Kamkar on the SJDASH

[kamkar]

Okay so this are day one with this little thing.

First off i would like to say it feel like a sturdy little camera, just the same feeling i got when i got my hands on the SG9665XS.
The box are also nice and you have everything to get going right away, i picked mine up at the post office, drove across town to get my car washed and at the car wash i installed the camera in next to no time as i already had a power wire with a micro USB from the 0906 that sadly gave up on me.
So first i pulled off the base from the mini 0906 that was glued on, and you have to be careful here or you can totally destroy the GPS mount for the mini camera.

After that i put the SJDASH in its place ( i can do that as suction cup work just fine on the grid like shaded area i have on top of my windscreen )
And so i got the SJDASH to sit fairly high on my windscreen beside the SG9665GC, V3.
I had to tweak the mount a little as it is a few inches off dead center of my windscreen, but a little pice of wood sorted that out for me.
I then did the settings, and this was strait forward, no need to consult the manual for this dashead

After that i proceeded to Dl the app to my android phone as this camera also have wifi, and a big screen.
And when i had that up and running all there was left to do was run "the little red lightning" thru the car wash, and then get out there and capture some footage.

So after my little drive today i have this to offer up at the moment.

1. i am not a big fan of the kind of buttons used below the screen, and installed like i have it on the Right side of the vertical center-line i cant see much of the camera as the RVM block it so pressing the event button are not something i can do " Just like that"
This could be compensated from bu installing camera lower so it can be seen under RVM, or more towards the driver side of the mirror.
So in this case its just me wanting stealth ( many cameras in car ) so i had to put camera there.

2. The colors are a little over-saturated ( see footage to come )

3. The slot for the memory card are just a clean slot and the spring action are firm, so care have to be taken when inserting and removing memory card from the dashcam.
BUT ! the camera snap off its mount pretty easy, so you can take it out of there and have a more comfortable grip on it while messing with memory card.

4. The chrome bezel do make it stand out a bit, but people needing stealth will find out what to do, so its not really a big deal.

5. APP : i had no problem connecting the APP, but after a stop i could not get a connection unless i told my phone to forget the camera wifi and then set it up again.

APP function: seem to be fine, easy to navigate and what you need are there, only minus is you cant put the phone on its side and have a landscape view of a larger image.
APP look: the colors are unfortunate bright ones, it would seem better to use darker colors / backgrounds.
BUT ! i am not sure if the APP dim the phone screen as light fade in the car, but still the large surfaces of white do bother me a little.

PS. i have not yet fully explored the APP and camera interface, so not 100% sure if all things work as they are supposed to, but so far what i have messed with seem to work as intended.
you can even update camera firmware via the APP.

The footage / camera performance:
This seem to be fine at least in regard to the somewhat cloudy day we had again today, but there was no problems in the footage to capture stuff "just as good" as the SG9665GC.
I have made a split screen comparison of the 2 cameras, here you can see the rich colors, but if you pause in the right places or maybe playback at 0.25 speed via youtube it is more easy to pause in the right places.

Try looking for license plates on cars, the white roadside markers we have every 50 M and the numbers on them, and other little things, so far i have high hopes for the SJDASH ( camera )

I will off course add a link to DL of the head 2 head video, both cameras are 15 mbit i just split them up in post and then saved then with a 40 mbit bitrate.

https://mega.nz/#!fswCVILZ!2I-5rxrYF0I04vecjjIvLj7w5pu8kvVpBXDrnW0Vf1o

A few phone pictures.

 

[TonyCams]

Thanks for the review. We are processing this information and will try to improve on the things we can. Looking forward to more footage. Cheers!

 

[kamkar]

More to come, this was just the first few hours of use, dident get any night time in as i whent to bed after posting above as i by then had been awake for 28 hours.

Today i will get daytime and night time ( town ) footage in too.

 

[TonyCams]

More to come, this was just the first few hours of use, dident get any night time in as i whent to bed after posting above as i by then had been awake for 28 hours.

Today i will get daytime and night time ( town ) footage in too.

Okay, thanks... please also remember to upgrade to v1.1 fw. Cheers

 

[kamkar]

Upgraded before my drive today, just about to upload the new night/town footage.
None of the cameras great as it had been raining for most of my drive and i prefer to do any recordings with a dry windscreen, but i figured i post it anyway as it was after all the same conditions and windscreen for both cameras just a couple of inched between lens center line.

 

[TonyCams]

Upgraded before my drive today, just about to upload the new night/town footage.
None of the cameras great as it had been raining for most of my drive and i prefer to do any recordings with a dry windscreen, but i figured i post it anyway as it was after all the same conditions and windscreen for both cameras just a couple of inched between lens center line.

Can you please try this firmware? I think your current one says xcamera.... thx

 

[kamkar]

I did turn off everything i could after updating to 1.1 so there are nothing in my recordings from today.
But i will get that one on the camera shortly.

 

[kamkar]

Okay here i am back with part #2 of this journey with the first dashcam from SJcams.
Tonight i took a drive to capture some night footage both on dark back roads and in town, but off course the Danish summer ruined everything with a shower that lasted most of my drive.
So what i have here are just a little footage from inside town after the rain stopped, and again i have the SG9665GC as a reference camera.

