Got a Dashcam

[gammagoblin]

I got a dash cam (dashcam?) off of ebay and finally got it hooked up and went for a drive. I'm still tweaking the settings a little but here is a quick day/night test sample.

I'll update you all more later with details on what camera and the install and such if anyone's interested! Off to bed for now.

Day time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xllytng_To8

Night time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAmR534ABtw

[Avetiso]

In Soviet Russia...

[BavarianZHP]

^^^ Haha, I was thinking the same thing.

I'm pretty interested in this and the further details you speak of OP. Spokoinoi Nochi. LOL

[LivesNearCostco]

How do these work, do they turn on automatically and just save the last 20 or 30 minutes of your driving? Or do you need to clear or reset them occasionally? If you have a high-G event, does the dashcam automatically save a video from a few minutes before and after the event? Does it record date, time, location, and speed?

[Reckless]

This should provide some very interesting footage, or maybe just a lot of traffic. Very cool addition and in for more details.

[BimmerWill]

Think that's a great idea considering your location and prevalence of traffic incidents in NYC. Would definitely help you in getting an insurance or police report settled involving frontal collisions especially if it records date and time. Then on the fun side would be nice to go back and revisit some of your fun in the twisties!

[gammagoblin]

OK!

So, being paranoid about scams like where the one guy backs into someone and tries to claim he was rear ended (that was famously caught on youtube), or just generally wanting to have some evidence of people doing stupid shit in event of a crash, I thought it would be a good idea to get one of these. I wanted it to just work, and not have to manually mess with anything.

I noticed research was actually a little hard to do with these, these don't seem to be very widespread in the states yet as opposed to russia. Russian driving videos anyone? But I found dashcamtalk.com and there was a camera around the $100 range that seemed like it would work well. So I got a Livue LB100 off of ebay. The commentary on dashcamtalk is pretty spot on: http://dashcamtalk.com/livue-lb100/ .

I was thinking it would be cool to have a GoPro or something; I could use it for other things, and the video quality would be better, but it might be harder to hardwire (could be wrong about that). The main points against it are- it won't start recording automatically, and as far as I know it won't loop over itself after it fills up. So purpose-built dashcam it was. Pretty much all of them worth buying will do all of the following:

* record automatically when the car starts moving
* mark a recording as do not overwrite when it detects a high G event (or, there's a big red record button you can press and it saves up to 2 min before/after the press)
* automagically overwrite oldest files

So I ordered up my Livue. First impressions were meh. It's very 'plasticy' feeling, and has that general feeling that it's going to snap something off whenever you take it in or out of its mount. The mount is just a plastic piece with a ball joint, that is plastic and feels like it will break, that the camera snaps into. Mount is secured to windshield with a nice sticky 3M adhesive. Pick a good spot the first time because it doesn't come off easy! Cam also comes with a cigarette lighter power plug and a 8GB micro SD card with some software on it.

The software is 'meh' as well. I heeded the warnings on dashcamtalk not to get firmware or software from Livue directly. Apparently it's all made for Korean language and the updated software writes bad config files and the camera won't work. But at least the SD card comes filled with a viewer/configuration program. It's shit for viewing movies - I just use VLC player. But it lets you config some of the camera settings and that works ok.

Once I got the camera installed and configed it works as advertised, and you can see the sample movies. I since upped the video quality setting and lowered the G-sensitivity. It seems to think every NYC pothole is a crash event. Maybe that should tell DOT something about the roads around here? It works well enough that you can see what's going on. There isn't a good example in the videos I posted, but of there is a car right in front of you the plates are clearly readable. If the car is further or to the side, or there is a lot of movement, it can be hard to read detail as fine as a plate. Hopefully the higher video setting will fix that. Overall I'm satisfied but not ecstatic about the video quality. Then again there are dashcams for triple the price so it seems like a decent value.

