What dash cam are you using?

Both vehicles have Viofo A119 in front which replaced my A118s which I wired one for rear view and will do the 2nd one shortly. I am seriously looking into 2 cam systems, but the good ones cost about $400 and are Korean. I get my Dashcam reviews from Dashcamtalk.com forum.
 
GFM said:
Blackview DR650GW-2CH
Works great!
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That certainly wasn't the case back in 2013 when I purchased my Blackview DR-500GW-HD. It was pretty new to the market and after doing my research and viewing uploaded captures from the camera decided I would take the plunge and purchased one, boy what a mistake that was!

I temporarily hooked the camera up so I could record the drive home from the local distributor after picking it up. The footage it had recorded was terrible, unless you were stopped right behind a car number plates were unreadable and the consistent lighting conditions resulted in a very grainy image and it wasn't just me that was having this issue.

A review shortly after I purchased the camera came up on Dash Cam Talk which listed the above problem as macroblocking. The sneaky bastards decided to limit the maximum bit rate of the camera. A solution was later found by using hacked firmware but it was too late as I decided to get my money back, so I returned it.

The replacement was a Vicovation Marcus 1. All for the small fortune of $250AUD at the time. It might not have all the bells and whistles the Blackvue had such as inbuilt GPS, WiFi etc, but what it could do is produce video which is clear, crisp and has saved me on a number of occasions the Blackvue would have failed.

Moral of the story, just because it is expensive doesn't mean it's the best. The bridges with myself and Blackvue are burned, but at least they have changed their act and others are having better success.
 
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Ours has been working very well. Been in the vehicle for about a year and a half. Video is nice and sharp, and it works well in the cold and seems to handle Canadian winters without issue. This unit wasn't terribly expensive, maybe the middle of the road cost-wise. It's taken some real interesting footage but have not needed it to get out of a jam or anything like that so far (knock on wood of course!).

Only issue has been with the micro SD cards. After a several months they start getting errors and don't seem work properly. The unit says "SD card error", and we pop in a new one or different one and good to go. The cards are usually readable after this happens but the last hour of recording might get corrupted. The recommended cards seem to work better. Might be recording settings, I think it is set for FIFO and continuous recording.

Honestly this is the only dash-cam unit I have ever installed and used... so maybe it's not that great... but we like it. :)
cryptelli said:
others are having better success.
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I use a couple of G1W-CB's (capacitors) but the issue and date constantly resets to the year 2000, 0100 hours. I figure this occurs when the cameras are left running 24/7. Solution is to disconnect whenever possible, otherwise these cameras suffice. Never had a read / write error on microSD, been over a year.
 
Arjun said:
I use a couple of G1W-CB's (capacitors) but the issue and date constantly resets to the year 2000, 0100 hours. I figure this occurs when the cameras are left running 24/7. Solution is to disconnect whenever possible, otherwise these cameras suffice. Never had a read / write error on microSD, been over a year.
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I also have this camera. It's fantastic. I set mine to shut off when the car shuts off so that doesn't happen. No sense in it sitting there for 30 minutes recording nothing but parking lot, doing nothing but eating into your storage capacity and resetting your settings.
 
Before getting these cameras, a car of mine was parked in a quiet residential tree-lined street. Somebody either was making a sharp right or left turn, or was backing their car out from a driveway and left a dent on my rear driver side door. The driver never left his / her number and just drove off (I wasn't present at the car at that time). This motivated me to install the cameras (both front and back--capacitor based) and leave them recording 24/7 for getting scene and catching the license plate numbers. The license plate number is all that really counts in these situations. I thought about putting a mini digital clock somewhere, but I can tell when something happened just based on other sensors on the car. :)

DavidDavid said:
I also have this camera. It's fantastic. I set mine to shut off when the car shuts off so that doesn't happen. No sense in it sitting there for 30 minutes recording nothing but parking lot, doing nothing but eating into your storage capacity and resetting your settings.
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I have been using a DOD RX8W for over a year now and I really like it.
I had a cheaper Wicked HD camera before that but it didn't last a year - I blame the cold northern Minnesota winters for its death.

After investing in the DOD Rx8w cam I also installed a temperature switch so that my dash cam does not turn on until the temperature is at least 32ºF
The cam is rated for much colder temp but I don't plan to be driving until the inside temp is at least 30ºF

I have a 64GB SD card in it and I am recording at 1920x1080.
Comes with a nice playback/player too.

dodrx8w screenshot.JPG
 
Hmmmm wonder how that'll hold up in court when someone tbones you and your doing 36mph in a 35 mph zone.

