Good dashcams with park guard and IR/nightshot?

Mexxxi

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I recently had my car vandalized (front window cracked, tires slashed, headlights destroyed...) and now I'm looking for a way to secure my car at night since I expect more attacks to happen during that time.

Most cameras that advertise great quality at night don't actually have active IR leds built in. Are there any cams that have this feature and deliver good enough quality to identify an attacker? A dual cam system would be preferred, especially built into a single case with both cams having wide angle lenses.

Are there any cams that have those features and that support 1fps recording (or are off at that time) but that switch into 30fps mode when they detect movement under those lighting conditions?

Does anyone have experience running a standard dashcam with a separate IR light emitter?
 
Hello and welcome to the forum.

You are not alone with this problem, but a dashcam might not be a working solution.

The dashcams you see with IR LED's are often just a gimmick, the light off the LED's will reflect in window glass and blind camera.
And if they dont the LED's are very weak with little range to them, no longer than to the front of your car at best.
There are some with IR light for filming the inside of the car, but here you might only see people in the back seat as moving shadows / silhouettes.

BUT ! if you park in a place with a little light from a street light or maybe in a underground garage, then a regular dashcam with good night performance might be able to help.
 
The night mode on the thinkware F770 is really good, also has time lapse for longer recording. Maybe have a look on youtube and watch some night shot videos ?
 
A more budget-oriented choice might be using a G1W-S recording 24/7 with a BDP. These have great low-light video and one member here has been running his in this manner for over a month with no problems so far :D Used with a 64GB card this will give you about 8 1/2 to 9 hours continuous recording tine before over-writing. This is a new cam so nobody can be sure that it will endure such usage which of course is not recommended by the manufacturer ;)

No dash or action cam can work without some light, and none are optimized for use with IR illumination which would also need to be provided separately. The best cams for parking security are those viewing the car from the outside, not inside. There are much better cams of that type available and many have good IR capability but unless you can always park within their range they won't be useful here. Cams can protect you only after something has happened in showing who caused the problem. Car insurance is always your first and best line of defense with car alarms and cameras assisting :)

Phil
 
Thanks for the replies and the nice welcome.

Hello and welcome to the forum.
The dashcams you see with IR LED's are often just a gimmick, the light off the LED's will reflect in window glass and blind camera.
And if they dont the LED's are very weak with little range to them, no longer than to the front of your car at best.
There are some with IR light for filming the inside of the car, but here you might only see people in the back seat as moving shadows / silhouettes.

BUT ! if you park in a place with a little light from a street light or maybe in a underground garage, then a regular dashcam with good night performance might be able to help.

Thanks! You brought up some very interesting points I wasn`t aware of yet. I might be able to park my car close to a street light so a regular dash cam with good night performance might be sufficient.


The night mode on the thinkware F770 is really good, also has time lapse for longer recording. Maybe have a look on youtube and watch some night shot videos ?

Thanks! The night recording quality of the F770 is indeed great. Unfortunately, the price is anything but cheap, especially with the additional rear cam.


A more budget-oriented choice might be using a G1W-S recording 24/7 with a BDP. These have great low-light video and one member here has been running his in this manner for over a month with no problems so far :D Used with a 64GB card this will give you about 8 1/2 to 9 hours continuous recording tine before over-writing. This is a new cam so nobody can be sure that it will endure such usage which of course is not recommended by the manufacturer ;)

Now that is an interesting suggestion! Thanks! The video quality seems to be great even at night. I guess lowering the resolution to 720p would easily net 15 to 16h or constant recording. The only downside seems to be that the cam doesn`t have any sensors to turn it on in case an event happens, so constant recording and sifting through hours of footage in case something happens will be unavoidable.


No dash or action cam can work without some light, and none are optimized for use with IR illumination which would also need to be provided separately.

Actually, the Zetta ZIR32/Somikon DSC-50 seem to be optimized for IR recording, featuring built in IR-LEDs.


The best cams for parking security are those viewing the car from the outside, not inside. There are much better cams of that type available and many have good IR capability but unless you can always park within their range they won't be useful here.

That`s true and if that was an option, I`d go for it. Unfortunately, I neither have a constant parking lot, nor can I see my car from my apartment to record it from there.

Cams can protect you only after something has happened in showing who caused the problem. Car insurance is always your first and best line of defense with car alarms and cameras assisting

Actually, insurance is not really helpful in some cases, such as mine: My car is old, so insuring it against such damage isn`t really worth it. Also, I know the perp who damaged my car. There`s a high chance he might do it again and that`s what I want to document, so I have some hard proof. Also, the perp is my neighbour and I need proof of his violent outbursts for the landlord so he can be kicked out. Nothing an insurance could help me with.

I ordered the Somikon DSC-50 and will order G1W-S as well to see which one fares better, before I consider buying the F770. I`m willing to give more cams a shot, so if someone has a good suggestion, then don`t be shy about it :)
 
Myself i have put a 1080P IP camera on my balcony door on my car that's now parked in the back yard, cuz on the other street side of the block my cars got vandalized 2 times within a year of moving here.

The PTZ ( Pan Tilt Zoom ) camera are zoomed in real good, so i will get good facial capture of anyone getting near my car, even have motion detect on so both my NVR box and the APP running on my tablet bedside will sound if anything large get within 4 feet of my car.


Not quite legal and whatever, i dont care the people here dont care, so win win and i even have a few more cameras filming out my apartment on the street below and my peephole and one in kitchen aimed at back door.
 
