360º always-on cloud-connected roof-mounted smart carcam

Who is interested in this type of carcam?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Maybe


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I am trying to gauge potential customer interest in a carcam product that has the following features:

1. Easy and secure top of car camera
2. 360º panoramic view
3. 4K res
4. H2O-phobic
5. License plate and distance sensors
6. Powered by solar, wind, kinetic and maybe wireless transmission - Always on
7. Connected to internal powered control unit
8. Control unit connected to 4G LTE (and already started testing on 5G test rig)
9. Large encrypted video buffer that smart cloud purges
10. Smart object sensing
11. Partial or all 360º streaming with variable bit rates
12. Chain of evidence digitally preserved and provable in court
13. Police can not get video off the unit or from the cloud. This is personal security video that YOU control.
14. Smart Alerts to your phone | Saves connected events - like initial casing by thief AND the act itself

I'd like to know:

1. Would you buy one?
2. What price would you pay for the unit?
3. What price would you pay for monthly data service plan?
4. Why you wouldn't buy one?
5. Would you buy a unit through Kickstarter-like offering?

Thanx,
JG
 
Even right smack in the middle of the small roof on my shoebox sized car, that camera would have to be pretty tall to be able to catch a licenceplate that sit pretty low to the ground ( on a car close to mine ) but offcourse if its captured before that then no problem.

BUT! i am affraid a camera permanent on the top of car would get vandalized pretty fast with the dumbasses i share my country with.

Most ppl in a western marked prefer the stealth approach to dashcams.

But there have often been questions in here regarding 360 cameras for the windscreen so the cabin is allso recorded, and that evil cop on the outside misusing his authority.
 
Good points.

These dynamics have been thought out and planned for.

1. The height of the sensor (or lens) doesn't have to be that high to capture the license plate. Most test scenarios and car configs show good visibility at a distance of 3/4 metres.
2. The components that are exposed cost less than a side mirror and could be treated by the insurance industry like glass (100% replaceable and no impact to insurance premiums)
3. There are MANY problems with current dashcam approach, to name a few; front visibility only, not always on, low res., not cloud-connected..., privacy issues, car is stolen so is dashcam data... I could go on....

Dash cams are at the same stage that MP3 players were at before the iPod arrived. The adoption in the US is very low. With surveillance increasing all around us, this is a play to empower the individual against the biggest cause of personal injury and property damage namely car accidents.
 
A dash cam with all the features you mentioned above I would be willing to pay around a hundred bucks. Maybe a little more if the solar power is spot on.
 
A dash cam with all the features you mentioned above I would be willing to pay around a hundred bucks. Maybe a little more if the solar power is spot on.
Thanks. The final price will be higher as this has many new technologies that solve the problem of car video recording. I am, however, working to get car insurance offset at previously unattained levels of discount.
 
You are right there is drawbacks with current dashcams, reflections in the windscreen is one of the major ones as in the right unfortunate circumstances can make a good capture hard to get.
Offcourse you can fight this with a CPL filter or a dashmat, but both of those are not optimal but just what is available right now.

On the other hand having the camera on the outside it is also problematic, dirt can get on it, and just 1 splattered bug the wrong place and you are "recording blind"
On the windscreen you will see that big bug splattered out all over the place and can stop and get it off if the wipers cant handle it, with a camera you cant see you will drive on and not discover the problem.

Offcourse if you have a preview running on your phone you will see the bug on the camera on the roof, but i really cant be bothered with all that stuff running in my car and remembering to crank up the app and what not ( dont use apps in any form on my phone )

Cloud storage is also somthing that have been requested in here often, but it boil down to cell coverage, and even here in Denmark thats a small country with allright 3 & 4G coverage you can easy be in a place where you only have 1 or 2 G coverage.
Also the data generated by dashcams is pretty much around 400 MB for each 3 minutes of driving and this is just 1080/30, and that would eat up my 15 Gb dataplan in no time.
Offcourse i could get a mobile dataplan thats more Gb than my plan for my phone, but thats a whole other pricerange that i cant afford right now, and i think even if i was well and working i would not get such a plan, and i will ditch my cellphone when i can, ATM i am forced to have a phone but i dont like them.

