What dash cam are you using?
- Thread starter Jonwire
- Start date
that looks like it replaces your rearview mirror, is the quality that good? and it the rear camera wire long enough to go to a big suv like an Excursion . watching the the news with all the crazy people I want dash cams on everything that rolls now
Left Coast Geek
Getting comfortable
hmm? no, the A119 fits on a holder that you stick to your windshield NEAR the rear view mirror using double sided tape. and there's no rear camera, you must have confused this with a different one. The Viofo A129 has a rear camera, the amazon ad for the current version says it comes with a 6m cable for the rear camera, thats just short of 20 feet.
FWIW, I had an earlier version of the Viofo A119, worked great for about 9 months, then just checked out and never came back to life. I see there's a new v3 which has a fair number of improvements, including a better camera chip.
I am struggling with this also, especially now that the pandemic is almost over, everyone getting behind the wheel forgot how to drive. I have been looking at the BlackVue DR900X-2CH 4K Dual-Channel Cloud Dash Cam with the BlackVue Power Magic Ultra Battery Pack B-124X because I want to to run 24/7 without draining my cars battery incase someone breaks into the car or there is a hit and run in the middle of the night, etc but $780 for the package seems steep. And what is better .... 1080p / 60 FPS or 4k 30FPS?
I also noticed that they only support 256gb micro sdxc cards and I moved up to 1tb cards in my phones 12 months ago.....
I am also i the southern US, so the 900X has more cooling holes in it than the previous model to get rid of heat.
I also noticed that they only support 256gb micro sdxc cards and I moved up to 1tb cards in my phones 12 months ago.....
I am also i the southern US, so the 900X has more cooling holes in it than the previous model to get rid of heat.
I just installed a Viofo A129 Duo Pro. This supplements my old Esky unit that still works and I will leave in the vehicle if I ever sell it. The Esky is the stealthy one that you hide the head unit and mount the little cams to the glass. My head unit is in the glove compartment. This Esky cam is about 7 years old and doesn't have the greatest resolution, only 1080p, which isn't sufficient for reliable license plate reading. And it lacks GPS and wifi. The new Viofo is 4k to the front and has GPS and wifi... the wifi merely to be able to view and download videos on my phone whereas on the old Esky needed to connect up an AV cable. Of course on both one can also pull the micro SD card and view the footage on a computer. I'll post some videos when I get some... although I believe you guys are already familiar with this cam.
One minor annoyance with the Viofo is the time/date setting. It has GPS and will set the time automatically. But you need to enter your GMT offset to have it report accurate time. Seems like they could have made this automatic using GPS position relative to well established time zone borders. Maybe there is some technical reason for this?? IDK. But I have a road trip coming up and will be crossing a time zone between eastern and central US time. I am not gonna pull over mid trip and reset my GMT offset.
I was thinking about parking mode. I never used it on the Esky. I looked into the battery backup options for the Viofo and they just don't seem adequate, only providing about a day of power. This vehicle sometimes sits for several days... so it just is not worth it to get a battery. I can still use parking mode on a case basis when out and about.
One minor annoyance with the Viofo is the time/date setting. It has GPS and will set the time automatically. But you need to enter your GMT offset to have it report accurate time. Seems like they could have made this automatic using GPS position relative to well established time zone borders. Maybe there is some technical reason for this?? IDK. But I have a road trip coming up and will be crossing a time zone between eastern and central US time. I am not gonna pull over mid trip and reset my GMT offset.
I was thinking about parking mode. I never used it on the Esky. I looked into the battery backup options for the Viofo and they just don't seem adequate, only providing about a day of power. This vehicle sometimes sits for several days... so it just is not worth it to get a battery. I can still use parking mode on a case basis when out and about.
TechBill
Known around here
- Nov 1, 2014
- 1,827
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I installed a VIOFO A129 Duo Pro in my SUV but I brought it directly from the manufacturer in China instead of from USA supplier.
Reason I got mine direct from China is because I learned that the older A129 had a poor wifi chipset where the wifi connection between mobile device and camera is very poor and it would often disconnect from each other. The video file download would be slow and live streaming nearly impossible to achieve. When I contacted the manufacturer to see if they were going to improve in this area and that when I learned they have switch to a different improve better wifi chipset just recently and none of the USA supplier have any with the new chipset in stock.
I really loved my A129. The live streaming is stable and smooth also the video file downloading is quick too. I have not face an issue with wifi at all like other had posted about on the internet.
I just ordered a power cord to allow it to be in parking mode (full time power and accessory power separated) also I got a bluetooth button for it too. My A129 is mounted right behind the rearview mirror so it hard to press the file lock button by feeling alone while still keeping your eye on the road. With the button, I can just put it on the console which will make it easily reachable when I need to lock a video file.