I'm not familiar with the Zetta- I'll look into it when I have some time as I'm somewhat interested in IR stuff. My old van is also not worth full coverage insurance since my insurer won't let me cover it's contents which are worth more than the van. A better insurer would help me out but also add too much to my budget. It's a "catch-22" for me so I aim for cheap and smart with a little luck thrown in ;) The G1W-S excels at night at a slight cost of daytime vid quality, though that is still acceptably good and you can solidly identify a face reasonably close with it. After seeing what mine can do I'll never buy a lesser cam (other than Mobius for special applications) except as something to play with- not for serious protection.

Not having anything to indicate the time of an incident is a drawback, but since it is only needed when damage occurs (which is hopefully rare) then you won't need to do that often. It is a far more certain method than 'notion detect' or 'G-sensor' in cheap cams and we do see reports of well-regarded cams not giving useful evidence in 'parking mode' due to inherent design limitations. It's the only way to reliably provide parking coverage 'on the cheap'. If an incident provides visual clues like a broken window or the car moves, that can help you more quickly narrow the time down when viewing the opening of each video file, starting from known times and working inward from there. Or somebody may have noticed something at a certain time, helping you narrow it down :)

When you know who a problem is, there are many ways to address things where you can't be connected to them. I won't go into that here as much will be illegal although I personally feel that morality trumps legality, at least until you get caught :rolleyes: Lots of ways to get someone out of your hair for a little time, effort, or money which is likely more effective than what the legal system will do. I believe in karma and I believe in helping it along where I can :D You should do what you can sleep well with :cool:

Phil
 
The PTZ ( Pan Tilt Zoom ) camera are zoomed in real good, so i will get good facial capture of anyone getting near my car, even have motion detect on so both my NVR box and the APP running on my tablet bedside will sound if anything large get within 4 feet of my car.

This is really great. I wish I had the possibility to film my car from my apartment.


I personally feel that morality trumps legality

I couldn`t agree more, especially after being victimized and the police not doing much about it.

No dash or action cam can work without some light, and none are optimized for use with IR illumination which would also need to be provided separately.

Today, the Somicon DSC-50.IR arrived and first tests in a totally dark room without any windows were pretty convincing. The built in 12 IR-LEDs are doing a bang up job of recording in total darkness. The video quality isn`t great, but people are clearly identifiable. I will install the cam in my car tonight to see how well the night shot mode fares under real life conditions. Should be even better since on the street there`s always some rudimentary lighting to assist the IR-illumination.
 
Myself i have put a 1080P IP camera on my balcony door on my car that's now parked in the back yard, cuz on the other street side of the block my cars got vandalized 2 times within a year of moving here.

The PTZ ( Pan Tilt Zoom ) camera are zoomed in real good, so i will get good facial capture of anyone getting near my car, even have motion detect on so both my NVR box and the APP running on my tablet bedside will sound if anything large get within 4 feet of my car.


Not quite legal and whatever, i dont care the people here dont care, so win win and i even have a few more cameras filming out my apartment on the street below and my peephole and one in kitchen aimed at back door.

At least he didn't pee on the car. Interestingly enough this ties into the other discussion about IR on dashcams because one of the things you notice straight away is his coat, hat anf the car number plate are all washed out due to being highly reflective of IR.

Also, don't forget there are now colour night vision options (not recommending any brands here):


Finally, you often get better quality from wired cameras as there's more bandwidth especially with HD / 4K.
 
Color night vision is pretty impressive, though the video makes it quite obvious that it only works well with some form of external lighting like a street lamp. Also, the video is not really honest in its comparison since they didn't use a true IR night vision camera, but they merely grayscaled the color footage. As for bandwidth, what does that have to do with the camera being wired?
 
Which cam is that buddy ?

Thats a cheap 1080p 20 X optical zoom camera of the Sunba brand i found on ebay, i thik the model are called 805, but dont put me up on that.

It is quite large, today you can get a similar camera that's just 4 inches in diameter where mine are 7 inches, and if your distance are small then you can make do with 10 X optical zoom, my camera zoomed in on my car are just at 7X zoom when the car that's 18 - 20 M away from the camera are prefect framed.

And yes to color vision if you have a little light where you want to film, in this case you will have to look for ip cameras with the sony starvis range of sensors, like the IMX 291 now used in some dashcams or the even better IMX 185 i have in the camera i have hanging in my living room window recording the street below.

You could also go for analog cameras, but unless its HD ones ( there are now systems that allow for transfer of HD signals via the old style antenna wire, but you will still need a recorder that support such formats.
I will not recomend 700 TVL cameras for anything where you need to identify anything, but you could make do with that if you just need to get a alarm ( via motion detect or such camera feature ) and then react to it yourself.

IE come running out the front door wearing underwear and brandishing a baseball bat. :D
 
Color night vision is pretty impressive, though the video makes it quite obvious that it only works well with some form of external lighting like a street lamp. Also, the video is not really honest in its comparison since they didn't use a true IR night vision camera, but they merely grayscaled the color footage. As for bandwidth, what does that have to do with the camera being wired?

Not sure about the grayscaled footage. Otherwise there would be no advantage to having IR. All colour cameras have traditionally switched to black and white for night vision using IR. Maybe the sensors are sensitive to a broad a spectrum of light and they just select a different part of the signal in low light. Just speculating as I wouldn't know.

An ip camera uses a wireless connection which is far more limited in bandwidth and thus speed than a cabled connection. That it turn affects the level of compression. Not so much of an issue with lower resolutions, but becomes more of an issue with HD and 4K and higher frame rates.
 
Thanks for the clarification c4rc4m.
 
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