Dash - a new website to view and analyse dash cam videos

Thanks for your feedback @HonestReview . We already offer a "Zoom" feature on Dash in the player (check out this test video ). On the player click on the tools icon and you will have the ability to change playback speed or zoom in on the video.

Regarding other enhancement, we are working on some artificial intelligence features like number plate recognition (ANPR/ALPR is the term). We're still unsure that level of sophistication is required for most Dash users. We are also evaluating number plate blurring to preserve the privacy of other drivers. See example gif below:

It would be awesome if you could try Dash and provide more feedback. It's completely free and comes with lots of features out of the box.

All the best,
Ed.

Number plate recognition is a great idea. It's more than just the privacy of hiding plates. It's also identification. Sometimes hit and run makes it hard to decipher the plate numbers due to the speed at which the incident happens.

There was a thread here while back where car was in parking mode (low bitrate recording) and a passing SUV sheered the side of OP's vehicle. Plates were "blurry" but with some enhancement and investigative work, we were able to locate the driver.
 
Number plate recognition is a great idea. It's more than just the privacy of hiding plates. It's also identification. Sometimes hit and run makes it hard to decipher the plate numbers due to the speed at which the incident happens.

There was a thread here while back where car was in parking mode (low bitrate recording) and a passing SUV sheered the side of OP's vehicle. Plates were "blurry" but with some enhancement and investigative work, we were able to locate the driver.

Nice story regarding the rogue SUV :).

How do you suggest the plate recognition should work on Dash? Would it be something that you would request for a given image or across a few seconds within the video for instance?
This seems like a premium feature. Is this something for instance that you would pay for?
 
Of course we want it for free :ROFLMAO: but when somebody really needs a plate number they will pay something to get it, but only if it works, and that will be a hard thing to do. So maybe a lower priced "pay-per-view" kind of thing where for a few bucks they can try with one or two short clips (front and rear). Can't really narrow this down to one frame because you might get different parts from different frames.

Do this and you're miles ahead of the competition (y)

Phil
 
Nice story regarding the rogue SUV :).

How do you suggest the plate recognition should work on Dash? Would it be something that you would request for a given image or across a few seconds within the video for instance?
This seems like a premium feature. Is this something for instance that you would pay for?

Could have users submit their videos and if you guys are able to pull off plate, you could charge them a fee. Trust me, if you're in a hit and run, a small amount of money to identify the driver is well worth the effort.

I loaded his plate in photoshop and played with all sorts of settings and filters. I was finally able to get a close enough match that I looked up records online for vehicles in his area and one of my guesses turned out to be correct. Op was thrilled to have identified the person.

Pretty much if you guys can pull off plate recognition like you did in the demo you showed me, I think that would be a worthwhile service for anyone involved in a collision.
 
Of course we want it for free :ROFLMAO: but when somebody really needs a plate number they will pay something to get it, but only if it works, and that will be a hard thing to do. So maybe a lower priced "pay-per-view" kind of thing where for a few bucks they can try with one or two short clips (front and rear). Can't really narrow this down to one frame because you might get different parts from different frames.

Do this and you're miles ahead of the competition (y)

Phil
LOL Phil! When we have it ready we'll definitely get people from DCT to try it for free and provide feedback. We can this way improve our detection until we feel confident the feature is ready for the primetime.

Could have users submit their videos and if you guys are able to pull off plate, you could charge them a fee. Trust me, if you're in a hit and run, a small amount of money to identify the driver is well worth the effort.

I loaded his plate in photoshop and played with all sorts of settings and filters. I was finally able to get a close enough match that I looked up records online for vehicles in his area and one of my guesses turned out to be correct. Op was thrilled to have identified the person.

Pretty much if you guys can pull off plate recognition like you did in the demo you showed me, I think that would be a worthwhile service for anyone involved in a collision.

Insightful comment. It's obviously a great deal if you could pay a few bucks to recognise a number plate, and thus save time and thousands of dollars by this "simple" operation.
We sometimes are so deep into Dash that we forget those very important things. @HonestReview if you have a video with a number plate you want us to try recognise, don't hesitate to share it with us (you just upload to Dash and share the link) and we'll see what we can do. Our algorithms are still in early development.

As I mentioned in a previous message, this quarter we are focusing a lot on our AI capabilities. We are looking at being able to detect vehicles, number plates, etc. so that we could provide further driving insights. The image below shows that we are off to a great start :).
Screenshot 2020-07-08 at 11.24.15.png

Cheers,
Ed.
 
Insightful comment. It's obviously a great deal if you could pay a few bucks to recognise a number plate, and thus save time and thousands of dollars by this "simple" operation.

