Side cameras, are they worth it ?

Lane driving and use of indicators before changing lanes is almost non existent here, getting swiped from the sides is not unusual. Nothing but a side camera can capture such an incident.

Also what if someone unintentionally or intentionally damages the doors or windows while parked, probably breaks the window to grab something that may have caught their attention. What good is parking mode and those front and rear cameras then?
 
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yeah it is always the side window that get broken in cars when some one want something in it, so in that case you can only hope the person have passed by front or rear camera first.
And i think there is a good chance of that, but off course a side camera would remove chance all together.

And i do get people want to actually film that person hitting them, and when i got rear ended i was sad my rear camera was not working cuz i an sure that guy in the 4x4 was on the phone, why else overlook 2 cars in front of him stopping.

But i cant see why you absolutely got to have that guy sideswiping your side from the rear, as long as you can prove you was driving rock steady in your lane right up until you get hit, then surely you can not be blamed for that accident.
Sure i would like to get that on tape too, that's why i have the side cameras, but really in a dispute i should be able to disproof any wrong clams against me with just the front camera that never see the offender car hitting my side from behind.

The other way would just be buying into the "video or it dident happen" phenomena, and i for one do not want to have a stake in that.
 
@kamkar1

You probably don't need side cameras. ;)

Saw a video of your latest drive. I'm amazed at the level of discipline. Not like anyone is trying to make any extra effort to drive or park responsibly, seems to be the norm. :)
 
Like Dashmellow, I've gotta have my side cams too. In the beginning I thought one cam was enough, then I realized a lot of what happens in back of me is relevant so I bought another for there but due to an order mix-up they sent two cams, so having nothing better to do with it I put the 'extra' cam on the driver's side. It wasn't long before I felt vulnerable on the passenger side so I bought a cam for there too.

I won't drive without a front cam- I keep a spare ready to go for that. And my own vehicles will have 4-side coverage. Just too many fools out there now for me to chance not getting the vid evidence from wherever they are coming from. My side cams cost about $70 for both and have paid for themselves in peace of mind already.

Phil
 
I like mine too, and look forward to be able to upgrade them.
But in the grand scheme of things and with a money conscious person looking into dashcams for driving or parking then i would do my best to keep side cameras off the topic.
But personally,,,, hell i will probably add more cameras.
I know for sure:
1. i would like to replace the right side 90 degree innovv C3 with something wider.
2. i would like a driver camera.
3. i really badly need a low FOV front camera, will procure a lens for said camera soon, and then evaluate my options.
4. also would like a low FOV rear camera, but not that high on the agenda here.

And for my long walk next year i would like a body camera, but if push come to shove i could and will fab up a mount that will allow for me to use one of the SJ action cameras to snap a picture every 2-3 minutes to log my long walk.

Just took a drive with no front camera and i dont have a rear camera, so really all that was in my car recording was the right side innovv C3, and to be honest it did not feel nice.
GC memory card and mobius 1 lying on my computer table, and too fat and lazy to walk back up all those stairs to get them.
 
to anyone else who has or had side cam setups... pics of installation?

curious to see something a bit neater than kamkar's setup
 
Is that a pic of mine, i cant even remember doing that, but i can see why i would like it in another way as that take up a lot of room.
My current setup have the camera the 10 mm or so the 2 magnets are thick.

Damn hard to find as the page i use for pich dont have any structure to it.
But i managed to find a few pics of the creative mounts for some of my cameras.

1. rear camera on magnets, spaced out by metal strip screwed to camera using the 1/4 tripod mount.
rearcamside_big_thumb.jpg


Left side mobius 1 camera installed behind B piller ( 5 door hatchback )
This was scrapped as camera was too low ( rarely have people on back seat )
m3_big_thumb.jpg


The Right side camera the discontinued innovv C3, but the new C5 should be able to mount same way off the back side of the B pillar.
m4_big_thumb.jpg


Video os setup as is, the mobius attach to sheet metal folded over headliner and that in turn held in place by rubber list over door.
Using 2 neodymium magnets glued and duct taped in place, also on front of mobius i had to add a little and tape that too as the camera would otherwise point too high.
It aint pretty but it work, and even with the window down i can do 120 km/h and it stay in place.


