Dash cam saves your ass (no Roundabout stuff please :)

fred funk }{ wrote: »

I bought one of the Smartcams off eBay last week. I had a problem with it, think I caused it myself, Scott was extremely helpful and sorted me out straight away.

I'm very pleased with the cam and I would highly recommend anyone thinking of getting one to get one of these. For the money would cant go wrong.


http://www.ebay.ie/itm/SmartCam-HD-Car-DVR-720P-Dashcam-Driving-Recorder-HDMI-2-0-LCD-UK-SELLER-/200745123135?pt=UK_In_Car_Technology&hash=item2ebd577d3f#ht_2701wt_700

any chance of you posting up some sample video of it so we can have a look?

mine arrived whilst i was away on holiday, but i'll be picking it up tomorrow from the post office so i'll give it a test run as well.

it's this one anyway that was posted on the thread a few days ago: http://www.ebay.ie/itm/270964106767?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_3058wt_1396

might be worth getting some test day & night footage to see how they compare.

vibe666 wrote: »

any chance of you posting up some sample video of it so we can have a look?

mine arrived whilst i was away on holiday, but i'll be picking it up tomorrow from the post office so i'll give it a test run as well.

it's this one anyway that was posted on the thread a few days ago: http://www.ebay.ie/itm/270964106767?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_3058wt_1396

might be worth getting some test day & night footage to see how they compare.

I'll post something up later or tomorrow. Quality isn't too bad at all.

Looking forward to it lads.. my decision is resting firmly between those two anyways!

not actually had a chance to test it properly yet, but i know people are waiting, so here's the preliminary impressions.

i'd thought it took a microSD card, but it's a regular full sized SD slot and i didn't have an adapter yesterday, so i couldn't record anything.

playing around with it today at my desk, it's obvious it's a cheap chinese product, very cheap plastic. there'a actually no HDMI despite what the ebay auction says. i contacted the seller and they said that the wrong batch was sent by their supplier and they only just realised and that i could get a full refund if i sent it back, or a £4 refund if i kept it, so i decided to take the £4 back.

i also said i'd planned on buying more and had 'friends' who might also want some, so to make sure they corrected their ebay description to say there was no HDMI and if they are going to get new stock in with HDMI, to let me know. not a big thing though, i imagine most people won't use it anyway, so it's just a minor gripe.

i did some test video recordings at my desk with usb power from my laptop and there was a lot of noise on the audio, almost like a small engine running in the background. it's only when i have my laptop powering it though, the car charger doesn't seem to have the same problem, so again only a very minor gripe.

so, you can mess around with all the usual settings as you'd see on most of these things, inc. turning on/off the date/time stamp (or changing it to the correct date/time ) you can disable audio recording, choose the video and image quality you'd like, from 720p down to 480p (i guess to save space, more on that later) and you can also disable the (most likely) useless IR LED's and also flip the image upside down if you mount it on your dash instead of on your windscreen.

so, i guess it's time for the good bit (sort of).



to try and give a side by side impression of video quality, i spliced back and forth between the dashcam and my desire hd which was mounted next to it and fitted with a fisheye lens (another ebay buy) to give as much of a similar field of view as i could get to the dashcam as it's pretty wide compared to my desire hd standard field of view.

the only downside really is a pretty inefficient encoding rate as i only got 5m45s of video for a 977mb file, so you won't be filming long journeys.

just to be complete, this is the one I got: http://www.ebay.ie/itm/270964106767?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_3058wt_1396



the seller was elec-touch for anyone reading this after the auction has expired.

also, this was the total delivered price in the end according to paypal:

Conversion from: -€34.71 EUR
Conversion to: £26.99 GBP
Exchange rate: 1 Euro = 0.777617 British Pounds

From that thread I linked to earlier, it seems the iTronics ITB-100HD is considered a better device than the Blackvue 400 so I might go for that instead. Anyone here have one themselves? I think it's new enough..

i forgot to mention that the mini usb car charger my dashcam comes with has a very long length of cable, so you can position it wherever you like and still have plenty of cable to run to your cigarette lighter socket.

one thing i have noticed is that if you have loop recording on it will still keep recording over the oldest video indefinitely in automatic/ignition mode (assuming it is set) but you can't manually record anything if the card is already full of automaticly recorded video. i imagine most device will be the same as well, but it's just something to watch out for.

