Dash Cam

[FarmerPug]

I had a few mildly interesting clips the other day, an R plater, changed lanes without indicating or checking the mirrors and nearly drove into the side of me, and then a quashquai turned down the wrong way in a 1 way street.

A cheaper £20 dash cam arrived today from china, it arrived rather slowly in a bit over 1 month, i mounted it up beside the 3rd brake light:



(it shows up with the camera flash turned on, normally its much better hidden)


It sits there unobtrusively, there is more than enough wire supplied with it to reach the B pillar where i soldered it to a 12v wire, it uses a tv component lead to connect to a tv, which would be used to change the time and date, quality settings etc, a small portable tv would be useful for setting it up and getting the angle right, then once its set up hide the component lead in the B pillar and return the tv to whatever room of the house it occupied.

[Welly]

Nice neat install, good stuff mate.

I keep looking at the first pic there and can't work out what I'm seeing instead of the inside of a rear passenger door is that just an optical illusion?

[steve_earwig]

Ah, another Mini 0801 clone, is it any good? How does it compare to the other one? If it is any good any chance of a link? I've gone and ordered up this one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331075791728? ... 1439.l2649 because they say it has the right chips in it and everyfink, so it'd be interesting to see if it's any better than your 20 quid one. I plan to stick it in the back window just like yours, the yoyo even has a fag lighter socket in the back, although inconveniently it's in the side away from the hinges.

I presume you've read the stuff about how dual camera cams are expensive and not very good, and that it's better to buy two single cams.

it arrived rather slowly in a bit over 1 month,

Let me guess, free postage from China? Stuff takes up to two months to get here that way but I guess free is free...

I had a few mildly interesting clips the other day, an R plater, changed lanes without indicating or checking the mirrors and nearly drove into the side of me, and then a quashquai turned down the wrong way in a 1 way street.

Do they look like the action happened a quarter of a mile away? That's what mine look like, if I uploaded them everyone would wonder what the f..k my problem was. In the only very near miss I've had with it the (traditional) BMW just flashes past in front, looking like it was in the next village...

Btw I this morning I was once more greeted by my camera dangling from the rear view mirror by it's power cable Suckers blow big time I did clean the screen before I fitted it but I reckon I'm going to have to give it a go with the locally-produced meths (the stuff the locals refer to as plum brandy...) and see if it stays up there a bit longer.

[Welly]

I always thought suckers worked best on a super-clean surface but were additionally 'wetted' before applying (maybe one of the locals could lick it?)

[steve_earwig]

The local window lickers

[FarmerPug]

Thats a brick wall with damp spots visible through the open rear door.

Its not really an 0801 clone, this camera is called an A8, a lot of the cheap 720p dash cams on ebay look like it, the main reason for buying this one as opposed to them is that it has a rocker switch to turn the audio recording on or off. The other ones you need to manually set it to record sound every time.

The 0801 on the other hand has the LCD screen, records in 1080p, and has the option of GPS, but both do have the same "bullet design" i think this is the best setup for a dash cam, it makes it compact and it can still be adjusted. Any of the dash cams that use suction cups get a bit big looking.

The two channel cameras that are out there usually have really bulky designs, and seem to cost a lot more (Garmin seem to make a GDR35D that does this). Its much handier running a bit of power to a separate camera mounted on the back window.

Ill post up the video later to show, the wide angle lens do seem to change the perspective a bit.

[steve_earwig]

Sorry mate, I didn't spot that it lacked a display, I was just trying to say a lot of cameras look similar but have different features and internals. It is a really neat size, compared to my one and many of the others which are massive I Actually have that GDR35D bookmarked in a few places, it's not cheap, not good at night and only records in 720p if you have both cameras running Anyway, at almost 200 quid it makes much more sense just to buy two of those Mini0801s, one with GPS, and you'll still have enough cash left over to buy the memory cards too.

[FarmerPug]

Don't worry about it, they all look quite similar, most are chinese clones of chinese cameras
Actually the A8 camera i have looks almost identical to a camera called the road hawk 720, which costs about £80. I don't know if my A8 is a clone of the road hawk, or if the road hawk is a rebadged A8 camera with "designed in uk" marketing.

The gamins higher price might be a bit inflated due to its name, the chinese brand cameras might not have a well known name but they seem to work fine.

I got the tv to setup the rear A8 camera today, mainly the time and date, as well as checking that it was angled correctly, to do this i have to remove the B pillar trim and hoke out the lead and connect it to the TV (the tv was powered by an extension lead from the house):




I don't want to upload a whole video right now, but here is a few screenshots of the footage i got today, i drove my grampa to ballycastle as he bought himself a yaris to replace the polo.
Is anyone surprised that one of these appeared in the footage:





(this car was sitting behind me in a queue for roadworks, it needs to be this close before the plates can be read)

(a night time shot, a bit crap to be honest)

After watching the footage back i can say: the image quality is not as sharp as the 0801 but thats expected as it only records in 720p that does mean that you can only really see number plates if the car is very close such as queuing at traffic ligths, night time footage isn't great, its ok in well lit up areas such as towns or on roads with street lighting.
It doesn't seem to remember the date or time, thus rendering the whole exercise with the tv a waste of time. But it only cost £20, and it might just see something sometime which could be useful.

[steve_earwig]

Will you be mounting the tv on your dash for a reversing camera? The quality is rather poor, but I suspect with a decent camera on the front it probably doesn't matter.

I just had a look for that roadhawk, it gets a mention on dashcamtalk in this thread http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/re ... .85/page-4 which covers all the A8 clones and their faults. Looks like the roadhawk comes with a lot of accessories, including a fag lighter socket and a slide bracket, but not enough to justify such a huge price hike, if indeed it's the same actual camera. Also, it seems the reason for yours loosing the date is a defective batch of batteries and there's a suggested replacement in the thread.

[FarmerPug]

The roadhawk does come with a few more accessories yes, but a cigarette socket would be the first thing i would chop off it a dash cam came with one as i prefer to wire them into the car, i suppose it might be useful if you were removing the camera frequently.
The A8 i have also came with a slide mount, its a bit pointless because the camera doesn't work when its not connected to power, a slide out thing is useful on the 0801 because it can be taken out of its mount to take still post accident photos.

The quality of them screenshots does look a bit poor to be honest, but then thats a screenshot of another screenshot, I'm trying to upload a video but its taking quite a while, in the video it doesn't look as bad as them stills.

[steve_earwig]

its a bit pointless because the camera doesn't work when its not connected to power

See comment above about duff batteries

[dave406]

So what cameras are we recommending?

[steve_earwig]

That depends I guess, although from what I'm seeing here that Mini 0801 is perdy good without being stupidly expensive, and the A8 seems ok for a cheapy cheapy, although its night vision isn't very good. Both need to be stuck to the screen with a pad but that must be better than the damn thing falling off all the time (I think when my one turns up I'll be moving it about a bit so I'll use double-sided tape until I work out where's best.)

I'm liking the idea of wiring them in, the power supply plugged into the fag lighter socket with a huge length of wire you need to hide is definitely a nuisance. On the one I have the power supply drops the voltage so I can't wire it straight in and I did think about gutting it but I was wanting to swap it between cars anyway.

[dave406]

Can the mini 0801 be hard wired? is that the one with the screen?

[steve_earwig]

Yep, it's the one with the screen in Frank's original post. Don't know if it it can be hard wired, sorry, I'm sure Frank will tell you though. I'm pretty sure it plugs into the fag lighter but if it's 12 volts all you need is the right size connector and a lump of wire.