[NA] Car/pickup gopro or equivalent

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
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west Texas
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Display name:
Dave Taylor
Thinking about getting one.
Anyone have one they like?
What features are available; I have no idea what they can do.
How does the storage and retrieval of images work?

Prices/quality/warranty info would be helpful.
 
I don't have one, but a lot of them just have an SD card and many will record over the oldest stuff so it keeps a certain number of hours of the most recent driving. Google "dash cam"
 
I use a garmin GPS that has a dashcam built in. Works great.
 
What do you hope to do with the video?

GoPro and other action cams typically record until the SD card is full, although some can be set to record continuously and overwrite the oldest files.

Dash cams always record continually and overwrite the oldest files unless a file is locked due to an accident or manually by the user. The better ones are also GPS-equipped and record the vehicle's location into the file as metadata, and optionally display the speed and embed it into the raster.

Many dash cams have dual-cameras. The second camera can be mounted on the rear window facing aft to catch the idiot who tail-ends you, or mounted forward facing aft to monitor the passengers in the cabin. The latter are commonly known as "taxi cams."

There also are phone navigation apps, like Magic Earth, that also incorporate forward-facing dash cams, often along with driver-assistance features like lane guidance or proximity alarms. They require very powerful phones to use all the functions simultaneously. I suppose there are probably single-purpose dash cam apps, as well.

Rich
 
What is your intended use? A GoPro and a dashcam are two very different things with completely different uses. Are you looking for a dashcam (as several posters have assumed), to record traffic around you and potentially protect you in the event of an accident?

Or, like you say in the OP, are you looking for a GoPro or other "action cam" to record you taking scenic drives or racing or something else that you intend to make into a video, perhaps for youtube?
 
I think what you're really looking for here is a dash cam, which I'd agree is worthwhile. A lot of GPSs have dash cams built-in these days, although the PND is largely obsolete in the days of Google Maps. There are much smaller dash cams that will include abilities to take snapshots as well as videos, export to various devices. Another option that's worth considering is a dash cam that can take rearward facing video as well as forward facing.

As mentioned above, Garmin does make a good number of dash cams. You could even put one in your plane but if someone cuts you off in the sky you probably have other issues. :)
 
I have an Apeman. I've never actually looked at any of the footage to check picture quality, but they claim it is great.

It has a feature that, when in a collision, it automatically locks the video file so that it won't be overwritten.

You can set it to record so many minutes of video and then start a new video, but I think it only overwrites the oldest videos. So if you need something off of it, you are only searching and storing smaller video files.

I have no complaints about it. I picked it up because I towed out 30' camper on a 2,000 Mile road trip and sooooo many idiots almost killed us. I wanted evidence if it ever actually happened.
 
I also turn off the audio on my dash cam cause I'm the kind of person that, if an idiot wrecks me, will say something threatening that could be used against me in a court of law.

I once told a dangerous driver I was going to fill his mouth with windshield glass and kick him in jaw. I don't need that kind of stuff on a memory card.
 
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One key question is, if you buy and install a dashcam, is it mandatory that you learn to speak Russian?
 
I have an older version of this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Street-Guardian-SG9663DC-Channel-MicroSD/dp/B072HNKJ45

Works great and has excellent video quality.

Street Guardian also has phenomenal support, both at the manufacturer and U.S. distributor level. Representatives from both levels hang out on the Dash Cam forums (yes, such forums exist) and really bend over backwards to keep people happy.

Rich
 
Ted DuPuis said:
A lot of GPSs have dash cams built-in these days, although the PND is largely obsolete in the days of Google Maps.
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I know most people just use their phone for navigation in the car these days, but I'm not a fan of it. It gets the job done but I really prefer having a dedicated GPS on the dash.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
I know most people just use their phone for navigation in the car these days, but I'm not a fan of it. It gets the job done but I really prefer having a dedicated GPS on the dash.
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They both have their places. My truck has a nice integrated navigation setup, but entering the address can be a pain. So sometimes I use it, sometimes I just click the address that I Googled on my phone and let the phone do the navigation.

When you look at the navigators being sold today, most of them add some additional special value. The ones designed for RVs and semis that can help keep you off of roads too small for you are really helpful. My friends who have those all love them.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
I know most people just use their phone for navigation in the car these days, but I'm not a fan of it. It gets the job done but I really prefer having a dedicated GPS on the dash.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why, but every integrated navigation system I've used seems very hard to use and unintuitive. Maybe the newest, latest ones are better, but the standalone Garmin GPS devices even 15 years ago were far easier (to me) to use than even some pretty recent integrated systems. So I just default to Google Maps on my phone, which is always the same and is pretty useful and intuitive.
 
