01-23-2013, 06:00 PM
Prompted by Dayna's recent thread about her and daughter's frightening experience being chased by some crazy guy in a jeep, and Hikatz also mentioning in that thread mulling over getting a dash cam, I thought I'd briefly(!) describe my first experience with the one I bought and installed the other day in case it's useful.
So I bought this and have been driving around with it for the last couple of days. I like it and although there are cheaper cameras out there, this was recommended in a link given earlier in the thread. This is a non-GPS camera so no info on driving speed, location etc, but wasn't too interested in that. If you want GPS as well, there are several cameras out there that have it.
Image quality is good (I have it set to 1920x1080 at 30fps) and using a 16GB SD card means well over 5 hours of video can be recorded before the card is full. The camera doesn't come with a card so you will need to buy your own one. It's set up so that when the card is full it loops so will delete earlier files on the card. You can set it too take movie clips of 1 to 45 minutes, or even just turn that off if you want so just keeps recording one long video. The advantage of setting the movie clip length is that if the card fills up only the earlier clips get deleted rather than the whole 5+ hours of movie.
The camera arrived set up in Russian mode so had to fiddle about a bit before getting things shown in English on the LCD screen but only took a couple of minutes to figure that out. You have to figure out how to mount it yourself, the manual didn't cover this but again it didn't take long to work it out. It mounts to the windshield and that's where I had to think a bit.
Hawaii law suggests these things can only be mounted in two places on the windshield - within a 5x5 inch square at the bottom of the driver's side of the windshield or in a 7x7 inch square at the bottom of the passenger's side windshield. The ideal place to mount it would be by the rear view mirror but think that's illegal here. Anyway, I have it mounted right in the bottom left hand corner of the windshield which means I can easily reach it to change settings or remove/install the camera from the mount easily (not while driving though - that wouldn't be a good idea!). The other bit of law I discovered is that I think it's illegal to drive with the LCD at the back of the camera turned on - a driver could be ticketed for having a TV/DVD-like display switched on while driving under the driver distraction laws. I'm not certain about this but you can set it up so the LCD turns off a minute after recording starts, so that's what I'm doing.
Finally, the manual is awful. Some of the less helpful instructions include "Before cleaning the device is always his turn" and "If you are unable to remove yourself, then contact the Service Center". It seems to be a direct translation of Russian since I think the car crash industry is booming there, but this site helped me figure things out and the optimal settings.
Hope this helps if anyone is considering a dash cam. I think this is a good investment due to the increase in loonies I seem to be encountering recently plus it could save you a lot of money if you're in a crash that you can now show wasn't your fault or are the victim of some insurance scam.
PS. I should add that if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them here or in email and that the law stuff should be taken as is, I'm not a lawyer, it's just my own interpretation.
Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/
So I bought this and have been driving around with it for the last couple of days. I like it and although there are cheaper cameras out there, this was recommended in a link given earlier in the thread. This is a non-GPS camera so no info on driving speed, location etc, but wasn't too interested in that. If you want GPS as well, there are several cameras out there that have it.
Image quality is good (I have it set to 1920x1080 at 30fps) and using a 16GB SD card means well over 5 hours of video can be recorded before the card is full. The camera doesn't come with a card so you will need to buy your own one. It's set up so that when the card is full it loops so will delete earlier files on the card. You can set it too take movie clips of 1 to 45 minutes, or even just turn that off if you want so just keeps recording one long video. The advantage of setting the movie clip length is that if the card fills up only the earlier clips get deleted rather than the whole 5+ hours of movie.
The camera arrived set up in Russian mode so had to fiddle about a bit before getting things shown in English on the LCD screen but only took a couple of minutes to figure that out. You have to figure out how to mount it yourself, the manual didn't cover this but again it didn't take long to work it out. It mounts to the windshield and that's where I had to think a bit.
Hawaii law suggests these things can only be mounted in two places on the windshield - within a 5x5 inch square at the bottom of the driver's side of the windshield or in a 7x7 inch square at the bottom of the passenger's side windshield. The ideal place to mount it would be by the rear view mirror but think that's illegal here. Anyway, I have it mounted right in the bottom left hand corner of the windshield which means I can easily reach it to change settings or remove/install the camera from the mount easily (not while driving though - that wouldn't be a good idea!). The other bit of law I discovered is that I think it's illegal to drive with the LCD at the back of the camera turned on - a driver could be ticketed for having a TV/DVD-like display switched on while driving under the driver distraction laws. I'm not certain about this but you can set it up so the LCD turns off a minute after recording starts, so that's what I'm doing.
Finally, the manual is awful. Some of the less helpful instructions include "Before cleaning the device is always his turn" and "If you are unable to remove yourself, then contact the Service Center". It seems to be a direct translation of Russian since I think the car crash industry is booming there, but this site helped me figure things out and the optimal settings.
Hope this helps if anyone is considering a dash cam. I think this is a good investment due to the increase in loonies I seem to be encountering recently plus it could save you a lot of money if you're in a crash that you can now show wasn't your fault or are the victim of some insurance scam.
PS. I should add that if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them here or in email and that the law stuff should be taken as is, I'm not a lawyer, it's just my own interpretation.
Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/