Dash cams, what to get and where to get it (Q&A only)

Hi, guys. I recently upgraded to a newer model so I am selling my baby. She is a 2001 Lexus IS 200. For her age, she has low mileage, only about 135,000. She had a new timing belt put in back in November, new battery earlier this year and also had brake pads changed earlier this year. Was serviced in December just like every year and had the oil filter, cabin filter, and air filter changed. The body has a few dings and scratches but nothing major and the interior is also in good condition. There is a high demand for this car among boy racers so I will start my asking price at 2,800 and go from there. I've been told by several people that I am asking too much....so I am open to offers.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OCaLD3LUK6nNr-W7cHvhdjiKC2rIDhPj

Selling my car as I need 7 seater.
Its in great nick and I would be surprisd if it doesnt sail through the NCT like it did this year

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/mazda6-2-0-td-ts2-4dr-diesel-manual-147g-km/18962218

Anyone recommend someone to install a dash cam by hard wiring it? I thought I was getting a cigarette lighter plug in but he gave me a hard wire kit. I take it they are a lot tidier .. any recomodations for a competent guy ? Thanks.

cormie wrote: »

Nice, I see it's back in stock, lettuce know how you get on

Well, it's not an easy install by any stretch of the imagination.
Positioning the front cam is trial and error to get the correct left/right alignment. I used some not-too-sticky double sided tape to get it right before sticking it to the screen with the actual tape - (stick it on, temporarily power up for some footage, power down, remove the card and check the results on the laptop) Took a few attempts before I was happy with the result. Up/down is handy enough though.
Getting the link cable to the rear camera, you don't want to be shy in tearing certain parts of your car apart, just take a little care so that nothing gets broken or badly twisted out of place. I have a Gen3 Prius, so I had to dismantle the interior of the tailgate to get the cable to where I wanted the rear cam. Luckily enough the panels just pop off, but a certain amount of care was exercised nonetheless.
The only 'mistake' I made was initially putting the gps module beside the interior mirror mount. The thing can't read the satellites through all those black dots, so I had to move it to a clear area.
Unfortunately I didn't save any of my test footage, but the results look good on the 10 minute run I did. I reformatted the card when everything checked out.
One thing though, from the time of turning on the ignition to the camera starting to record is about 15 seconds. I can only assume that the cam is charging it's capacitor during this time, while a cam with a battery will start almost instantly.
Apart from that, only time will tell if it's good, average or so-so.

I started my install just before 8am. I took my time in positioning, stripping the car, etc, and then did a couple of test runs. I stopped at 10am for the regulation mugga tea and a snack, and got called for my lunch at 1pm just as I was locking her up and everything put away tidy.

TigerTim wrote: »

Hi All,

Anything I can do with my Mini 0806 or is it just for the bin. It no longer loops when the card is full & just beeps for format card. I have 2 x 64GB cards in but it now only picks up one & doesn't switch over to the 2nd card even though that is selected in the settings. I've replaced the cards but no joy. I saw an incident on the road this evening but on checking the camera, there is about 10 mins missing from the start of my journey. Can't rely on it anymore. Installed latest firmware but that did nothing.
If its for the bin, any recommendations on a dashcam similar in size to the Mini 0806 & fairly discreet.

THANKS.

T.

I hopefully resurrected my Eprance mini 0806 over the weekend.
Once a day it used to give 3 beeps and shutdown.
I'd have to unplug the cigarette lighter to reboot it.

I had switched to a Xiaomi Yi dashcam (the 1080 @60fps version).
But the suction cup mount held the cam too far from the windscreen, I couldn't get a polarising filter to fit and it was slightly out of focus for reading reg plates at typical driving distances.

With nothing to lose, I ordered a replacement battery for the redundant Eprance mini 0806.
I think the original was 200mAh and this was something like 340mAh, but same size.

Eprance mini 0806 battery replacement

Note: the images are gone on that web page, so I supplemented it with a YouTube video on disassembling the mini 0803 which has similar casing.

With a delicate hand, precision screwdrivers and soldering iron you can perform this replacement yourself. It was only about the 2nd or 3rd time I ever performed any soldering.

The battery of my mini 0806 was slightly swollen so that hopefully that accounted for the issues. Only on day 2 now, but so far so good.

Green_Martian wrote: »

Hi all,

Have a quick question about my Xiaomi Yi dashcam. I have it connected via the USB port in the centre console of the car. I noticed that on Friday evening and again on Saturday it switched itself off, as in screen turned off and it made the sound it usual does when turning unit off manually. The Red light was still on the unit to indicate power still being supplied so its not as if the power supply was cut off. Even though power is being supplied the unit does not record.

