Blackvue Over the Cloud: Overview and Review

USDashCamera

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Blackvue is my personal favorite dashcam company when it comes to parking mode. Lukas comes close because Lukas cams seem to offer a lot of customization blackvue doesnt (such as seperate channel settings) but blackvue has really stepped it up with the "Over the Cloud" feature with the iOS/Android Blackvue C app. Check out an overview on all the features, how to set it up, and my personal opinions and review here:


Check out my video reviews of the DR650GW-2CH and 1CH cams here:

Blackvue DR650GW-2CH Review:


Blackvue DR650GW-1CH Review:


Its a really cool feature, it may not appeal to some personal users, but it can really appeal to small businesses with vehicles or people with pricey cars.
 
i dont understand: how this dashcam can sent the signal to phone when the phone is not around ? is this connet to internet itself ? if it does, so do i have to install 3G sim into it ?
 
the car needs a wifi hotspot that the camera connects to, wifi hotspots are starting to become common features in some high end euro cars, Merc, Audi etc
 
Blackvue is my personal favorite dashcam company when it comes to parking mode
Me thinks you have set a pretty low bar if you are happy with the parking mode..sorry my opinion. The video clips you attached seem.. to be Blackvue clips.. with Blackvue bias.

Again.. my opinion.. the "Cloud" is an attempt by Blackvue to provide an ongoing revenue stream. IF.. they were interested in satisfying "customers" they would improve the WiFi feature to allow access to any local WiFi hot spot where the customer could then do what they wanted with the data.
 
Me thinks you have set a pretty low bar if you are happy with the parking mode..sorry my opinion. The video clips you attached seem.. to be Blackvue clips.. with Blackvue bias.

Again.. my opinion.. the "Cloud" is an attempt by Blackvue to provide an ongoing revenue stream. IF.. they were interested in satisfying "customers" they would improve the WiFi feature to allow access to any local WiFi hot spot where the customer could then do what they wanted with the data.

what other dash cam offers better parking mode? lukas i think is great feature wise for their parking mode, but their dash cams are all huge, ugly, and so visible in your car. i really would like to know what you consider a good cam with good parking mode though out of curiosity.

and of course the cloud feature is their attempt at a revenue stream. its a service. look at every other company, nest cam, logi circle, foscam, amcrest... they ALL charge subscriptions for their cloud services. xbox live... playstation network, netflix, hulu, office 365. these are all services. services cost money. the fact that you are upset that they are offering an optional service to make money seems silly. and regardless, a typical consumer can use the free version just fine to receive notifications if their cars are impacted in parking lots etc.

you can access any local wifi hotspot, and then you can do what you want with the data. obviously you arent going to get on other peoples private networks. i don't understand what you are expecting.
 
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i dont understand: how this dashcam can sent the signal to phone when the phone is not around ? is this connet to internet itself ? if it does, so do i have to install 3G sim into it ?
i mention in the video that you can buy a hotspot from companies like AT&T but those devices typically dont have long enough battery life to run all the time, even if it is connected to a power supply in your car. this also costs about $20 a month (atleast on AT&T) which is a steep price to me just to get notifications from my dash cam while its parked.
 
i really would like to know what you consider a good cam with good parking mode though out of curiosity.

you can access any local wifi hotspot, and then you can do what you want with the data. obviously you arent going to get on other peoples private networks. i don't understand what you are expecting.

I have had my 1 channel DR650 for about 6 months now. I purchased it based on the reviews I was able to find. Form factor..Parking mode.. WiFi.. GPS..and picture quality were factors in my decision. The only one of the criteria I am happy with is the form factor. The parking mode is a joke.. you may just as well have a run / record continuously button. WiFi is also a disappointment. the best I can do is watch live on my laptop (in a reduced size window) . There was no mention that to use the WiFi you need a smart phone or tablet and neither was included with my purchase. GPS is spotty. Picture quality is also a disappointment when compared to other models.

