Vehicle camera system upgrade

westgolf · 09-12-2021 8:39pm #1

** Mods, please move to alternative or more appropriate forum if necessary. **

Looking for someone to upgrade our vehicle camera system. Presently have a number of vehicles,all of which are fitted with 360 degree camera systems. Looking for someone to upgrade system to provide remote monitoring and recording facility. All the systems I have seen to date involve removing the existing cameras and installing completely new system.

Any and all comments welcomed.

Gloomtastic! · 09-12-2021 9:21pm

Moved to Motors forum on OP’s request.

The Gloomster!

zg3409 · 10-12-2021 10:37am

What cars? You might be better with local recording as remote recording is too much, most remote system just allow you to view data stored on car.

Get a Tesla, they have local record with a phone app for mobile viewing.

Is there a real reason you need full 360 remote? It might be far easier getting a few pinhole hidden type cameras at front and rear and feed them to vehicle recorder. What is your budget?

A ring camera doorbell, within wifi range of house, will motion detect movement and record to the cloud. Newer ones can run from battery. Mounting it might be fun.

You really need to do a risk assessment and a risk/reward, such as home cctv, theft alarm, secure car parking, good insurance, 360 cameras will not stop damage nor theft.

I would start with a 2 sided dash cam with it's own battery and go from there.

kirving · 10-12-2021 11:13am

It's not easily doable to be honest. At least not by anyone other than the original manufacturer.

The four (or 5) cameras feed video to an ECU which has been calibrated at the factory to correct for lens distortion, merge the feeds, and output a top-down view.

Video from individual cameras in a multi camera feed is in a secure, proprietary format and not easy to view.

Sometimes, the video from the ECU to the head unit is basic NTSC, but that's not giving full resolution from the camera, and you'd need the ECU To be powered and send it commands to select different feeds (top view, forward, reverse, etc). Again, very difficult to do, if at all.

You'd be much better served by buying the likes of a cloud accessible dashcam I think. That, or buy a new car which comes with the functionality as standard BMW and Tesla do this for sure off the top of my head, as do others I'm sure.

cormie · 10-12-2021 12:11pm

I have this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32820503297.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.25e04c4dsxuRCN

It's great on paper, reverse camera, front camera, both constantly recording, motion detection etc... but it's a bit buggy and doesn't work as well as I'd like. It also doesn't work with EU sim cards, so to remotely monitor it, you need it connected to wifi (another phone tethering a hotspot would also work).

If there was something similar that would work with EU/Irish sims and wouldn't be as buggy on a newer android system, I'd be happy to update.

westgolf · 10-12-2021 2:17pm

Thanks for all the replies so far. By way of information it's not for cars. It's for HGV vehicles (tipper trucks). We purchased vehicles in the UK which came with the cameras fitted as standard. From both a vehicle management and compliance perspective I would like to have real time monitoring. My idea is that I should be able to retro fit some sort of transponder or transmitter that would feed the vehicle stream back to the office ? The onboard screen already shows the driver the four angles/views so the same stream would be the output/input to base ?

Hope the above makes sense!

zg3409 · 10-12-2021 5:58pm

What is your budget? We would need to know make and model of existing system

westgolf · 10-12-2021 10:23pm

@zg3409 if I could source a unit that would do the job, as outlined,on our 10 vehicles then a budget of about €10K would be there.

Brands are a mix of brigade, sidescan and others.

The footage is fine for the drivers and quality is quite good.

dollylama · 11-12-2021 2:09am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118303220#Comment_118303220

You're looking at a Mobile Network Video Recorder (MNVR) if you wan't to access or stream the footage remotely.

https://www.hikvision.com/uk/products/Mobile-Products/Mobile-Network-Video-Recorders/Pro/ds-mp5604n/

I looked briefly at the likes of the above from HikVision but they're not cheap and then you've to add on a data plan with one of the mobile networks, likely an individual monthly plan for each truck unless one of the networks offers data pools

cormie · 11-12-2021 12:26pm

How much are they?

dollylama · 11-12-2021 8:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118304712#Comment_118304712

If memory serves, they were about £1,200 for the bare kit. I haven't looked in a long while but there are some Irish distributors for Hikvision and some of the other Asian manufacturers would be the first port of call.

I think the biggest pita with these will be the network connectivity for remote streaming / remote retrieval. Dependent on where the op is operating, the inconsistent quality of the Irish mobile networks will become quickly apparent. There'll also likely be the issue of trying to get public IP addresses on a mobile SIM, etc...

[Deleted User] · 11-12-2021 8:05pm

Have you done a Data Protection Impact Assessment on what you're proposing?

Whocare · 11-12-2021 10:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118300735#Comment_118300735

your biggest problem will be no one will drive for you if there going to be live feed back to office .as hgv driver it ok to cameras for accident/insurance Purposes ect but live feed back to office you get no drivers to work under those conditions especially with shortages of drivers

westgolf · 12-12-2021 11:13am

Given the type of environment we work in it seems that the mobile signal would be the issue so that might not be an option.

@Whocare it's not about the constant live feed,it's about being able to locate any vehicles near a client's site and dispatch the nearest appropriate vehicle. We work with our driving team to make things easier not more difficult.

Whocare · 12-12-2021 6:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118308423#Comment_118308423

why not just get Satellite tracking fitted to the trucks as like most transport company have .I think it be hard sell to driver having a live Camera feed back to the office

Del2005 · 13-12-2021 1:04am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118308423#Comment_118308423

Do you supply company smart phones? There's plenty of live tracking options for phones and if you have SIM free cheap plans. Throw the drivers a few extra Euro a week and they could even install on their own phones, once it's clearly laid out that they only have to use it when in your wagon. You can even automate the App coming on/off depending on being connected to your wagon

westgolf · 20-12-2021 9:37pm

Hi all,

By way of update, following a lot more research it seems that the most suitable solution to our problem is to go with a GPS solution for fleet management purposes and separately to install DVR capacity in each vehicle, (already have the cameras) to be downloaded in the case of an issue arising or overwritten if no issues.

cormie · 21-12-2021 12:39am

I guess all that could be done with a basic Dash Cam and then a smartphone for GPS tracking if you're on a budget, I'm sure there's fleet management solutions out there that will offer more options and that, I've certainly had enough cold calls about similar, but the basic functionality can be achieved for pretty cheap!

Vehicle camera system upgrade

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