i'll be sticking a 16gb card in mine today once i've finished copying stuff off it this morning, so i should be okay for a decent amount of recording time going forward, although i might pick up a cheap 32gb card for the longer term just to get the most out of it.

i'll definitely be buying more of them anyway (one for the back of the car and one more for the wife's motor), very happy with the results for the money and i'm now officially 100% converted from my old android dashcam app.

for any interested nerds, here's the audio & video info from gspot:



i cant help but think they could have done better with the bitrate on the video. :eek:

23900kbps versus 4300kbps on my DHD.

cormie wrote: »

Perfect example of one of the many problems caused by people not keeping in the left hand driving lane and hogging the overtaking lane. Whatever car is in front of you was slightly ahead of the truck at the start of the video yet ends up going slower and lulling behind the truck so the truck driver can either choose to slow down, probably not fit in the gap between you and the car ahead, or maybe the rest of the people sitting in the overtaking lane behind you. Truck driver is forced into this position, indicates out and indicates back into the driving lane. Good procedure considering problems caused by other drivers.

Though it is indicated as a bus lane, so not obvious here whether its active or not.

There's signs at the start saying bus lane not in use, either that or no sign posts, I forget which.

i've actually no idea if it's in use or not, but everyone seems to ignore the bus lane markings so i'm guessing it's the latter.

i'll be going that way again this evening so i'll try and see if there is sign-age to say if it's not in use.

the problem isn't actually all that evident from the video as the 120 degree wide angle lens makes it look like the distances are much greater than they actually were.

to give you an idea of the distances involved, i'd actually sped up a bit to get a closer look at the range rover, but eased off as if i had been any closer to the car in front of me i wouldn't have had time to stop on the wet road if he had slammed on his brakes, so take that distance as an estimation of the minimum safe distance between 2 cars on a wet road.

ignoring the fact that he had cut up the inside of the car in front of me to get where he was, by the time he actually puled out, there was only about a foot between him and the blue car in front of him and the back end of the truck and the silver car in front of me, and similar distances either end of him when he pulled back in again after overtaking the blue car.

it wouldn't have been much more than antisocial driving if he'd been behind the wheel of the range rover, but in a truck with a heavy load on wet roads, it's a pretty dangerous manoeuvre imho.

Anyone have any recommendations for one of these?

i had a near miss yesterday (Fella came around a corner, speeding, in an ML Merc and frightened the **** out of me) so a few of us are thinking about investing.

Value for money vs quality?

Limerick man wrote: »

Anyone have any recommendations for one of these?

i had a near miss yesterday (Fella came around a corner, speeding, in an ML Merc and frightened the **** out of me) so a few of us are thinking about investing.

Value for money vs quality?

I've been paying attention to the newest high quality ones and it seems the iTronics ITB-100HD is the new benchmark in quality DVR's. The popular Blackvue 400 is close but the iTronics comes out top according to a few reviews.

Nissan doctor wrote: »

I don't see the issue here, that bus lane hasn't been in operation for several years, truck was in the driving lane, came behind a slower vehicle, overtook and returned to the driving lane.

The problem with that road is people still driving in the overtaking lane and ignoring the driving lane.

the problem with this particular bit of footage is how close the truck was to both the back of the car in front of him and the front of the car in front of me when he pulled out and again when he pulled back in.

he's driving a truck with a heavy load on wet roads at a relatively high speed, far too close to other road users to be safe and then overtaken someone on the inside, pulled out directly in front of them and then pulled in again directly in front of the car he's just passed leaving no space ahead or behind him in the process.

the problem with the road itself and the people driving on it in general, is that the road is still marked out as a bus lane and the old road markings haven't been removed. hardly surprising that a lot of people still follow those road markings.

cormie wrote: »

Afraid not, I'm after 3 myself so weighing up the options. I'll probably go the ebay route and just look for somebody with good feedback at a good price!

How much is a good price? i might have 5 or 6 more people interested.

Nice bit of driving on the M50 yesterday ... :rolleyes:



Captured with Daily Roads Voyager on a HTC Desire, the video isn't quite as fluid as I'd like. Does anyone know whether something like a class 10 micro SD card would sort this problem out ?

I have downloaded Autoguard on my phone today ... has anyone used this application ? Any better/worse ?

Thanks.