Picture quality is why I have not yet upgraded to the "cloud" version but I hear they are going to improve the bit rate to what we have now with the pre cloud firmware. As to accessing "any" local hot spot.. I believe that does not yet include connecting to a laptop.. where one would have the advantage of seeing / saving etc ALL the data available.

Again.. the assumption by Pittasoft seems to be that everyone with a dash cam has a smartphone and is driving a car with a built in WiFi. Not
 
I have had my 1 channel DR650 for about 6 months now. I purchased it based on the reviews I was able to find. Form factor..Parking mode.. WiFi.. GPS..and picture quality were factors in my decision. The only one of the criteria I am happy with is the form factor. The parking mode is a joke.. you may just as well have a run / record continuously button. WiFi is also a disappointment. the best I can do is watch live on my laptop (in a reduced size window) . There was no mention that to use the WiFi you need a smart phone or tablet and neither was included with my purchase. GPS is spotty. Picture quality is also a disappointment when compared to other models.

Picture quality is why I have not yet upgraded to the "cloud" version but I hear they are going to improve the bit rate to what we have now with the pre cloud firmware. As to accessing "any" local hot spot.. I believe that does not yet include connecting to a laptop.. where one would have the advantage of seeing / saving etc ALL the data available.

Again.. the assumption by Pittasoft seems to be that everyone with a dash cam has a smartphone and is driving a car with a built in WiFi. Not

i think the parking mode works great. i have captured car accidents while my car was parked from the motion sensor. i turned off the motion sensor this year to save battery, but it still records perfectly when i bump my car (haven't had a real bump or fender bender tho) 5 seconds before and 25 seconds after. why would you want it to record continuously? you will drain your battery so fast. the whole point of the parking mode is so you don't waste your car battery or memory card. if it was recording continuously you will constantly record over your entire memory card every day at work (depending on the size of the card).

i will agree that picture quality isnt the best, but its not terrible either. during the day its very adequate to me, night time is too dark but in an accident you should have your head lights on. worst case scenario you might miss a license plate if its way off to the sides of the image. but i also run a street guardian sg9665gc up front along side my 650 since that only runs while my car is on and has great video quality especially at night.

when you bought it, what were you expecting from the wifi? if you didnt have a smart phone (i have a pre-cloud model, plus a new cloud version of the 650, both boxes list wifi and iOS/android apps and there is a 3rd box variation. all three box variations specifically list an iOS/android app right on the box multiple times) i don't understand what you were hoping to do with the wifi. did you want to connect to your home wifi? i have heard some people say they want it to connect to their home wifi and back up the data automatically every night. then they get mad that it cant do what they expected.... yet NO camera can do that, and blackvue never claimed it could.

to me it seems you bought one without researching the features, and then were disappointed that it did not have features they never advertised. not to be a jerk but thats what it seems like. and again, there are no cams that do what you want, so you hate blackvue's parking mode for features they never said it had, but no other cams do either. you still haven't mentioned what dashcam DOES have a good parking mode in your opinion.
 
when you bought it, what were you expecting from the wifi?

For the WiFi.. I expected it to "work" in the sense every other WiFi enabled gadget works.. Like my Samsung tablet for example.. When in the vicinity of my LAN it connects.. when in the vicinity of Tim Hortons..2nd Cup.. Starbucks and many other public place where WiFi is available it connects. That.. is what I expected from my WiFi enabled Dashcam. So, when I got home I could hit the WiFi on button.. go inside log on with my laptop and view any video I wanted to view. Yes.. I can do this with my tablet.. but am limited by what the viewer shows.. And not mentioned before but the viewer that Blackvue provides.. suck, both the Android and PC models.

For the parking mode.. I expected it to work as one would reasonably expect.. Triggered by motion to turn on. I expected.. the settings to determine the size of the motion with perhaps a relation to distance.. However as everyone on this forum has noted (including likely you).. the sensitivity of the movement logic is such that a leaf.. a bird or branch blowing 300 yards away triggers it.. effectively making the parking mode a record continuously switch.

