Recommend me a dashcam

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jamesrt

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#263313 16-Jan-2020 09:36

Hi all,

Wondering if it's worth buying a dashcam; or more to the point, multiple cams (more than 1 car in the family).

What's the recommendation for the current state of the market?

Most importantly, I guess is "Anything to specifically avoid?"

Ta!

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meow
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#2398750 16-Jan-2020 10:17

Personally - I only recommend Blackvue (https://www.blackvue.co.nz/).

Streetsoundz originally installed my unit and did a great job but when I got my new car I opted to install the unit myself. I ended up getting fuse taps for my car and installing both the power magic pro + dashcam the way I wanted it. After about 2 hours of work and routing cables (and many YouTube videos) I installed my dashcam complete with parking mode enabled:

Some example videos from the Blackvue DR750S-2CH:

And night without night mode enabled:

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#2398829 16-Jan-2020 11:20

https://dashcamtalk.com/ and their forums are a good resource for helping choose as well, though primarily focused on the American market

tehgerbil

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#2398874 16-Jan-2020 11:26

70mai are quite good - $50 for FullHD dashcam. Really good quality footage.

Blackvue are the crème de la crème of the dashcam crop.

I personally have a Transcend DP200, specifically for the ultra-wide 170deg lens.

Item

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#2398893 16-Jan-2020 12:06

Some good reference in my Dashcam 2018 thread:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=162&topicid=228727

I still have my BlackVue 750 2ch and am still happy with it. Just sits there and works.

Obraik

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#2398895 16-Jan-2020 12:10

michaelmurfy:

Personally - I only recommend Blackvue (https://www.blackvue.co.nz/).

Are the Blackvue's able to automatically upload to a network location when you get home? It was something I had been wanting with a dashcam but at the time it seemed none had that capability, which seemed to me seemed like an obvious desirable function

It's no longer an issue for me now since the car I now have has built in dashcam capability that can do what I want but I'm sure others would appreciate it.

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Nate001

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#2398901 16-Jan-2020 12:16

I was looking also looking into dash cams yesterday so following with interest.

Was surprised to see Blackvue NZ agent claiming your warranty is void if you do not use their SD card and how theirs is specifically designed for the heat of Dubai etc. What are users thoughts on this? - Seems like a load of BS to me.

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#2398957 16-Jan-2020 12:47

Obraik:

Are the Blackvue's able to automatically upload to a network location when you get home? It was something I had been wanting with a dashcam but at the time it seemed none had that capability, which seemed to me seemed like an obvious desirable function

It's no longer an issue for me now since the car I now have has built in dashcam capability that can do what I want but I'm sure others would appreciate it.

Yes - I have a script on my server that looks out for the IP of the Blackvue and then automatically downloads and archives footage. I keep the last 2 months of footage (a little overkill but I have space for this) and the rest is archived to Crashplan.

There are several ways of doing this and plenty of scripts on Github. My script was written in PHP because it is quite specialized for my environment (not the best language, I know).

Windows: https://github.com/morrisonbrett/BlackVueDownloader
Linux / MacOS: https://github.com/GoKEV/GoKEV-BlackVue-DashCam-Pull

The only important thing doing this is ensuring there is very strong and good WiFi where you park your car. On an average work day there is 20gb worth of footage to download for me.

michaelmurfy

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#2398958 16-Jan-2020 12:53

Nate001:

Was surprised to see Blackvue NZ agent claiming your warranty is void if you do not use their SD card and how theirs is specifically designed for the heat of Dubai etc. What are users thoughts on this? - Seems like a load of BS to me.

Not at all BS. Dashcams, especially the dual camera ones do a whole lot of write cycles to the SD card and require a large amount of bandwidth. If you're using a cheap and cheerful SD card then this overheats and causes damage to the internals of the dashcam. I've done this without knowing but lucky I didn't damage the dashcam (the SD card did however start smoking and was far too hot to touch).

If you're going Blackvue then just grab the Blackvue SD cards - they're simply Samsung High Endurance cards. I am personally running a 64gb Samsung High Endurance card in mine which is fine for the task but if you run with a cheaper card that is not High Endurance then simply put, you will damage your dashcam.

The Blackvue cards are rated for the write speed that is required for the dashcam, and are high endurance. Really if you want the least problems then just pay for one of those. They're around the same price as high endurance cards from your brick and mortar store anyway.