We sometimes are so deep into Dash that we forget those very important things. @HonestReview

Over the years, my mother has been a victim of several hit and run accidents. Back then, the technology wasn't available to capture these events. Last year, I installed a Viofo A129 Duo in her vehicle. My mom being almost 70 thought it was a backup camera at first. After a few close calls, she now understands the whole purpose of dash cameras.

My point here is that when injuries, lawyers, and insurance companies are involved, any obtainable evidence is crucial. Most people would be more than willing to pay a fee if it can identify the responsible party.

If you have a video with a number plate you want us to try recognise, don't hesitate to share it with us (you just upload to Dash and share the link) and we'll see what we can do. Our algorithms are still in early development.

As I mentioned in a previous message, this quarter we are focusing a lot on our AI capabilities. We are looking at being able to detect vehicles, number plates, etc. so that we could provide further driving insights. The image below shows that we are off to a great start :).
View attachment 52558

Cheers,
Ed.

As with all technology, it requires tweaking and revisions. If you can get the AI recognition to work well, you've hit on a much overlooked market that could be invaluable to insurance companies. Imagine if the insurance company could go after a person involved in a hit and run. If that individual has any assets, recovery can be shifted from penalizing the aggrieved party to going after the responsible party. Meaning the insurance company insuring the aggrieved party isn't on the hook for a large payout. So I see real potential.

I do have some, but I'm not keen on posting personal stuff online. So I'll defer sample videos to user submissions that might wish to test out the system.
 
I do have some, but I'm not keen on posting personal stuff online. So I'll defer sample videos to user submissions that might wish to test out the system.
with their service you get to choose who you share the video with, or not
 
The image below shows that we are off to a great start :).
agree, will that function have a toggle on/off function, for example it could be nice to pull a frame with and without say you want to show the event, but also highlight the points of interest that you want to receiver to look at, eg here's the moment it happened, highlighted is the things I want you to notice, position of other vehicles, traffic lights etc
 
agree, will that function have a toggle on/off function, for example it could be nice to pull a frame with and without say you want to show the event, but also highlight the points of interest that you want to receiver to look at, eg here's the moment it happened, highlighted is the things I want you to notice, position of other vehicles, traffic lights etc

Liking this. To be honest I find the current bookmarks already helpful especially when I want to pinpoint and describe specific events in my videos. But maybe something to annotate or draw on the video frames could also be great
 
Over the years, my mother has been a victim of several hit and run accidents. Back then, the technology wasn't available to capture these events. Last year, I installed a Viofo A129 Duo in her vehicle. My mom being almost 70 thought it was a backup camera at first. After a few close calls, she now understands the whole purpose of dash cameras.

My point here is that when injuries, lawyers, and insurance companies are involved, any obtainable evidence is crucial. Most people would be more than willing to pay a fee if it can identify the responsible party.

So sorry your mother has to to go through this. From your profile info it looks like you are based in the US, where the % of car ownership is much higher than in Europe. Also, from the YouTube video compilations I watch, there are a lot of confrontations where the offending driver gives a false account and then shuts up or outright drives away when they are told they have been caught on dash cam. It's really a critically important device on the road nowadays.

As with all technology, it requires tweaking and revisions. If you can get the AI recognition to work well, you've hit on a much overlooked market that could be invaluable to insurance companies. Imagine if the insurance company could go after a person involved in a hit and run. If that individual has any assets, recovery can be shifted from penalizing the aggrieved party to going after the responsible party. Meaning the insurance company insuring the aggrieved party isn't on the hook for a large payout. So I see real potential.

I do have some, but I'm not keen on posting personal stuff online. So I'll defer sample videos to user submissions that might wish to test out the system.

Yes we will improve it over time. The technology is not perfect but if we could make it work in 90%+ of cases that would visibly bring about a lot of benefits. Completely understand that you are not comfortable sharing personal material. As @jokiin already stated, the videos you upload on Dash are private by default unless you decide to share them.


agree, will that function have a toggle on/off function, for example it could be nice to pull a frame with and without say you want to show the event, but also highlight the points of interest that you want to receiver to look at, eg here's the moment it happened, highlighted is the things I want you to notice, position of other vehicles, traffic lights etc

Interesting idea! We could definitely have a "AI on/off toggle" for a given frame/sequence. What points of interest do you suggest we highlight? It sounds almost like a replay of the event with commentary and visuals (AI bounding boxes around important areas). That sounds pretty cool. Is that what what you were thinking of?
 
