on but I don't know how much power that would use. To be honest I'd like to have mine always on or at least be able to be woken by WiFi so I can use it to capture people hanging around the door to my block.
I assumed it would have had some sort of parking motion detector. Even the basic Nextbase ones have a 30min battery and parking sensor.

It seems it switches itself on but you have to sync it every time you want to go anywhere with the wifi and app, honestly who could be bothered with that.

Think it'll stick a cheap Nextbase one in the video is only 720 but at least it's fairly easily to use with 4 hour loop and no dodgy wifi or GPS to put up with.

threadlock

3,196 posts

253 months

Thursday 5th September 2019
quotequote all
EarlofDrift said:
So basically every time you want to use the dashcam you have to get into your car and sync the app on your phone to the wifi on the dashcam to get it to work. Now after a few days it's getting right on my tits if you have to do this every time you stop to pop into a shop.
Surely the dashcam is storing photos and videos on a memory card inside itself whether your phone is connected to its wifi or not?

In my experience, the wifi built in to a dashcam is there only so you can download and review interesting clips later without removing the camera or the card from the car. It's not needed for day-to-day operation.

Seventyseven7

866 posts

68 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
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Hi All,

After someone driving into my 2 week old car whilst parked and driving off, I'm now on a hunt for a dash cam (Or 2)

I want to cover both the front and rear window and also want it to record whilst parked.

I've looked at a few cameras, but fail to see many that record whilst parked, I understand this is a power issue. Is there one that comes with separate power so you don't have to wire up to the car's battery. If it's wired to the car's battery and you don't drive for 2 weeks I'm assuming that won't be good for it.

Another question is, am I better off getting 2 separate cameras, one for front and one for back rather than the 'dual' setup?

acme

2,971 posts

197 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
quotequote all
Seventyseven7 said:
Hi All,

After someone driving into my 2 week old car whilst parked and driving off, I'm now on a hunt for a dash cam (Or 2)

I want to cover both the front and rear window and also want it to record whilst parked.

I've looked at a few cameras, but fail to see many that record whilst parked, I understand this is a power issue. Is there one that comes with separate power so you don't have to wire up to the car's battery. If it's wired to the car's battery and you don't drive for 2 weeks I'm assuming that won't be good for it.

Another question is, am I better off getting 2 separate cameras, one for front and one for back rather than the 'dual' setup?
Look at the Techmoan site for lots of useful tests including one of the Aukey DR02, which has front and back, based on his video and recommendation I bought one, been very happy so far. The video also references an external power supply for being parked up, it's hard wired too. Mine's off the 12v and I carry a spare battery, the type you charge a phone with to power it when occasionally parked up in say a supermarket car park - granted not much use if parked on the road.

thetapeworm

11,192 posts

238 months

Tuesday 1st October 2019
quotequote all
acme said:
Look at the Techmoan site for lots of useful tests including one of the Aukey DR02, which has front and back, based on his video and recommendation I bought one, been very happy so far. The video also references an external power supply for being parked up, it's hard wired too. Mine's off the 12v and I carry a spare battery, the type you charge a phone with to power it when occasionally parked up in say a supermarket car park - granted not much use if parked on the road.
I have the Aukey DR02D, quality is superb and it's been 100% reliable.

They do the PM-YY hardwire kit that just uses your OBD2 plug, I keep meaning to buy one.

I need another unit for a 2nd car and suspect it'll be another DR02D I go for, I'm that happy.

acme

2,971 posts

197 months

Wednesday 2nd October 2019
quotequote all
Thanks for the response re the PM-YY hardwire kit, not something I’d heard of before. Done a bit of reading up on it, interesting. Not sure how the forward facing monitor can sense 360 degrees, but for £20 quid it seems worth trying. Plus it’s an extra ‘thing’ in the windscreen which is a shame as the camera itself is fairly subtle, albeit not as much as the Mini series ones.

I’m assuming as it uses the OBD2 plug it can run all the time/as needed? Wonder if it works on the original OBD ports, I have an old car with one?

Like you I’m happy with it so will be getting another. To the previous poster only thing to consider is that the rear camera has a very thick cable which could be an issue routing around a car, not so much of an issue on a Ford, but definitely more so on a BMW etc where cabin construction is tighter. Plus it has interfered with DAB on one of my cars, albeit a replacement DIN sized Continental unit with a DAB aerial in the windscreen as opposed to one built into the car. I’m now wondering if this hardwire kit will be more shielded thus improving signal.

thetapeworm

11,192 posts

238 months

Wednesday 2nd October 2019
quotequote all
One thing I forgot to mention which is a slight negative on the Aukey and the hardwire kit - they have opted to use a grey sticky pad rather than black which makes it slightly more obvious than it needs to be. You may want to put a piece of black double-sided between it and the window if this is likely to bother you.