RussR said:
I'm not sure why, but every integrated navigation system I've used seems very hard to use and unintuitive. Maybe the newest, latest ones are better, but the standalone Garmin GPS devices even 15 years ago were far easier (to me) to use than even some pretty recent integrated systems. So I just default to Google Maps on my phone, which is always the same and is pretty useful and intuitive.
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I quite agree. I only have an integrated nav system in my car because it was inexplicably bundled with the sunroof in an option package. I wanted the sunroof, had to accept the second rate nav system that went with it. I use if for simple stuff, but I use my phone or my standalone Garmin if I really need to find something. Way better performance, for a tiny fraction of the cost.

It also drives me nuts that the integrated system not only disallows data entry when the car is moving, but if you have an address partly typed in and the car creeps forward, like in your driveway, it erases everything. OK, nanny state and all, they don't want the driver typing in address data at highway speeds...but a passenger is also locked out from data entry. There is already a weight sensor (for the airbag) in the passenger seat, so the car knows when the passenger seat is occupied. Why not allow the benefit of the doubt that if there are two people in the front seats, the passenger is the one typing in the address?
 
I hate that. You would think that since the car already knows if someone is sitting in the right seat, it would allow you to override that. Margy's car just warns you not to do it while driving, while our other cars won't let you do anything. At least my truck you can try "talking" to the thing while you are driving but it's not very good at that either.
 
RussR said:
I'm not sure why, but every integrated navigation system I've used seems very hard to use and unintuitive. Maybe the newest, latest ones are better, but the standalone Garmin GPS devices even 15 years ago were far easier (to me) to use than even some pretty recent integrated systems. So I just default to Google Maps on my phone, which is always the same and is pretty useful and intuitive.
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Oh I agree. When I said I prefer a dedicated GPS on the dash, I meant on the dash not in the dash. Every in dash nav unit I've ever tried sucked. The interfaces are always clumsy and they sometimes have limitations that are just idiotic. Really the same goes for any in dash electronics and smart phone connectivity.

It must be a rule that automakers only employ engineers who have never seen or used any personal electronics more modern than a Motorola flip phone.
 
flyingron said:
I hate that. You would think that since the car already knows if someone is sitting in the right seat, it would allow you to override that. Margy's car just warns you not to do it while driving, while our other cars won't let you do anything. At least my truck you can try "talking" to the thing while you are driving but it's not very good at that either.
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My truck doesn't understand hillbilly. Seriously, I sound like @OkieFlyer in his videos when I'm trying to sound smart. I have friends who's dialect wouldn't even qualify as English.
 
Phone-based navigation has come a long way. The biggest problems nowadays are with the devices themselves. You need a fairly powerful phone with excellent GPS antennas and radios. It also helps to disable GPS duty-cycling on Android, which will result in a minor battery-life hit, but improve accuracy and precision. I've also found that disabling all Android location services except for GPS improves performance except when driving through artificial valleys bounded by tall buildings.

The other problem is all the crapware that OEM's and carriers tend to load onto the phones. If you start with a factory-unlocked phone or tablet that runs as close to a stock OS as possible, the results will be much better because of reduced competition for resources and fewer potentially-incompatible (and usually useless) preinstalled apps.

If I were building a freestanding GPS box for the car, I probably would start with a powerful tablet with mobile data and excellent SATNAV radios that supported GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. I'd probably start with an Android tablet or phone and root it, disabling all the crap I wouldn't need. Or if I only wanted to run Magic Earth, I'd load an AOSP-based Android on it. (Magic Earth doesn't require Google Play Services, but some of my mapping apps do.)

I could also use an Apple tablet with mobile data services. I'm told that Apple tablets use the same chip for GPS and mobile data; so an Apple tablet that doesn't support mobile data won't have GPS radio service, either.

I could also start with a powerful smartphone, more than likely one of last year's Android flagships. They often can be had on the cheap once the new flagships come out.

Either way, I'd provision the device with the cheapest data plan I could find. If it were a phone, it would probably be a Mint Mobile phone plan. If a tablet, most likely I'd use TMO's cheapest data plan. Because the nav apps I use store the maps on the device, they use very little mobile data. They mainly download traffic, detour, and weather data, not map data; so even a cheap data plan would be suffcient.

When I'm actually using navigation to get someplace, Magic Earth is my preferred app. The latest Sygic is pretty good, too; but they're constantly trying to upsell me features that I don't need; and even with a lifetime license, the maps only update quarterly without an upgrade. Magic Earth, on the other hand, is free and updates its maps at least monthly, and often more frequently than that. But they're both competent apps for ordinary navigation.