There are other features like a parking mode. I honestly don't know or really care about the parking mode. Apparently if you give it a permanent +12v (not accessory switched) it will record for up to XX hours after the car is stopped if there is an 'event' ie someone bumps the car, it will record and you can go hunt the perp down and beat them with a baseball bat, or whatever. As long as you don't get hit from behind, in which case the camera will obviously do nothing. It's a nice feature in theory but I could care less about it. Mine is wired to the UGDO (universal garage door opener) which I thought was constant +12 but the camera only turns on with accessory power.

For the install, I followed MadRussian's (how fitting) guide for a V1 install pretty much verbatim - http://m3.madrussian.net/diy_valentine_v1.shtml
It's quite the easy install, with one caveat. The cam comes with one power cable, that terminates in a cig lighter socket. I cut the cable and separated the 2 power/ground wires. The wires are really really tiny, like 30 gauge or something. Too small for a crimp-tap connector to work. So I took a 24 or 22ga wire, twisted it to those and covered it (you should solder this, I didn't because I am lazy), and then use a tap on the larger wire and the UGDO cable and a ground wire like the one in the mad russian guide.

Here's a pic of the final install. I picked the right so it was more out of my view, but it's a pain in the ass to take the SD card out without unplugging and unmounting the camera, and if it's not pointed just right it will catch the mirror mount on the left side.

[gammagoblin]

One thing I don't like so far is the way it does recording files. I've since upped the 'max' recording time to 2 minutes from 1 minute, but it splits up files like so:

Makes 1min (or 2 depending on setting) recordings while car is in motion. Large number of short files means it's easier for the camera to overwrite old ones. If there is an 'event' it preempts this and puts a new file in the 'Event' folder on the SD card. These are saved longer than the regular ones (the percentage of space on the card storing which files is configurable). So if 10 seconds into a regular file there is an event, the first file is 10 seconds long and it puts a minute or 2 of recording into the new event file. This all makes sense except when you consider just looking at a bump in the road will cause an event. Unless you have perfectly smooth roads this means you have a TON of files that are short and they get stitched into 2 different folders, so if you wanted to make a longer movie you have some editing/splicing together to do. Not a huge problem, but an inconvenience if you are trying to make long recordings for fun.

There is a way to record longer, I think, if you hold the Rec button down but the documentation is pretty bad and I haven't tried it yet/not sure if it would actually work. The PDF manual is a good effort for a Korean speaker but is clearly not done by someone who is both a native English speaker and also tech-savvy. [political correctness disclaimer: nothing against Koreans, my girl is 1st gen Korean American, etc etc]

[gammagoblin]

Also, if I ever have a crash (ahem), see something crazy here in the city, or see a huge meteor I will post the video here first :thumbsup

[Qto33]

Great thread.
I have often thought about fitting a camera system fitted to the buses I used to drive.
One facing forward, one facing rearward and one either side mounted high at the rear looking forward to cover the sides.
These side cameras came in handy when a car came through the red light from the left one day. Driver swore black and blue his lights were green. The cameras on the bus proved that my lights were green at the time as I went through (back of bus was still behind the line)

[NorCalZman]

I would really like a camera but I am waiting for them to advance a bit. Would like a bit more advancement in ease of usage and set up, and smaller size maybe. I can afford to wait since I only drive a few thousand a year.

[TheFinanceGuy]

Reviving this thread a bit, as I recently got a Garmin dashcam.

Thought I would share two clips from yesterday and today.

First is a motorcycle who clearly blows through a red light following a white SUV. This intersection has a no right on red sign. So, both of these two cars are in fact, in the wrong. Watch closely, you can see the white suv driver stops paying attention and crosses the line into oncoming traffic.

Second is a crazy rav-4 lady trying to make a left from the right lane.... Almost gets hit twice from the front.


https://youtu.be/TkNXwciGRAY

[NoVAphotog]

Reviving this thread a bit, as I recently got a Garmin dashcam.

Thought I would share two clips from yesterday and today.