Any ideas what the issue could be, its looks to happen sporadically sometimes when unit is on for over 20 minutes plus sometimes when only on for a few minutes. The settings are set to record over old data so not sure if it might be an issue with the SD card.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,
G

Try formatting the SD card.

If that fails then return it if in warranty.

punisher5112 wrote: »

Try formatting the SD card.

If that fails then return it if in warranty.

rgodard80a wrote: »

You could download "h2testw" to test the sd card on a PC.
Or try another SD card to rule out card corruption.

If it has a bad sector in the card, then it would make sense that the issue will occur periodically. Eg. with a small 4gb card you might see it every hour or two.

Note: A "quick format" won't do you much good, as it only wipes the start of the disk. If you do format, ensure "Quick format" is unchecked (if formatting it on a PC)

Cheers both.

Yeah was thinking I might need to format the card, its a 64GB SanDisk Class 10. Will try that tonight and let you know. If its a problem with the unit I will send it back as I only bought it in March of this year

sdevine89 wrote: »

The best quality camera that doesn't have a screen on the rear? (I find them utterly distracting even as a passenger.)

With the Yi cameras you can have them turn off the screen after a time.

As for SD cards, dashcams are hard on card as they are constantly writing which can cause card failure quite quickly. You can buy high endurance cards such as the following:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SDSDQQ-032G-G46A-Endurance-Monitoring-microSD/dp/B00V5Q1K3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528724517&sr=8-1&keywords=sandisk+high+endurance+32gb+micro+sd+card

Which should last better.

Green_Martian wrote: »

Hi all,

Have a quick question about my Xiaomi Yi dashcam. I have it connected via the USB port in the centre console of the car. I noticed that on Friday evening and again on Saturday it switched itself off, as in screen turned off and it made the sound it usual does when turning unit off manually. The Red light was still on the unit to indicate power still being supplied so its not as if the power supply was cut off. Even though power is being supplied the unit does not record.

Any ideas what the issue could be, its looks to happen sporadically sometimes when unit is on for over 20 minutes plus sometimes when only on for a few minutes. The settings are set to record over old data so not sure if it might be an issue with the SD card.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,
G

I read somewhere that some dashcams will not work properly using the car's own USB port, you have to use the power plug/socket supplied.
I wish I could remember where I read it so I could add the link for you.

ridiculously cheap Lidl cam:
https://www.lidl.ie/en/special-offers.htm?articleId=9844

worth a punt?

loyatemu wrote: »

ridiculously cheap Lidl cam:
https://www.lidl.ie/en/special-offers.htm?articleId=9844

worth a punt?

Buy this before the 14th, tick the discount voucher box and you have it for £26

Bit more expensive than the lidl one but there are quite a few clips around to see the quality of these. No gamble there.

Lidl electronics usually have you visit 5 different lidl's before you finally manage to get one.

Green_Martian wrote: »

Cheers for that.

I formatted the card in the camera so looks to be ok now.
All seemed to go ok yesterday, got to blanch without it knocking off ( about a 20 min drive), but good to keep in mind about the output of the USB port

I'm sure your car manual will tell you what the power output is of the USB port (in some cases the output is even printed beside the port itself), but if it persists, use the supplied cigarette power adaptor that came with the dash cam, and see if that eliminates the problem.

I'd say the warm weather over the last few weeks has sorted a lot of the men from the boys in terms of dash cams and how well they cope with warm weather (my mini 0806 used to just stop recording on hot days with no warning).

Exporting question.

Folks, my head is melted trying various video editing software. I tried and got to grips with VideoPad. It all went south trying to use/upload a finished vid. It stores in a .avi file which is a project file and not a vid file.

Then tried shotcut and the same end result with a .mlt project file.
I have tried various file converters (within safe limits) to no avail.

Is there an easy way to do this, pref with shotcut as that's what I have at the mo.
I basically need to turn a video project file into a usable video file.

Thanks.

They don't really elaborate:

How do I order from DashCams.ie?

Ordering from us is easy. At the Shop section of the website, just click which camera package you wish to purchase. Options include a camera with a 16GB memory card or a 32GB memory card. The choice is yours. When you click your desired package, you will be redirected to PayPal, on which we are verified merchants. When you enter your details, we get notified instantly of your order. From there, we have your package organised, packed and dispatched using our trusted national and international courier service.

Mostly likely DPD or Fastway.

You can message them here: https://www.facebook.com/dashcams

Davy wrote: »

Pretty sure its DPD

Thanks Lads will actually have to be @ home so. If it is DPD. With any of the other crowd I could collect it from the depot. I think their facebook page is not manned any more i msged them but go no response.