When I'm doing OSM or Mapillary mapping, however, OsmAnd+ is the app I use because that one allows me to overlay a map of roads I've already covered so I can turn off the camera when I get to them. It allows me to "fill in the gaps," as it were, thus saving storage space and reducing the chances of the cameras overheating and getting wonky. The official version does require Google Play Services; but there's a community version (OsmAnd~) whose APK is available on F-droid, that doesn't.

So really, I could start with a powerful, but not bleeding-edge Android smartphone with a big screen and good SATNAV radios, root it, load an AOSP-based Android on it, and run the two navigation and mapping apps I use most often onto it, without Google's spyware. I don't think it would run Mapillary's official app, but I rarely use it anyway. I upload the footage from a PC because the front and rear camera images have to be stitched first.

My main gripe with standalone navigation boxes has to do with the way they get traffic data. They either use the phone's data connection via BT, which is cumbersome if I also want to use the car's BT; or they use an antenna to pick up broadcasts, which typically are limited to big metro areas. Phone-based systems usually use crowd-sourced traffic data, which tends to have much better coverage. I've been impressed by Magic Earth's knowledge of construction delays in some truly remote locations where I couldn't help but wonder how they knew about the delays.

One device that I think would sell well would be a freestanding GPS box with an unlocked 4G / 5G data connection that would be treated as a tablet by carriers. Just pop in a SIM, and you'd be good to go -- quite literally. TomTom actually makes a few that they sell in Europe, but they don't support critical bands used in the U.S. Considering how trivial it would be to add support for those bands, I have to wonder why they don't. Most likely it has to do with some regulatory issue or another. When something seems to make no sense at all, I've learned to look for the government's hand.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
I have an older version of this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Street-Guardian-SG9663DC-Channel-MicroSD/dp/B072HNKJ45
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Some, like this, say 'Wifi enabled'. Does this mean that upon arrival back home, with a wifi signal, one may connect to it from a computer in the home and review/save video?

This one has a monitor so I presume video may be reviewed right there in the vehicle.

Do most have a wide angle lens?

64GB SD card...I wonder how much video that is.

The monitor seems a bit bulky; I presume it resides on the dash (and can take 180F); any thoughts that it might be in the way?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Some, like this, say 'Wifi enabled'. Does this mean that upon arrival back home, with a wifi signal, one may connect to it from a computer in the home and review/save video?
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It's doable, but pointless. It's easier and faster to just copy the data off the SD card to the computer.

Let'sgoflying! said:
This one has a monitor so I presume video may be reviewed right there in the vehicle.
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Yes, but it's cumbersome due to the limited number of buttons. There is an app that makes it much easier.

Let'sgoflying! said:
Do most have a wide angle lens?
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The front lens is always wide-angle to catch as much of the road as possible.

The rear cameras of models with glass-mounted rear cameras have narrower fields of view because they're intended to get a good, clear view of the idiot who rear-ended you (including their plate number).

The rear lenses of "taxi cams" are usually built into the rear side of the front camera and have wide-angle lenses that can capture the whole passenger cabin in the raster.

Some dash cams have rear lenses mounted in the front camera (usually on swivels) that have a longer focal length that's optimized for recording through the rear window. They're easier to install, but miss more of the rear view.

Let'sgoflying! said:
64GB SD card...I wonder how much video that is.
Click to expand...

That's highly variable depending on the options selected (frame rate, quality, bitrate, resolution, etc.) as well as the complexity of the image. Trees, buildings, or heavy traffic make the image more complex and require more space. But at the highest settings, I'd estimate maybe four hours on average for a 64GB card. I use 256GB cards and get several weeks on average, given my driving habits.

Because dash cams put a lot of stress on SD cards, and because they have limited write cycles, bigger cards usually last longer before failing, all else being equal. A bigger card is not re-written as often as a smaller card. Also, you need high-end SD cards for a dash cam. Street Guardian maintains a list of which cards work best based on internal testing and customer feedback, but most high-speed cards rated for constant video surveillance will work.

Let'sgoflying! said:
The monitor seems a bit bulky; I presume it resides on the dash (and can take 180F); any thoughts that it might be in the way?
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It's integrated into the front camera and is windshield-mounted. This site has some pictures under the "See it Installed" tab.

The screen shuts off after after a user-selectable interval while driving. It will come back on if the G-sensor is triggered or if manually summoned. Basically, it should be mounted in a spot in the windshield wiper's path, clear of any shading on the windshield, where it's easy enough to access if you need to save a segment or change a setting, but where it doesn't block your vision while driving.

I can take a picture of mine if you want. (It's kind of hard for me to believe I don't already have one, but I don't.)

In terms of general reliability, I have the older model of this camera. It has been running non-stop whenever the car is on and for a few hours after it's parked (an optional cable is needed to enable that) for more than three years, with no problems at all. The company also has reps on the dash cam forums who are highly responsive to questions or problems.

Rich
 
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