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Dash Cameras


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Anyone out there using a dash camera?

Any suggestions relative to what features are good and which features are a waste?

Have you ever had to actually use the video to defend yourself or even know anyone that has?

Thanks

Bill

2023 Ford F150 Lariat 3.5EB FX4 Max Towing, Max Payload, 2016 Oliver Elite II - Hull #117 "Twist"

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I have been using a mid range NextBase 422GW camera for a couple of years, the mount is struck to my windshield below the rear mirror. I spliced into a “switched” power wire (on with the ignition) under the dash and ran the cable up the left A pillar. It works extremely well, the video is high res (so you can read a speed limit sign or license plate number). This is VERY important - if the plate is blurry, the video is worthless. I have never had to use a recording in court, tho I have had a few near-collisions while it was going. Mine is set to run all the time, and it shuts down 30 seconds after losing power when the ignition is switched off. At night the video quality is impressive, especially when there is some additional ambient lighting like street lights.

It has a few quirks, such as their Park setting, which activates the camera for 30 seconds after a big bump, which hopefully will record the bad guy driving away, unless the hit was from behind, in which case you need a second camera, in back. Unfortunately just entering and exiting your car a few times (slamming the door) activates this mode and it quickly depletes the too small onboard battery. I leave this feature off, I might engage it if I parked on a nasty urban street.

You must use a very premium VIDEO memory card, if it has too slow a read/ write speed it will not record correctly. It needs to be big so there is plenty of room for video without it constantly over writing the data. A small card will work fine for recording accidents, but if you want to go retrieve a pretty section of your mountain trip a week later, you may find that it has gone...

If your car experiences a hit, like running into car, or into a monster pothole, it will save one minute of video (first 30 and last 30 seconds) in a protected file that will not be over-written. All the settings are programmable using the touch screen or their app, you can have it add geodata and time stamps, you can edit and send a low res or hi res clip via email to the cops or your insurance company. You can view the video with the gps track overlaid onto a satellite map, with another side window showing g forces and road speed (computer only). You can insert your own comments too. Lots of cool features, but there is a really steep learning curve to all the editing features!

I really wish that it would record time lapse video at 5 seconds per frame, for scenic drives like Going to the Sun Rd, but so far the software will not allow it. I have gone into the files and extracted and combined the short (up to 2 minute) clips into a very nice real time movie, but the camera is not really intended for that either. A Go Pro would be excellent.

I do recommend these cameras, but OTH  I have not used another brand. I decided based on reviews and videos.

I carefully positioned the cam so it was 100% invisible to the driver, but he can still duck his head to see the blue power and red recording leds. At night they are not a distraction. Normally you set the actual display to be black when driving.

8C08011F-4037-40C2-9E8F-25FF1574629A.thumb.jpeg.b4f0fd8f408a4e7a979d82c258f978c7.jpeg

A824A055-FBE9-4D2A-AC96-B9F5E70C8DC8.thumb.jpeg.6c63523298790d597b4f6b59462ae227.jpeg

1E74228E-53E9-4DAA-AAD7-7ECA8DAFA0FF.thumb.jpeg.4d22a361fda9ab98c52011add2bd0d8b.jpeg

I left a cable loop, so I can pop the cam off the magnetic base and plug the cord directly into it, to operate it off the truck’s power, tho it is easier to just use the Bluetooth app.

I also added an adjustable polarizing filter to the lens, this really helps to cut glare on a sunny day.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-dash-cam/amp/

Watch this and it’s additional videos, it shows what is so good about these. You can then compare features with other brands. I hope that helps.

NextBase 422GW video reviews

John Davies

Spokane WA

Edited by John E Davies
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SOLD 07/23 "Mouse":  2017 Legacy Elite II Two Beds, Hull Number 218, See my HOW TO threads: https://olivertraveltrailers.com/topic/john-e-davies-how-to-threads-and-tech-articles-links/

Tow Vehicle: 2013 Land Cruiser 200, 32” LT tires, airbags, Safari snorkel, Maggiolina Grand Tour 360 Carbon RTT.

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My son installed front and rear cameras in his Subaru WRX (you’ll see the big rear wing in the video).  And they proved to be very valuable. The video was used as evidence in an accident he was involved in.  The other driver tried to give the State Police officer a complete BS story about the accident, and my son just calmly said “I have video”.    I wish it would have captured the look on the other driver’s face when they realized they were caught lying to the state trooper.  I’m considering adding cameras to my tow vehicle.  

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58 minutes ago, John E Davies said:

I have been using a mid range NextBase 422GW camera for a couple of years, the mount is struck to my windshield below the rear mirror. I spliced into a “switched” power wire (on with the ignition) under the dash and ran the cable up the left A pillar. It works extremely well, the video is high res (so you can read a speed limit sign or license plate number). This is VERY important - if the plate is blurry, the video is worthless. I have never had to use a recording in court, tho I have had a few near-collisions while it was going. Mine is set to run all the time, and it shuts down 30 seconds after losing power when the ignition is switched off. At night the video quality is impressive, especially when there is some additional ambient lighting like street lights.

It has a few quirks, such as their Park setting, which activates the camera for 30 seconds after a big bump, which hopefully will record the bad guy driving away, unless the hit was from behind, in which case you need a second camera, in back. Unfortunately just entering and exiting your car a few times (slamming the door) activates this mode and it quickly depletes the too small onboard battery. I leave this feature off, I might engage it if I parked on a nasty urban street.

You must use a very premium VIDEO memory card, if it has too slow a read/ write speed it will not record correctly. It needs to be big so there is plenty of room for video without it constantly over writing the data. A small card will work fine for recording accidents, but if you want to go retrieve a pretty section of your mountain trip a week later, you may find that it has gone...