When i rarely had people on the rear seat it tend to be the Right hand C3 that get bumped, the higher installed mobius never been bumped by guests in car.

The kind of coverage i have.
 
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wow, looks good! any chance of a pic with a little more perspective, so we can see how "in the way" it is?

thanks

Sorry, I'm afraid it is not convenient at the moment to shoot new photos of my installation. Fact is it is not "in the way" at all. The window it is mounted in is fixed glass and is also darkly tinted so that the camera is very difficult to see from outside the vehicle. For the most part the cameras are so "not in the way" that I can more or less ignore them most of the time. The camera is in the rear left window of an extended cab Toyota pick-up truck.

THIS link will show you some screen shots from my four camera installation. As mentioned, the above camera is mounted on the left side of my vehicle, so you can observe the results in the link. Also, THIS link shows some of the same photos but defines the specific overlap boundaries of coverage between each camera.
 
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Is that a pic of mine, i cant even remember doing that, but i can see why i would like it in another way as that take up a lot of room.
My current setup have the camera the 10 mm or so the 2 magnets are thick.

Damn hard to find as the page i use for pich dont have any structure to it.
But i managed to find a few pics of the creative mounts for some of my cameras.

1. rear camera on magnets, spaced out by metal strip screwed to camera using the 1/4 tripod mount.
rearcamside_big_thumb.jpg


Left side mobius 1 camera installed behind B piller ( 5 door hatchback )
This was scrapped as camera was too low ( rarely have people on back seat )
m3_big_thumb.jpg


The Right side camera the discontinued innovv C3, but the new C5 should be able to mount same way off the back side of the B pillar.
m4_big_thumb.jpg


Video os setup as is, the mobius attach to sheet metal folded over headliner and that in turn held in place by rubber list over door.
Using 2 neodymium magnets glued and duct taped in place, also on front of mobius i had to add a little and tape that too as the camera would otherwise point too high.
It aint pretty but it work, and even with the window down i can do 120 km/h and it stay in place.


When i rarely had people on the rear seat it tend to be the Right hand C3 that get bumped, the higher installed mobius never been bumped by guests in car.

The kind of coverage i have.
Nice job with the install @kamkar1
 
Im hoping to improve myself on this install, but its still tough going finding cameras that will install and do better.

It is a big plus i pretty much only have people on the back seat 1 day every year, so aside for that and the need for some degree of stealth i could install two RED cinematic cameras right up against the glass.

The mobius look like WFT but it do a stellar job in its place.
I have been brainstorming a solution reversing the current setup so i would have the magnets above the headliner and then just a strip of metal stuck to the mobius with dual sided tape, this should make the camera ride 10 mm higher and pretty much be on the rubber door seal and headliner.

My car seem to have a few lucky design features that's good.
1. tonnes of room in front of rear view mirror, and a nice shade area of a grit structure instead of dots, meaning i can get a suction cup to stick to that area just fine, a thing you can not do when its dots.
2. a vertical rear window with a wiper and on the inside pretty strait forward to install a camera right up against the glass so i dont have any heater elements in the footage.
3. the transition of the headliner to the side of the car above the rear doors, it is fairly flat and so i dont have to get too creative with my little tools and materials in my installs.
I do wish i had a garage where i could tinker with stuff and have a lot of tools.

One thing that are a problem, with a wide angled side camera it is hard to get it as close behind the B pillar as i would like, the innovv C3 only work that close to the B pillar as its a 90 degree lens.
So putting a side camera at the middle top of a door entrance will mean it will get dinged all the time, moving it closer to the B pillar mean it get into the safe zone.
Though i do wonder why the C3 have gotten dinged, then again every time it have been a alcoholic family member that's been pretty drunk at the time.

I had a lot of plans for this summer, but the weather have pretty much ruined those as i need weather to work outside alongside the curb at my friend house as he is the guy with the tools.
Haven't even gotten around to improve on my DIY dashmat, so that will just have to make do as is for another year.
 