Obraik

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#2398960 16-Jan-2020 12:56

michaelmurfy:

Yes - I have a script on my server that looks out for the IP of the Blackvue and then automatically downloads and archives footage. I keep the last 2 months of footage (a little overkill but I have space for this) and the rest is archived to Crashplan.

There are several ways of doing this and plenty of scripts on Github. My script was written in PHP because it is quite specialized for my environment (not the best language, I know).

Windows: https://github.com/morrisonbrett/BlackVueDownloader
Linux / MacOS: https://github.com/GoKEV/GoKEV-BlackVue-DashCam-Pull

The only important thing doing this is ensuring there is very strong and good WiFi where you park your car. On an average work day there is 20gb worth of footage to download for me.

That's cool, I don't mind that it requires some external script work to achieve the same thing. With my Tesla I have a Raspberry Pi that plugs into the cars USB port and acts as a storage device which the car can save the files to. When it gets in range of my home wifi it then uploads the days footage directly to a Sharepoint Online site (figured I'd make use of the 1TB storage I get with the O365 account I use for testing). Depending on what the car sees as security events in the work car park, I tend to get around 5-10gb or so a day to upload.

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mentor

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#2399007 16-Jan-2020 13:30

I got the BlackVue DR900s dual channel installed by Alex @ https://drivercam.co.nz/ in our two cars along with the battery backup.

Such a friendly guy and a clean install in brand new cars who I highly recommend.

The SD card got corrupted in one camera after 3 months and he popped by replaced it immediately!

jamesrt

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#2399009 16-Jan-2020 13:33

mentor: I got the BlackVue DR900s dual channel installed by Alex @ https://drivercam.co.nz/ in our two cars along with the battery backup.

Such a friendly guy and a clean install in brand new cars who I highly recommend.

Appreciate the recommendation; but I'm at the other end of the North Island...

(Maybe I should have mentioned being Wellington based!)

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#2399013 16-Jan-2020 13:37

There's also a couple of models that now have apps for mobiles. When you activate the save action on the camera it dumps via Wifi/BT direct so you can instant upload or archive later.

I've been through 3 Chinese ones, all have the grainy over-compensation or audio squeal interference bug that the early adoption chipsets got. My latest is still chugging away. a 'Mini 0805' which has been superseeded a few times (new one is an 0805P)

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#2399052 16-Jan-2020 14:21

There is also this article: Best dash cam 2020: 8 car-ready cameras for peace of mind. This is by TechRadar NZ.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#2399129 16-Jan-2020 16:26

Viofo A129 Pro is really good value for money.

Do whatever you want to do man.

Smix

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#2400298 16-Jan-2020 22:50

On balance, I've got the Blackvue DR750s and it hasn't met my expectations (I haven't tried anything else on the market in that price range), especially given the ~$1,000 price tag (including the battery backup) when I bought back in May/June.

I really dislike/hate:

The wide angle means it's damn near impossible to read number plates more than a car distance away. You'll definitely capture the event (and it does so pretty damn well), but we rely on memory/calling out the number plate to keep record of it.
There's no way to signal that you want to save a clip. If you use the motion sensor hand wave, it only saves 5 seconds-ish prior to the hand-wave. My previous dashcam, the Mini 0605, had a physical button you could push to save a clip.
I've found the Wifi connection to be both slow and unreliable ... it's pretty hit and miss for auto-connecting once we're in the garage, but if you clear the camera it works fine for a few days before going back to flaky connections.
The app is buggy as hell - I've woken up to 30+ notifications of connection/disconnections.
My biggest hate is that you have to use 3rd party tools (unless I'm missing something) to export PiP front and rear recordings even though the desktop app plays both back simultaneously.

What I do like:

The camera itself is pretty rock-solid. I've only had one corruption which required a format - this was a fortnightly thing with my 0605.
DIY install was a breeze and included everything I needed. The hardest part was replacing the fuse with the piggyback connector. The rear camera has plenty of wire and I've got quite a bit of excess shoved into the rear ceiling panel (Nissan Leaf).
The BBU has never missed a beat, and the bluetooth connections is oddly more reliable than the Wifi.
As above, although you can't read number plates, it takes silky smooth video @60fps. Night time is pretty good too.

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