Only con I found on it is that I have to enable the wifi each time I need to access my video file and it does not keep it enabled if you power cycle the camera (Honda vehicles does not power lighter plug all time, only when key is in ignition). I asked manufacturer if they could add a function in setting to make it that wifi come back on after a reboot or power cycle, they say they will forward to their engineer to look into it.
Overall, it's an awesome camera ..
Here an easter egg, hold down the mic button until you see an icon of a sandisk with a down arrow appear on the camera screen then let the button go. This will enable the h.265 compression
IReallyLikePizza2
Known around here
I have audio recording turned off. Simple one button to turn it on if and when needed.
Left Coast Geek
Getting comfortable
When I had a dashcam (they all seemed to die within a year), I used to just pull the uSD card out and stick it in my PC to read the vids, seemed much faster than messing with wireless downloads.
re encryption, pretty hard to see how a camera could do that in a secure fashion, as if it has the keys to encrypt it, then the keys are in the camera already. realtime secure encryption of HD video at any sort of reasonable frame rate requires a lot of CPU power. I just shut the audio off on mine, I don't record it at all.
re encryption, pretty hard to see how a camera could do that in a secure fashion, as if it has the keys to encrypt it, then the keys are in the camera already. realtime secure encryption of HD video at any sort of reasonable frame rate requires a lot of CPU power. I just shut the audio off on mine, I don't record it at all.
IReallyLikePizza2
Known around here
That's fine, I just don't want the police or some random person pulling it and getting all the files. Even a small hurdle would fix that
Even just a 3-4 digit PIN would work
Look at it this way, if something happened that you cared about you would immediately pull the SD card to save the files to your computer and/or send them to the authorities. If nothing important happened you leave the SD card in and someone steals it... who cares. If they wanted to watch them for some unknown reason the cops would catch them bored fallen asleep... unless, of course, you are making your own real life fast and furious drag race videos. ;-)
Left Coast Geek
Getting comfortable
if you had to enter a pin via the tiny 2-3 button controls of one of those cams every time you turn it on, chances are, you won't have it recording every time you drive, which is the whole idea, they are supposed to be fully automatic, start car, they record.
I've had my Viofo for awhile now and it works pretty well. It seems to take videos in small clips instead of one continuous video for each start and stop cycle. Not sure why that is... I need to dive into the manual I suppose. Here are a coupe of clips of an arsehole driver today... full rear video shows the action between 2 traffic lights and the short front clip shows the final piece. At 4k it is good enough to make out the plate... but seems barely so. I had hoped it would be better. Might send these to the county mounties but they would probably ignore it.
Left Coast Geek
Getting comfortable
awhile back, I picked up a VIOFO A119 V3 to stick in my truck. I haven't hard wired it yet, its still on a cigar power cord. Seems to work well enough.
IAmATeaf
Known around here
I’ve also got a V3 again just running off a 12v cigar lighter. Got a Vantrue for my wife’s car again not hard wired.
Both dash cams give really good video during the day but pretty flakey, in the sense that numbed plates are difficult to read during the dark.
IReallyLikePizza2
Known around here
Firefighter
Getting comfortable
- Jun 18, 2014
- 218
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It's nice to see RING get into the dash cam scene for the fact that more people will be armed with one however, I think it's a terribly ugly design. It surely makes it obvious to others and maybe that's part of the point.
I just picked up a new Dual Dash Cam locally. BNIB, It was $50 and I offered $20 for shits and giggles and the guy said sure. lol It's another off brand but from the reviews it might be something decent.
Been wanting a Dual cam for awhile. For the price I'm sure i'll be happy with it.
I'll have to download some files and see how they look.
I would still like to see basically a poe setup for cars. LOL
A Main Box and however many cameras you want added to it. I'd buy the hell out of it. One each direction, One Inside, and one high mm forward to catch stuff farther down the road. Would really combat issues with the main FOV being so wide.
We can dream right....
I just picked up a new Dual Dash Cam locally. BNIB, It was $50 and I offered $20 for shits and giggles and the guy said sure. lol It's another off brand but from the reviews it might be something decent.
Been wanting a Dual cam for awhile. For the price I'm sure i'll be happy with it.
I'll have to download some files and see how they look.
I would still like to see basically a poe setup for cars. LOL
A Main Box and however many cameras you want added to it. I'd buy the hell out of it. One each direction, One Inside, and one high mm forward to catch stuff farther down the road. Would really combat issues with the main FOV being so wide.
We can dream right....
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