You couldn't pay me to have a dash cam with GPS in it!
 
DavidDavid said:
Hmmmm wonder how that'll hold up in court when someone tbones you and your doing 36mph in a 35 mph zone.

You couldn't pay me to have a dash cam with GPS in it!
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I have heard that over and over from people but the only way anyone would get my cam footage is if I died in the accident or if I gave it to them and I don't have to give it to them with speed on it. Besides that, I don't have a habit of pushing the speed limit.

What if, however, my speed recording shows the other guy was clearly exceeding the limit!

In a fatality accident they can pretty much nail your speed by doing some calculations based on evidence - what if they say I was going 60mph but my cam says I was only going 53mph... I just watched a forensics show where the state patrol charged a driver for going 73mph based on their measurements and calculations but later forensic analysis proved their first wrong.

I understand the argument but it certainly could be in my favor.
 
Well let me go thru a scenario.... my wife got tboned going thru an intersection. Cop showed up, other guy admitted fault was apologizing over and over, cop wrote him a ticket. (true story and She had no dash cam)

Few weeks later we find out he missed his court date. Turns out his insurance did an "internal audit" and said it wasn't his fault. (we were happy he admitted running the red light for the cop because it was truly his word against hers) Anyway....We were out $1,600 of damages.

So, in that situation, let's say you reviewed your own footage and saw you weren't at fault but you were going 36 in a 35 (not quite "pushing the speed limit" unless you always go 5mph under the speed limit and to you, actually doing the speed limit is" pushing it") would you feel comfortable going to court with that evidence that clearly showed your light was green but also shows that you were breaking the law by speeding?

You can't just crop out your actual speed... That's called tampering with evidence haha

Also, not sure how your GPS is going to prove another cars speed.
 
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I've been running a DOD LS430W and more recently 2 x DOD 470W series.

Have to say it's one of the best low light dash cams I've come across.

A little lacking with parking mode but night time driving, it never fails to capture plates etc.
 
I've been using a ws300w for 4 years now. It's been helpful along the way. The only thing that is shot is the internal battery which can't hold a charge for shit unless powered and the32 gig sandisk card I have needs to be formatted every so often as it gets stuck writing continuously and will only write the current days worth of driving instead of what can be around 4 or so days for me when it's writing properly. Guess I just need a new card. The time runs fast after a while and there's no dst either so I have to manually set that twice a year. The picture remains awesome though. Love this camera, still. Here's a playlist I did when I first got it.

Dash Camera: Dash Camera - YouTube
 
I had a 0801 for two years and now an 0805. The 0801 lasted two years but after 12 months it needed a new battery and is now on battery #2. I decided to upgrade to the 0805. The 0805 went 13 months and is now in its 2nd year of operation on battery #2. In all cases it was the lithium polymer battery that failed. You can tell when they fail. My cam is hardwired so when you shut off your ignition the camera should run and record for a few more seconds on battery, stop recording and close the last file, then gracefully shut-off. If it shuts off immediately then the battery is shot and you lose the last recorded file. That last lost file could be the one you need in case of a collision should the camera lose vehicle power in the crash. I purchased Chinese made replacement batteries off eBay for just under $7 US each, delivered. They're a bit of a pain to solder in but within less than an hour you're back up and running. Here in TX the summers are long and hot so it isn't surprising that the batteries die.

Also, I might add that I had nothing but issues using any micro-SD cards other than Samsung. The camera would randomly lock up using Sandisk cards. I'm sure Sandisk cards are fine, but the 08xx cams don't like them. Never had a cam lock up using Samsung cards.
 
I use a Mobius action camera, it's great, has a wide angle, clear and reads license plates from a good distance.

I don't have the capacitor mod, just a regular mobius powered through cig lighter.
 
Striker cam has ir night vision and audio with a 7inch screen amazing detail and 120 deg field of view
 

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Figured I'd mention I heard a lot of people having troubles with SanDisk (least I think it was SanDisk) SD cards in the Blackbox cameras. One person on Amazon gave a good reasoning that SanDisk cards have some kind of special wear leveling logic in them that conflicts w/ the dashcam software causing corruption. SD card is fine but you find that you have to re-flash the SD card every now and then as it the dash cam seems to stop working w/ it. I had a similar issue and switched out to Samsung SD cards and haven't had an issue since.

Just wanted to throw that out there if it drives anyone up a wall like it did me!
 
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