Encrypted footage is also somthing ppl have asked for, this i think is somthing that can be done right here and now.

PT i am hoping for:

Much more light sesnetive sensors, what we have now is not good for anything but bright sunshine, as soon as there is grey skies above and you add a little speed you can forget all ambout capturing a small thing like a licenceplate.
Really the minimum exposure time for any of the frames in the footage must be 1:500 second or faster, and today dashcams drop to the slow 1:30 second resulting in massive motion blur in low light.

I would love a secondary camera in my windscreen and it should be flir, if it could warn about dangers on or along the road like in high end cars it would be nice.

And now we are at the fjew "smart" things i would like then ANPR i would like too, so i could enter the plate numbers of all undercover cop cars here so they cant catch me by suprice ( not that i really need it as i pretty much drive with the specs of the Danish traffic code )

Hidden main unit with a HDD or SSD for storage, transferring data by wifi or plug in USB key when i get home or need any data for my youtube channel.

For side and rear cameras i would like some ultra small ones, dont have to be really light sensetive as i see these angles as secondary, the front camera should be enuff to prove i am driving like i should so what ever go down must be blamed on the other guy.
Things rarely go to court here, for that to happen some one will have to die at least, and if thats not the case the insurance companies will duke it out among them self.

If there was to be any 3-4-5G in my dream camera it would just be for me to track the ( stolen ) car via the GPS in it. but i doubt any one would steal my small cheap ass Suzuki car.

Sorry if i am raining on your parade ;)
 
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During a rain storm how would the camera get rid of water being driven in front of the lens? Will it include a silicon windshield wiper blade? Will this include an in-car recording system? If cloud is not available how about recording to a storage device inside the car itself?

The cost of uploading constantly to the cloud is likely to be prohibitive. Look at the amount of data sent per hour. Then look at the cost of coverage for a month. i suspect that wifi or bluetooth to internal storage inside the car would make more sense.

I suspect with dirt, bugs, and rain the video would be subpar on a regular basis.
 
Could you include a couple of charging ports so that the on the top of the car cam would have the ability to charge cell phones? This would be a nice feature on a long drive.
 
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I think roof mount is not the way to go. Flexible cameras that would just be strips on the windows or bumpers are the wave of the future :)
http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/flexible-camera-lens-array/#:oXOd1Oimo02E8A

I also think cars will soon come with drones that follow you everywhere and just land on your roof to solar charge while you are parked.

Seriously, I like any advances in the dashcam market but it's a limited time before auto manufactures and insurers are including cameras and black boxes in all new cars.
 
Comments for each item below:

I am trying to gauge potential customer interest in a carcam product that has the following features:


1. Easy and secure top of car camera
Bad idea, unless it's integrated into the car, 99% of the people will not be installing it on the outside of the car. Theft, damage, environmental factors.

2. 360º panoramic view
Interesting idea but ultimately falls short if implemented with a single lens and sensor, better to go with multiple cameras generating a 360 degree view.

3. 4K res
The more the better but needs to factor in if multiple sensors are used and if the hardware can handle processing.

4. H2O-phobic
Obviously a must, but with 24/7 outside, I don't know how long this protection/coating will last.

5. License plate and distance sensors
Purpose?

6. Powered by solar, wind, kinetic and maybe wireless transmission - Always on
Retarded idea if it's not a part of an overall vehicle system, meaning if the project is aftermarket, forget about it, only a wire run for power will work but then it'll require a hole in the car which 80% of the people will not do. Wind?-how many times do you need to be slapped? You can't transmit wireless power through the metal roof.

