Dashcam Viewer software for Mac: beta testers wanted

traveler

traveler

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Dash Cam
Viofo A119V2, SG9665GC, SG9663DCPro + many more
Hi everyone - I recently bought a Mini 0801 dashcam from e-prance. I really like the dashcam but was disappointed to discover there was no Mac viewer software on the CD. In fact, I found very little support for us Mac users from the dashcam manufacturers in general. :mad:

Since I have a background in software development I decided to write my own Mac viewer. The software is nearly complete but I could use a couple of Mac dashcam users to help me beta test it. If you are interested and have a few minutes to spare I'd appreciate your feedback (PM me). I've posted a video clip of the software "in action" here:


Requirements:
• Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.8.4 or later
• Internet connection
• Mini 0801 Ambarella dashcam

Thanks,
John
 
Great work you did there!
I like it
 
What no Lion support? :)
Good job John, always nice to see Mac software development.
 
Another Mac user here if you need more testers...software looks great !
 
Really cool! I'm a developer too and use a Mac, and I thought about doing one too :) Do you plan to open source it? Anyway I'm available for beta testing :)
 
Wow good for you! This is great news, thanks for taking up the challenge. I see the Mac Player support question posted often. I have a Mac Mini running Windows 8 for Media Center via Bootcamp so I'd be happy to boot into Mac OS X to help test.
 
Great stuff! Many people email me about which Dash Cams have OS X software. Unfortunately the list is very small. Glad to hear you will make it grow!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
traveler said:
Hi everyone - I recently bought a Mini 0801 dashcam from e-prance. I really like the dashcam but was disappointed to discover there was no Mac viewer software on the CD. In fact, I found very little support for us Mac users from the dashcam manufacturers in general. :mad:

Since I have a background in software development I decided to write my own Mac viewer. The software is nearly complete but I could use a couple of Mac dashcam users to help me beta test it. If you are interested and have a few minutes to spare I'd appreciate your feedback (PM me). I've posted a video clip of the software "in action" here:


Requirements:
• Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.8.4 or later
• Internet connection
• Mini 0801 Ambarella dashcam

Thanks,
John
Click to expand...

for a version 1.0 that's a very polished product, great work, I can't even find someone that can do a Windows version that well

would like to see how it goes with other cameras, there are some other file formats in use, actually even Registrator Viewer which is currently about the best Windows viewer has only recently added support for the 0801 as they do things a little differently to most other DVR's, I think the GPS implementation is generally easier on other cams
 
jokiin said:
for a version 1.0 that's a very polished product, great work, I can't even find someone that can do a Windows version that well

would like to see how it goes with other cameras, there are some other file formats in use, actually even Registrator Viewer which is currently about the best Windows viewer has only recently added support for the 0801 as they do things a little differently to most other DVR's, I think the GPS implementation is generally easier on other cams
Click to expand...

jokiin, appreciate the comments. Actually, parsing the 0801 GPS data wasn't too bad (hey, at least its ASCII and not binary! ;-). If other cams are easier to crack then it shouldn't be difficult to add support for them too. Just need to know their file layout, file structures and file formats. Having samples makes it easier.
 
traveler said:
jokiin, appreciate the comments. Actually, parsing the 0801 GPS data wasn't too bad (hey, at least its ASCII and not binary! ;-). If other cams are easier to crack then it shouldn't be difficult to add support for them too. Just need to know their file layout, file structures and file formats. Having samples makes it easier.
Click to expand...

here's a sample from our old model camera http://www.mediafire.com/download/czc96j7tqkgangt/samplefiles.zip which is a fairly typical config with an NMEA GPS file, we do some extra things now like user selectable MP4 or MOV output as well, some cameras are either/or, we do both, don't recall any other camera having the selectable output option, there's a couple of different ways the the GPS logs are done, depends more on the developer than anything else but the NMEA output is probably the most common

how big is the software, any dependencies etc, would a Linux version be feasible?
 
Notice you're in OC, @JazJon is in SF and has a bunch of different cameras so could possibly arrange some different sample files for you to look at also, plenty of volunteers here will have files they could send you no doubt, the Mac question comes up a lot
 
jokiin said:
how big is the software, any dependencies etc, would a Linux version be feasible?
Click to expand...

53 MB, no dependancies (they are built into the application "bundle"), and anything's possible. ;-)

jokiin said:
here's a sample from our old model camera http://www.mediafire.com/download/czc96j7tqkgangt/samplefiles.zip which is a fairly typical config with an NMEA GPS file, we do some extra things now like user selectable MP4 or MOV output as well, some cameras are either/or, we do both, don't recall any other camera having the selectable output option, there's a couple of different ways the the GPS logs are done, depends more on the developer than anything else but the NMEA output is probably the most common

how big is the software, any dependencies etc, would a Linux version be feasible?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the data. I downloaded your sample. The NMEA GPS format is straightforward. Parsing is not a problem. The MP4/MOV choice is also manageable.

Two questions: are the NMEA files and the movie files always in the same directory, like the sample you gave me? And what is the meaning (and units) of the numbers following the $GSENSOR? [Lol, I just realized that this conversation is becoming way too geeky. Let's followup in an offline private conversation.]
 
in most cameras (but not all) the video file and GPS log file would reside in the same folder, if you have access to a Windows environment it's probably worth having a look at this http://www.registratorviewer.com/index_en.html as it has just about every feature you can think of and support for a very wide variety of cameras, it's not well documented but a poke through the different menu options and a look at the change log http://www.registratorviewer.com/whatsnew_en.html pretty much reveals most of what it can do, the GSENSOR data is the output that gives you the XYZ values etc as shown in Registrator Viewer
 
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