Today i noticed i have quite a lot of static noise ( audio ) in my recordings, but i am using a non standard PSU, so will change tomorrow to what SJcams provide with the camera.
Normally i dont have any pronounced noise issues with dashcams in my car, so tomorrow i will have to work a little in the car to install the SJ power source.
And just for good measure i will also make a recording with the GC beside it turned off, and a recording where i power the camera with a USB power bank.

Also today i notice in the preview in the app there are a timer for the individual recordings, so it goes up to 3 minutes and then start over.
I have not yet come up with a good reason to have that counter in the app preview ?

Other than that the camera have not missed a beat yet, this is important with dashcams

Wishes:

It would be nice if you could select in the menu for the wifi to come on with the camera powering up, as it is now you manually have to start it every time.

Now this wifi stuff is not a big deal for me personally, but i know it is big for a lot of other people, that's also why i mentioned the preview in the app not working in horizontal as i am sure some people would like to see a larger feed, though i dont know why cuz you are supposed to look out the window when driving and not on a screen.

But for normal use lining up the camera FOV and changing some settings or DL something from the camera the current format work fine.

I will have to tilt dow the GC camera a little to get a more similar angle, i have tried to make the SJDASH go higher but the click it adjust in seem to me too large, next click up and i have no dashbord in the footage and too much sky.

I will return shortly ( tomorrow ) with more stuff, and more recordings with the SJDASH - camera

 

[evoixmr]

Upgraded before my drive today, just about to upload the new night/town footage.
None of the cameras great as it had been raining for most of my drive and i prefer to do any recordings with a dry windscreen, but i figured i post it anyway as it was after all the same conditions and windscreen for both cameras just a couple of inched between lens center line.

How did you update the firmware? I do not see an option to update on the setting/firmware.

 

[SawMaster]

The SG seems to have performed as usual so that makes an excellent reference to compare with. Based on that it seems to me that the SJ is either slightly over-exposed as the details are much crisper with the SG. They are about equal when off-board ambient lighting is good, but the SJ gets into the darker places much better when light levels drop below that which I like.

Good job Kamkar1 and looking forward to seeing more of what this cam can do

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Yes the SJDASH could be dialed back a little without suffering by that, at least the colors are a bit rich / strong.

But its early days here and SJcam seem to know what they do in their firmware crew so i am sure it will get better in the coming firmwares.

 

[kamkar]

So i am back again, and for this post i would like to talk and demo about the audio issues i have.

So it seem i have a noise in the audio with the SJDASH, in the video below i try a range of options to power it, ranging from the already there mini 0906 PSU - then the original SJDASH PSu and cable, and then my other power options in my glove box still using the SJDASH provided USB cable.

Off course i forgot my USB power bank at home so i was not able to try that out, so i will do that later on along with distancing the SJdash from the SG9665GC and also trying to turn off the SG9665GC

 

[kamkar]

Okay i have tried 3 other things to nail this audio issue.

First clip i power the SJDASH with a USB power bank using a short USB wire, and i have the power bank above the sun visor right next to the SJDASH. ( the SG9665GC was ON )
Second clip i power the SJDASJ with the provided USB wire that i have routed over the sun visor and down the A pillar and then down into my glove box where i again use the USB power bank as source. ( in this the SG9665GC are also ON )
Third clip i use the SJ wire again and the power bank as source, but here i have turned off the SG9665GC.

It seem like no matter what i do some noise find its way to the audio track.

On my drive out with the first config i parked at the gas station and when my car is sitting there while i shop there are no noise to the recording.

sadly i only have mini USB wires with ferrite chokes on, so i cant test if that will fix it, and i have no loose ferrite chokes to try out.

PS. there allso seem to be a little mechanical rattle noise, i will investigate that later on to see if that come from the SJDASH mount/camera combination.

 

[jokiin]

try it on the table in your house powered from a phone charger and see if you still get the noise in the audio, it sounds like it has too much gain or a very sensitive mic so it's possibly picking up noise from its own PCB

 

[Nigel]

sadly i only have mini USB wires with ferrite chokes on, so i cant test if that will fix it, and i have no loose ferrite chokes to try out.

Ferrite chokes wont help that, a slightly different voltage supply might help, eg 5.1 volts instead of 5.2 volts but with all that noise I don't think it will help much.

The noise will be coming from the capacitors on the board and being recorded by the microphone. Sounds like it has more than one switching regulator running at different frequencies.

 

[kamkar]

ill matched ripple noise reduction circuitry maybe, i was a little freaked it was still there using the USB power bank.
But it must be something with the SJDASH, cuz none of my other cameras have this issue.

There are no noise when the car is parked, but i just checked in the little recordings i have made on my computer table using a USB charger to update FW and even there i have a little noise, but less than half of what i have in the car moving at speed.

Ill mix up a couple more recordings from car OFF and my computer table.

 

[Nigel]

...the little recordings i have made on my computer table...

It is probably being supressed because there is no other noise - get your computer to make some noise so that it is recording something instead of silence.

 

[kamkar]

It do seem like that with more ambient noise the level of whine also go up, you can easy detect this as i pull in to the gas station, turn off the car and leave it slamming the door.

So i think they might be able to rectify this to some degree by dialing back the microphone ( if that's doable in FW )

 

[jokiin]

So i think they might be able to rectify this to some degree by dialing back the microphone ( if that's doable in FW )

it generally is

 

[kamkar]

And its not like the microphone are weak as is, no problem hearing every little squeak from my car, with the right timing you might even be able to hear my back throw out, or at least me sighing when it happen.