I am not in the market at this time to look for a replacement and thus do not spend my time trying to compare this feature with that feature. I do not recall saying I "hate" any of the features... but I will say they are miss represented by misleading advertisements. That of course is nothing new.. all products highlight (and exaggerate) what it does.. leaving the limitations in the fine print.. or to be found out after the fact.

But.. I am glad that for you this camera is the perfect piece of technology.. everything works just as your research showed it would.. Perfection.
 
For the WiFi.. I expected it to "work" in the sense every other WiFi enabled gadget works.. Like my Samsung tablet for example.. When in the vicinity of my LAN it connects.. when in the vicinity of Tim Hortons..2nd Cup.. Starbucks and many other public place where WiFi is available it connects. That.. is what I expected from my WiFi enabled Dashcam. So, when I got home I could hit the WiFi on button.. go inside log on with my laptop and view any video I wanted to view. Yes.. I can do this with my tablet.. but am limited by what the viewer shows.. And not mentioned before but the viewer that Blackvue provides.. suck, both the Android and PC models.

For the parking mode.. I expected it to work as one would reasonably expect.. Triggered by motion to turn on. I expected.. the settings to determine the size of the motion with perhaps a relation to distance.. However as everyone on this forum has noted (including likely you).. the sensitivity of the movement logic is such that a leaf.. a bird or branch blowing 300 yards away triggers it.. effectively making the parking mode a record continuously switch.

I am not in the market at this time to look for a replacement and thus do not spend my time trying to compare this feature with that feature. I do not recall saying I "hate" any of the features... but I will say they are miss represented by misleading advertisements. That of course is nothing new.. all products highlight (and exaggerate) what it does.. leaving the limitations in the fine print.. or to be found out after the fact.

But.. I am glad that for you this camera is the perfect piece of technology.. everything works just as your research showed it would.. Perfection.
hah i never said its perfect what so ever. i always point out that the blackvue cams have worse video quality than many other. and i don't think the features i like about it are perfect either, i just think overall it is the best the industry has to offer to fill MOST of my needs. i actually turned my motion detection off because it wouldn't matter if leaves are blowing, where I park there are constant cars driving by so it would be continuous anyways. lukas offers some pretty decent motion detection settings from what i recall, i think they actually let you set the area of the screen where it looks for motion (so you can ignore the sky or trees up high).

i get what you mean about "every other wifi enabled gadget" but dashcams aren't like tablets or phones. you said before they offer the cloud feature they should

"they would improve the WiFi feature to allow access to any local WiFi hot spot where the customer could then do what they wanted with the data."

that IS exactly what the cloud feature is attempting to do (although you can only save one SSID/login which limits it). the cloud is not some fancy version of the internet. when they say "cloud" all they mean is the camera connects to the internet (a wifi hotspot), and than other devices can connect to it over the internet (even if its the same wifi). what you want (turn on wifi, then view from your laptop) is a "cloud" feature. because your laptop (although PC's are not supported currently, only tablets/phones) would connect to your wifi network, not connect directly to the camera itself like the old 650 models. their old wifi models (besides the cloud 650) is an access point like a wireless router, not a wifi device like a phone or tablet. this is why old 650's dont work, because they are only access points, they arent capable of connecting to another wifi signal. it made more sense a few years ago to just have them connect to phones/tablets because most people don't have wifi hotspots in their car, and often cars are too far from a good wifi connection anyways. so if you want the camera to connect to the internet instead of just devices connecting directly to it, yes you do need the cloud version. there is not going to be any "fix" of the old wifi models like you are asking for, because what you are asking for IS the cloud feature (even if you don't plan on storing files on the cloud).
 
When they get the PC version.. and improve the bit rate back to what my current version of firmware is.. I will install it and see if it works for me.
 
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