L/F Dash Cam Recommendations

PrivatePilot said:
We have 2 of these.


I’m insanely happy with them for the price, and they are 40% off right now on top of that.

With a quality memory card they just keep going and going, no errors, no “it wasn’t recording when I needed it“ issues that I experienced with other cameras, and the quality is quite good. Wi-Fi connectivity as well.
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Looks decent. I may get a couple. Add one as a rear camera in my car and one for my wife. A little bit of marketing wankery with "24h parking monitor" and "no battery". I don't like leaving them constantly powered and don't want to bury a usb power pack in the car to keep the camera alive while parked. Thankfully, I am less concerned with parking and more concerned with driving behaviours.
 
Thanks @Evoex and @PrivatePilot I will take a look at those/

Are they plugged into a cord for power or battery? I'm tyring to make this as easy as possible for my parents, basically hands off, always on kind of thing. Kinda set and forget.
 
sburns said:
Thanks @Evoex and @PrivatePilot I will take a look at those/

Are they plugged into a cord for power or battery? I'm tyring to make this as easy as possible for my parents, basically hands off, always on kind of thing. Kinda set and forget.
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PP's has no battery at all. Most have a small battery to keep the G sensor alive for parking issues but it is barely adequate at best. All need to be powered. Easy but ghetto hookup is usb power supply and a dangling cord. Nicer install uses a fuse tap (converts one fused circuit into two fused circuits) and bury the wire in the A pillar/headliner. On my wifes old car, I buried a USB power supply in the overhead bin but that permanently affected the compass (not a big deal but would drive some people crazy).

When plugged into a switched power supply (circuit or lighter socket), camera wakes up and starts recording when it sees power and goes to parking mode when power stops. PP's with no battery at all would have no parking mode to record hit and runs without some more effort and expense.
 
GreyGhost said:
PP's has no battery at all. Most have a small battery to keep the G sensor alive for parking issues but it is barely adequate at best. All need to be powered. Easy but ghetto hookup is usb power supply and a dangling cord. Nicer install uses a fuse tap (converts one fused circuit into two fused circuits) and bury the wire in the A pillar/headliner. On my wifes old car, I buried a USB power supply in the overhead bin but that permanently affected the compass (not a big deal but would drive some people crazy).

When plugged into a switched power supply (circuit or lighter socket), camera wakes up and starts recording when it sees power and goes to parking mode when power stops. PP's with no battery at all would have no parking mode to record hit and runs without some more effort and expense.
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Thanks, I saw something about the fuse tap earlier in this thread. Interesting. I think the lighter socket would work best, at least get them on board with having it.
 
sburns said:
Thanks, I saw something about the fuse tap earlier in this thread. Interesting. I think the lighter socket would work best, at least get them on board with having it.
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for those who hate/are ocd about wires dangling or just being in the way the fuse tap is a good solution.

that aside; depending on where the lighter socket is that they plan to use you can probably run the wire under the A pillar in in/below the glove box then into the armrest/front area where it's going to be plugged. tuck the top bit into the headliner coming out of the A pillar and you`re set.
 
sburns said:
Thanks, I saw something about the fuse tap earlier in this thread. Interesting. I think the lighter socket would work best, at least get them on board with having it.
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It's definitely easy/fast. If they need more power points than they have, Use one of the fancier USB lighter plugs that gives you more USB outlets from one lighter socket. I have ones that do two, three and eight USB out of a single lighter.
 
Evoex said:
for those who hate/are ocd about wires dangling or just being in the way the fuse tap is a good solution.

that aside; depending on where the lighter socket is that they plan to use you can probably run the wire under the A pillar in in/below the glove box then into the armrest/front area where it's going to be plugged. tuck the top bit into the headliner coming out of the A pillar and you`re set.
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Just be careful. Most A pillars now have airbags in them. Not a huge deal but poking around with a tool to make space can go poorly. That also means they often use very annoying clips which are easy to deal with the second time but super annoying the first time as you can't see what is supposed to happen to release them.
 
sburns said:
Are they plugged into a cord for power or battery? I'm tyring to make this as easy as possible for my parents, basically hands off, always on kind of thing. Kinda set and forget.
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The one I linked is just a simple cigarette lighter plug. It requires a one time setup when you install the SD card to format it, and there's some settings in the phone app that you can configure, and then it just does it's thing honestly. Every few months I have to login to the camera and clear the locked event recordings - it triggers the G-force lock going over really rough railway tracks, or bad potholes etc. I think that feature can be disabled however if desired, and there is also sensitivity settings.

No, it doesn't have an onboard battery for any parking-related recording unless you wire constant power to it, at which point it does have g-force related parking recording ability.

My experience with any dashcams with batteries in them is that the battery dies a very quick death - they are basically getting blasted by the sun constantly and locked in a metal box that heats up to eleventy million degrees in the summer. Heat destroys batteries. I had one where the battery died in such an extreme way that it swelled up and destroyed the dashcam itself. If you search google for "dashcam battery swelled" you'll see that this is actually a fairly common problem, and one that has potential safety risks. Personally, I specifically wanted cams *without* batteries.
 
Thanks @PrivatePilot I need a camera in the GTI and don’t want to commit big money for one.

I’m ok with no parking recording, but want to minimize wires around. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

Does it come with the cable? I didn’t see that in the description / included section.
 
Are you guys putting a cam in the back as well? or buy 2 for front and back?
 
sburns said:
Are you guys putting a cam in the back as well? or buy 2 for front and back?
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I did. A proper 2 channel setup will run you a bit more.

You could also run 2 individual ones, then you'd need 2 power sources and 2 memory cards.
 
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