Dash cam, what to get and where to get it - vol. 2

I got mine fitted and bought from the same person

saved time n hassle

and a warranty aswell which was sensible

Near Cork?

Np

you’ll def get a decent guy with a bit of digging up in the smoke

anyone interested in this that showed up today for me on my computer from Expert Electrical:

https://www.expert.ie/nextbase-rear-window-dash-cam-module.html

Did you buy this after?

Hi, did you get sorted in the end? Mind sharing who you used if you did, thanks!

Anyone know of any places that will fit a dashcam to an EV in the midlands?

Just a heads-up, if anyone's interested in decent dashcam, Viofo Benelux currently has 15% off offer on all of their dashcams and accessories. Offer ends 14th of June.

Use code VIOFO15 at checkout.

Postage is a tenner via DPD to Ireland.

Just to follow up on this, received the dashcam this morning, no extra fees or anything so essentially a nice saving and 10 day shipping from China.

Anyone any experience with Wolfbox dashcams? Got a D07 off Amazon 2 years ago. Was working fine. Bought a new vehicle 4 months ago and only getting round to install the dashcam today. It worked fine as I was installing it to check the camera angle. But installed the rear cam and then main camera started freezing. Ive removed it, hooked it up to laptop. Switches on but doesnt show any video on the screen, just the Wolfbox logo. I can go into the settings on the camera, but if I try to view videos via its playback option it freezes. Ive formatted sd card. Tried a different sd card. Downloaded latest drivers and installed. Still not getting any video. Bit annoying after running all the wires and stick the cams on, now might have to remove all again if i cant get cam to work.

First time dashcam buyer here, though I've lots of experience with helmet cameras.

Is it possible to get a dashcam that will connect to the home wifi while sitting in the driveway, and allow me to download files directly from the dashcam to my laptop, without fiddling around with plugging cards in and out?

Any recommendations on models, brands, fitters for an EV around Dublin would be welcome.

Thanks, that's very helpful. I'd be getting a professional to install, as I wouldn't trust myself to do anything more than changing a bulb.

I'm amazed at how tricky and non-intuitive the wifi download option is. Even with large file sizes, you'd think it would be the obvious way to get files off the dashcam these days.

Is the swapping of SD cards a bit fiddly? Are the slots easily accessible? I swear I'd be dropping the tiny SD cards down the dashboard vents or something.

I can't find anything online about ability to download via wifi from Blackvue devices. I don't know much about them, but from what I've seen online, Halfords aren't great in terms of fitting, particularly for EVs.

You only have to look at this thread or spend a little bit of time on https://www.reddit.com/r/irelandsshitedrivers/ to see that people use dashcams for more than just the once-in-a-blue-moon crash event. Almost every TV in the land is transferring high quality video over wifi these days, without panicking over risk of file corruption.

They all seem to 'sell' some kind of wifi access, so they have the hardware in place to facilitate this, but it's generally really badly designed from a software POV. I had similar functionality on helmet cameras ten years ago, with the ability to connect from a phone to the camera's own wifi network.

It's just disappointing to see that it hasn't moved on in terms of usability.

The slot is find to access normally, but the camera very easily clips off (and on) the static mount. I would caution though that if you have a real camera which used a co-axial cable, the connector is very delicate and I would avoid regularly unclipping.

There's more to it than that though. The designers need to shield the camera for Electromagnetic Compatibility with other devices, but at the same time allow WiFi, so I'd say it's low enough power output. Being a small device, the antenna will be physically very small versus a TV too. That then is sitting inside a metal box, potentially though a block wall.

The camera is also working hard just to save the 4K front video + 2k rear. That's not an issue in terms of processing power necessarily these days, but it is a problem in terms of heat dissipation.

My prosumer mirrorless camera even overheats when I record 1080p video for 30 minutes straight, as does my GoPro if I don't have it on the bike with good airflow. The dashcam needs to work behind a hot windshield, with no airflow. I don't know what they're rated to specifically, but any OEM automotive camera would be rated to work up to 80°C continuously with no airflow.

The dashcam needs to run 24/7m without fail, and adding in more processing to compress the video more than it already is would be a very big heat overhead.

Compressing might be a bad idea too if the compression algorithm decided a registration plate wasn't important, so the compression is minimal. (You'll see on Reddit that even plug-in Wi-Fi security camera suffer terribly from compression artefacts) A 5 min video on my dashcam is 2.25GB (27 GB/hour), whereas Netflix will use just 7GB for a full hour of 4K as it's far more compressed.

I just did a test now, it took a full 2 minutes on my Mac Mini M2 to encode a 5 min, 2.25GB H.264 into 1.06GB H.265 video, and it's generally very fast at that kind of thing - so a lot to expect of a dashcam.

As storage is so cheap these days, and the dashcam normally overwrites old footage, it makes sense given the above to just leave the footage less compressed, but if you want to go scrubbing through footage for an incident it'll take more time due to the small Wi-Fi antenna.

Lastly, Netflix will even download 2 video files, and sub in the low-res version if for any reason the Wi-Fi drops or slows, the Dashcam needs to transfer the full file, every single pixel, without any errors, while streaming over Wi-Fi is fare more error tolerant.