If your car experiences a hit, like running into car, or into a monster pothole, it will save one minute of video (first 30 and last 30 seconds) in a protected file that will not be over-written. All the settings are programmable using the touch screen or their app, you can have it add geodata and time stamps, you can edit and send a low res or hi res clip via email to the cops or your insurance company. You can view the video with the gps track overlaid onto a satellite map, with another side window showing g forces and road speed (computer only). You can insert your own comments too. Lots of cool features, but there is a really steep learning curve to all the editing features!

I really wish that it would record time lapse video at 5 seconds per frame, for scenic drives like Going to the Sun Rd, but so far the software will not allow it. I have gone into the files and extracted and combined the short (up to 2 minute) clips into a very nice real time movie, but the camera is not really intended for that either. A Go Pro would be excellent.

I do recommend these cameras, but OTH  I have not used another brand. I decided based on reviews and videos.

I carefully positioned the cam so it was 100% invisible to the driver, but he can still duck his head to see the blue power and red recording leds. At night they are not a distraction. Normally you set the actual display to be black when driving.

8C08011F-4037-40C2-9E8F-25FF1574629A.thumb.jpeg.b4f0fd8f408a4e7a979d82c258f978c7.jpeg

A824A055-FBE9-4D2A-AC96-B9F5E70C8DC8.thumb.jpeg.6c63523298790d597b4f6b59462ae227.jpeg

1E74228E-53E9-4DAA-AAD7-7ECA8DAFA0FF.thumb.jpeg.4d22a361fda9ab98c52011add2bd0d8b.jpeg

I left a cable loop, so I can pop the cam off the magnetic base and plug the cord directly into it, to operate it off the truck’s power, tho it is easier to just use the Bluetooth app.

I also added an adjustable polarizing filter to the lens, this really helps to cut glare on a sunny day.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-dash-cam/amp/

I hope that helps.

John Davies

Spokane WA

John,  

As usual a most excellent article on something you have either for your TV or TT. 

And the image in the article you attached, reminds me of the fine line between Safety & sensory overload...

Avoiding this, BUT I can relate to this..docx

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Maggie & Bryan | Arnegard, ND | 2020 LE II "Twins" Hull #665 | 2021 RAM 2500  6.4L HEMI Gasser  4dr  6.5' bed

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As I’ve been thinking about this for towing it seems that 3 recording cameras would be the solution.   One forward facing in the tow vehicle, one rear facing in the tow vehicle that captures what’s going around the front of the trailer and along both sides of the trailer, and another rear facing one on the back of the trailer that records.  (The factory installed rear camera on our Ollie that we use now while towing doesn’t record).   Or maybe a single 360 degree view camera like some of the GO-Pro type sports cameras, mounted on top of the Ollie capturing everything all around. 

Edited by FrankC

 

 

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FrankC, the NextBase camera takes up to three external inputs, one of them is a rear "over the shoulder" lower res one that simply plugs into the HDMI port on right the side of it. They have hard wired hi res ones, for installing in a rear window for example. I don't know how far away one can be, but recording stuff off the back of the Ollie 35 feet from the dashboard will be a challenge. You canNOT record hi def video using a wireless camera.

Here are some screen shots from my computer. The first shows the video file structure, accessed by plugging in the camera with a USB cable. It is a little hard to decipher, but the first digits are the date "year/month/day" So 210205 is Feb 5, 2021. The next digits are the time, Hrs/Mins/Secs and the last is just their sequential file system. So if you are looking for a specific recording, like a collision, and you know when it happened, you can find it pretty fast. Otherwise, you need to have the Gallery or preview or whatever mode picked, and look at the thumbnail images for a clue about where it was recorded. 

1396552134_ScreenShot2021-02-06at2_01_54PM.thumb.png.931bda1f521bd9312beb4ac0fec9ade0.png

Hi res movies make for BIG files, each 1 minute clip is 220 mb, you can pick a smaller size or lower resolution and frame rate. Mine is 120GB. Here is the "NextBase Player" Mac computer application, showing the dash view on a bright day in shade:

2129258784_ScreenShot2021-02-06at1_54_01PM.thumb.png.6191d819b83d869992c441caf3c9f94f.png

And driving directly into the low sun, with a polarizing filter. (Without one, it would be much worse):

981105663_ScreenShot2021-02-06at1_55_00PM.thumb.png.4bde4f930c1ca5706b67ca68040306fd.png

All kinds of cool info for that particular recording is located along the bottom... A speedometer showing current and max speed, average speed and distance travelled. A compass rose showing current direction, latitude and longitude. A long bar graph showing G forces in three dimensions, and a round version to the right showing the same thing as circles. If you have Internet, the map will show, and you can choose Google Street, Terrain or Satellite, and zoom in or out. And the track and position curser is overlaid on top of that. Basically it's everything a civil defense lawyer would love to have to show a judge if somebody plows into you, like your son's WRX incident....

EDIT: I just updated my camera firmware for the first time, and now there is Time Lapse, a 3 minute or 30 minute setting... A 3 minute video plays back in 30 seconds, a 30 minute plays back in 5 minutes. A little too fast a frame rate for me, but it will be fun to experiment with it. Here is a sample I found; ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UziEtLlp6E

John Davies

Spokane WA

 

Edited by John E Davies
  • Like 2

SOLD 07/23 "Mouse":  2017 Legacy Elite II Two Beds, Hull Number 218, See my HOW TO threads: https://olivertraveltrailers.com/topic/john-e-davies-how-to-threads-and-tech-articles-links/

Tow Vehicle: 2013 Land Cruiser 200, 32” LT tires, airbags, Safari snorkel, Maggiolina Grand Tour 360 Carbon RTT.

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