7. Connected to internal powered control unit
-

8. Control unit connected to 4G LTE (and already started testing on 5G test rig)
Stream all the video to the cloud, are you retarded? Do you want your bill to be $2K per month in data, or are you compressing everything into 480p?

9. Large encrypted video buffer that smart cloud purges
-

10. Smart object sensing
Purpose?

11. Partial or all 360º streaming with variable bit rates
Good luck with the data plan.

12. Chain of evidence digitally preserved and provable in court
-
13. Police can not get video off the unit or from the cloud. This is personal security video that YOU control.
-
14. Smart Alerts to your phone | Saves connected events - like initial casing by thief AND the act itself
-

I'd like to know:

1. Would you buy one?
There's a 0.5% probability that I would. ie NO

2. What price would you pay for the unit?
Proposed unit does not make sense and therefor a value cannot be assigned.

3. What price would you pay for monthly data service plan?
I would not, too many thing to pay for per month already.

4. Why you wouldn't buy one?
See all the reasons above.

5. Would you buy a unit through Kickstarter-like offering?
Not sure, I would need to trust the owner to deliver and have a proven history of deliverables. I am unlikely to pay for a dashcam, several hundred $ that might not get delivered.
I would not buy a novelty dashcam, dashcam is for security, and that's not something you pledge to buy without understanding the exact specifications and operation including all the bugs and downsides without people testing the unit first. With ak ickstarter you are pledging to buy something that no one tested and that doesn't exist outside of your imagination/lab.
 
I have to say given that most manufacturers struggle to deliver single channel camera that functions well (high quality image day and night, GPS, parking mode) this project is too ambitious - there is no way you would be able to deliver all for a reasonable price.
 
During a rain storm how would the camera get rid of water being driven in front of the lens? Will it include a silicon windshield wiper blade?
I suspect with dirt, bugs, and rain the video would be subpar on a regular basis.

Modern lens coatings are available that are highly water-repellant (hydrophobic) and oil-repellant (oleophobic) that are designed to repel water, dust, oil, and dirt on optics as well as other materials. Some of these coatings have been shown to be quite durable. External lenses with such surface treatments are perhaps one of the more practical and doable features of this camera concept.


 
That second video was awesome. I wonder though, how long would the coating last on something exposed to elements 24/7?
 
That second video was awesome. I wonder though, how long would the coating last on something exposed to elements 24/7?

The military is using the stuff, so it must meet their specs.

Variations of this product are available on the consumer level in products like NeverWet. It can be fairly expensive, around 15 to 25 dollars per bottle but last September I came across a no-name version of it in an aerosol spray can at a discount/oddlot store for 4 bucks, so I bought some. I used it on a brand new pair of work boots I bought back then and the results have been spectacular. Firstly, the boots have been completely waterproof and I've worn them regularly through all kinds of mud, snow, dirt and harsh rural New England conditions and they still look just about as clean and new as the day I purchased them nine months ago. It's actually a bit spooky that they still look so new, really. I do hear some of these products are more durable than others. Some leave a residue if applied too heavily but the stuff I used was clear and invisible after application.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B00BN9P5SO
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B00DNQBFAW
Edit: hydrophobic nanotech optical lens coatings are different than consumer level spray-on products as they are applied to the glass lens surface in a specialized plasma deposition vacuum chamber making them far more durable.
 
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Those "new" hydrophobic and oleophobic things are pretty nice, but i doubt its a lasting solution.

Still i want it for my side windows as rain often "block" the cameras there.
 
Have seen Rust-oleum products here before, so fingers crossed.
 
Have seen Rust-oleum products here before, so fingers crossed.

Actually, last summer I used a silicon based car wax on my side windows for the same reason and it worked fairly well. It all started when I got some on the windows by accident and noticed how clear the windows looked in the rain after I cleaned up my mess. :)
 
Yeah you mentioned that before, so i will see what i can do when the weather get better again, have a lot of dashcam related projekts in the car.
And i am still on my winter rubber :rolleyes:
 
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