First is a motorcycle who clearly blows through a red light following a white SUV. This intersection has a no right on red sign. So, both of these two cars are in fact, in the wrong. Watch closely, you can see the white suv driver stops paying attention and crosses the line into oncoming traffic.

Second is a crazy rav-4 lady trying to make a left from the right lane.... Almost gets hit twice from the front.


https://youtu.be/TkNXwciGRAY

Wow.

Been thinking about one of these as well...what model did you get and how do you like it?

[TheFinanceGuy]

I went with the garmin 20 (https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/shop-by-accessories/other/garmin-dash-cam-20/prod146282.html). It had lots of good reviews, and offered the specs that I was looking for. I upgraded the SD card to a 32 gig that I already had for music in my car. I am now using the 4 gig SD card for music, which won't cut it.

I like that it displays MPH, and GPS coordinates, and starts recording within a second of it being turned out. Once the unit has power, it turns on. Also has an auto off when the power is cut (though it does have a battery). I plan on wiring in a power socket in the glove box for the power source. This will be done by tapping into the fuse panel with a fuse tap to a switched source. So, power on, it goes, power off, and it turns off. The SD card is very easy to remove to finding files.

I was able to mount my unit right behind (in front?) of the rear view mirror. Mostly out of sight for me, but has a great view of the road.

So far I haven't had anything actually caught. What made me do it, was a recent trip on Route 2 where a car cut me off doing about 70ish, proceeded to slam on their brakes, then sped off ALMOST hitting the car next to me. It was a pile of junk, and most like a road ragging driver. I noped all the way to work, and bought it (with the affiliate link through amazon!).

-EDIT: I should note that this unit records audio. However, in MA it is unlawful to record a conversation without all parties knowing. Due to this, I turned off the audio recording function.

[danewilson77]

Reviving this thread a bit, as I recently got a Garmin dashcam.

Thought I would share two clips from yesterday and today.

First is a motorcycle who clearly blows through a red light following a white SUV. This intersection has a no right on red sign. So, both of these two cars are in fact, in the wrong. Watch closely, you can see the white suv driver stops paying attention and crosses the line into oncoming traffic.

Second is a crazy rav-4 lady trying to make a left from the right lane.... Almost gets hit twice from the front.


https://youtu.be/TkNXwciGRAY
Clearly there's a double yellow line there for a reason.

Also....saw a nice BMW drive by.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/11/06/6c740110039a1e3ea68dae7ed139a793.jpg

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

[NoVAphotog]

MA it is unlawful to record a conversation without all parties knowing. Due to this, I turned off the audio recording function.

Thanks for the info Patrick! And I find this interesting...even in a public environment such as the roadways? I don't understand...it's one thing to enter into a contract or something inside, but out on the streets why would it be against the law? I would want to hear if someone started cursing and screaming with no provocation and brake checked me, etc.

[Pip]

+1 Edit: looks like I was 2nd place lol.

I would say that is a silver grey ZHP sedan.

22450

[az3579]

Clearly there's a double yellow line there for a reason.

Also....saw a nice BMW drive by.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/11/06/6c740110039a1e3ea68dae7ed139a793.jpg

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk


Good eye!

[TheFinanceGuy]

Clearly there's a double yellow line there for a reason.

Also....saw a nice BMW drive by.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/11/06/6c740110039a1e3ea68dae7ed139a793.jpg

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

Nice catch Dane! I saw him and we exchanged waves, but I didn't realize I caught him on video!

[danewilson77]

Wonder who it is?

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

[TheFinanceGuy]

Thanks for the info Patrick! And I find this interesting...even in a public environment such as the roadways? I don't understand...it's one thing to enter into a contract or something inside, but out on the streets why would it be against the law? I would want to hear if someone started cursing and screaming with no provocation and brake checked me, etc.

I think the laws are still being sorted out. In MA we have a wiretapping law, in which they are placing the recording of dashcam audio under.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/06/massachusetts_wiretap_law_expl.html

actual law about it.
https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/partiv/titlei/chapter272/section99

[TheFinanceGuy]

Wonder who it is?