It sounds almost like a replay of the event with commentary and visuals (AI bounding boxes around important areas). That sounds pretty cool. Is that what what you were thinking of?
yeah pretty much, often when we want to highlight something we will use two frames and turn them into an animated gif to shift between them so it can easily highlight the differences, I find when you focus on something and have the image change back and forth it makes it easy to spot the changes. more so than when you have images side by side, top and bottom etc, another method to make differences in images easier to notice is to overlay and be able to scrub back and forth with the overlay on/off
 
Yes we will improve it over time. The technology is not perfect but if we could make it work in 90%+ of cases that would visibly bring about a lot of benefits. Completely understand that you are not comfortable sharing personal material. As @jokiin already stated, the videos you upload on Dash are private by default unless you decide to share them.

Dash cameras are advantageous for numbers of reasons.

1. Capture what happened and removes he said / she said

2. Prevents against fraud. Russia and other places around world suffer from scams where people cause accidents, fake injury, or actually get injured, in order to claim insure proceeds.

Meaning Dash Cameras are a safety net. But all safety nets have gaps. So using AI to improve upon captured footage has wide reaching benefits. Sometimes, its a minor detail (license plate, car damaged in specific pattern, etc) that can help identify the driver. So your company could also benefit by marketing this technology and your services to insurance companies.

While the business might not be brisk at first, because a lot of people don't have cameras, technology and adoption improve over time. Think of the PC in the early 1990s with internet (few had) comparative to most people having a connected device (phone, tablet, computer, etc). Most adoption began in the early to mid 2000s and accelerated since. Meaning getting your foot in the door here could to more things later on.

Ultimately, I see no downside to improving your algorithms and the AI behind plate identification. Hopefully more companies will come out with 3 Channel cameras down the road. So impacts that include a side swipe, and out of reach of a front / rear setup, are capturable moments, too
 
Hey everyone :D,

Hope you are all keeping well. The last few months have been very busy on our end with a lot of work outside of Dash too, but we are looking to add more goodness soon. Case in point, we have recently silently added a brand new feature called Video Auto-Tagging . We apply some of the AI algorithms we have been building in-house to automatically generate up to 5 tags for any given video uploaded to Dash.

You can see it in action on the below screenshot of a video from my Viofo dash cam. The tags tend to be pretty spot on in many cases, but in case it's not accurate you can always suppress/modify them. At the moment the AI is not good enough to automatically detect accidents (sorry - that's a pretty hard thing to do honestly!). Anyway here's the screenshot:


Screenshot 2020-08-31 at 18.37.12.png

If you are new to all this and wonder what Dash is, here is the answer :cool: ---> https://getdash.ai

Any questions let me know.

Stay safe,
Ed.
 
It appears that Dash is closing up shop as of the end of next month. I suppose the lack of any activity in this thread was an indication that the business never really got off the ground. It seems a shame as we all saw how much work was invested in this project. I do have to admit, I was skeptical about this idea as I had been about all the similar online dash cam video sharing web sites. I'm not sure if any of the others are still around.


dash.jpg
 
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Sad, it seems like these guys really put their all into creating a novel idea. But there were two inherent flaws:

1. Dash Cam Market still remains a very small niche market. Look at most cars on the road and almost NONE have Dash Cameras.

2. The market these guys were after was even more limited. People interested in trying to pull off data from an accident or other incident. With a focus on enhancing the video if need be.

Quite a shame, as I do believe these guys had a good idea. But their idea is just way ahead of market trends then and now.
 
shame as the guys behind it are quite talented and achieved some really impressive results, I think the main issue for them is this was a solution looking for a problem, not something the market was crying out for so as good as it was they needed to find a market for it which is no easy task
 
A good idea and well done that simply didn't catch on :cry:

Phil
 
A good idea and well done that simply didn't catch on :cry:

Phil

You've got google drive to upload videos to for free. And the other crutch is that Dash Cameras are a niche market. Look at every car in a parking lot, and I bet you won't spot more than one or two with a camera. Dash Camera enthusiasts are radically outnumbered.

The thing that's lacking is knowledge and awareness. Most, if not all, dash camera manufacturers are virtually based and don't have retail outlets Which makes educating people difficult, since there's no "hands on models" to test.. Most people are oblivious of the protections a Dash Camera Offers. And then you've got technophobes who even if they wanted a camera, would be too scared to install. Even more so to use.

Funny thing is most people I show a Dash Camera video to are downright amazed. Like what's the benefit. O let me show you (pulls up an accident video). That's very cool. These types of interactions are what's needed to create a more mainstream market.

Sadly, Dash had a great idea (as I said earlier) but not enough people to capitalize upon it.
 
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Add to all that: Most people IN that niche market (most all of us here on this website) knew that this would eventually fail because of all those factors.

So we didn't bother wasting time with it only to have all our effort setting up and using an account wind up being for naught.
 
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