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

I posted in the BMW New England facebook section hoping to figure that out.

[ELCID86]

Good eye spotting the ZHP. I was paying too much attention to the idiot driver in front of you Patrick.


Thumbs, iPhone, TaT.

[TheFinanceGuy]

Never did figure out who had that ZHP.

This morning, I had a cabbie run a red light and almost T-Bone me. Left the SD card in the car. I'll grab the clip later.

[ecrabb]

This morning, I had a cabbie run a red light and almost T-Bone me. Left the SD card in the car. I'll grab the clip later.

Yikes. Glad it was a non-event.

Here in Utah where I live, we've had several high-profile collisions lately resulting in very serious injuries or even fatalities. In nearly every case, it's because somebody blew the read light. The results are often really ugly because we have several pretty high-speed divided highway-type roads intersecting with main corridors. So, you have people going 60-70 MPH crossing intersections. When somebody blows the red, the results are disastrous. Just a couple of weeks ago, a young woman in a Mazda 3 with a baby in a car seat in the back blew the red and hit three teens just starting to cross the intersection in a huge full-size Dodge Ram. The Mazda hit the Ram so hard on the left-front corner, it flipped the Ram on it's roof and killed a teenage girl who was a passenger in the pickup (and apparently wasn't wearing a seat belt). The girl in the Mazda was hospitalized while the baby escaped unscathed.

Long story short, I really want a dash cam. I'm not sure I care about GPS as much as I just want really high-quality video so if something happens, it's clear and provable that I was in the right and somebody else was in the wrong. I guess the speed could come in handy, too. I really want something small. I'm amazed that dash cams are as big and clunky as they are compared to cell phones.

Looking forward to the video of the cabby.

SC

[TheFinanceGuy]

Sorry for the late reply- here is the clip with the cabbie. What the video lacks is a side view. Where the cab driver runs through the intersection. He only appears after coming in full frontal view of my cam. Perhaps I need to think about this more.
It was much more exciting in person than it is to watch on the camera.


https://youtu.be/GgInpBDNvf4?t=2m10s

This morning as I was flying down the road at a normal clip keeping up with traffic, someone popped out from behind a farm stand sign.

22549

I travel this road about 4 days a week, and have never once seen a state trooper on this road. You can use the GPS coordinates if you're bored to pin point my location :)

[SwiftyM3]

That was not even close. He was a good 5 seconds after your light went green. I'm as guilty as the next as squeezing through yellow lights turning read, but I can't believe the audacity some people have blatantly driving through red lights.

I was always taught yellow means you better get through it before it turns red ;)

These people apparently were taught to just do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want.

[ecrabb]

That was not even close. He was a good 5 seconds after your light went green. I'm as guilty as the next as squeezing through yellow lights turning read, but I can't believe the audacity some people have blatantly driving through red lights.

I was always taught yellow means you better get through it before it turns red ;)

These people apparently were taught to just do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want.

Ditto. I can understand pushing it a little on a yellow and misjudging just enough to have it turn red as you're passing under the lights, what some of us refer to as "a little pink." But, when the light turns green, and you have time to actually start driving out into the intersection, THEN somebody passes through, that's either somebody that has their head firmly planted in their behind, or it's just blatant disregard for everyone but themselves. They're essentially saying that a minute or two of time to stop at a light is much more important to them than anybody else's time or lives.

SC

[yura]

Pretty clear picture (at least at slow speeds) on that camera. Nice.

I've got one facing forward and another facing back - both hardwired. The amount of stupidity these cameras catch is mind-boggling. Very useful to have.

[TheFinanceGuy]

This guy flew beside me and passed me. No problem dude, road is big enough- I'm not worried.

Then you can see some other asshat fails to yield while the guy driving the mini van is yapping on the phone. ALMOST doesn't see it.


https://youtu.be/G10_JrPB80A

The video is really clear when I review the original source file. YouTube does some compression thing that degrades the video- but it is the quickest, and easiest place to upload and share.