Sorry, I'm afraid it is not convenient at the moment to shoot new photos of my installation. Fact is it is not "in the way" at all. The window it is mounted in is fixed glass and is also darkly tinted so that the camera is very difficult to see from outside the vehicle. For the most part the cameras are so "not in the way" that I can more or less ignore them most of the time. The camera is in the rear left window of an extended cab Toyota pick-up truck.

THIS link will show you some screen shots from my four camera installation. As mentioned, the above camera is mounted on the left side of my vehicle, so you can observe the results in the link. Also, THIS link shows some of the same photos but defines the specific overlap boundaries of coverage between each camera.

well of course it's not in the way your truck is bigger than both my cars combined LOL! no need for pics your description works too :)
 
well of course it's not in the way your truck is bigger than both my cars combined LOL! no need for pics your description works too :)

You don't happen to mention what kind of cars you own but a Toyota Tacoma mid-size pick-up truck is hardly the size of "two cars combined". In fact, the interior passenger volume of an extended cab Toyota Tacoma is quite similar to but essentially smaller than a typical compact sedan or equivalent. For example a 2017 Tacoma's interior passenger volume is 57.5/42.6 (front/rear cubic ft.) whereas a Toyota Corolla sedan averages 54.8/54.8. The overall length of a Toyota Tacoma is 212 inches vs 183 inches for a Corolla. So the question of whether a camera "gets in the way" between one vehicle or the other because of size is moot.

The issue of whether a side camera "gets in the way" has more to do with the design of the rear window than any other factor. It may be effected by how you use the vehicle as well but it has virtually nothing to do with the size of the vehicle. In my Tacoma, the basic reason the camera doesn't get in the way is due to the design of the window frame and the fact that it is a fixed glass panel that doesn't open or close.
 
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This thread has put my mind to work, since my current side-cam set-up was never meant to be permanent anyway ;)

My huge old van sits high and with the cams mounted at the top of the windows, they need a good downward tilt to capture nearby images. I can get the more distant images I want too so it's not that bad. but there's just no getting really close-by low images with them and having them at the glass limits their horizontal FOV close-bu as well. Putting them at the bottom of the glass wont help as the body bulges outward which blocks the view about the same, and that doesn't give me the wider close-by view I want either. And the one at the side door is always getting bumped. And they don't cover the back quarters for which there's no solution except 2 more cams for back there. External cams at the very top would probably do well but that gives its own problems as the only ones made which I'd use are too costly and with the van's height they'd be prone to damage and vandalism. So since I'm going to have 2 more cams in he back, they could aim downward to get close-up coverage for most of the length which would be good enough, leaving me free to do something better up front.

There's a dome light inside in just about the right spot to give the horizontal FOV I need, which close-by would be even better than I get now, and with the height of the windows and the current aiming I wouldn't lose much at the bottom of the FOV were I to mount my front side-cams there. The dome light has a 12V constant power going to it which I can access and re-purpose under the dash easily and as I never use the lights it powers, it seems that would make for a great way to power cams mounted there. A hardwire kit could be tucked into the headliner easily enough and the light's mounting screws can hold brackets for everything. And with low-profile cams there would not be any more bumping into to one at the door plus I can make and mount a metal housing for these to protect them from vandalism and damage. The hoary old Mobius would make for a perfect choice for this as it is thin, reliable, small, and I already have one of the two I'd need. It will take some time to gather all the pieces together and do the job, but it seems to be my ideal solution :cool:

And thinking of those with cars who don't have my problems of excessive height and limited glass area, this might be an ideal place for you to mount side-cams too, which is why I wanted to share my thoughts here. Of course there would be a little DIY for the mounting but the more I think about this the more perfect the location and solution seems as the dome light is always mounted out of the way already in every car that has one. Wirinf access is usually easy there and on removal there's no loss of originality nor any damage to the car so resale value is not affected. I'll share pics once I get the process started, which will initially be remounting my G1W-HC side-cams there until I can acquire another Mobius and get another front cam system set up. I want to thank @kamkar1 for starting this thread as I might not have otherwise thought of any of this :D

Phil
 
This thread has put my mind to work, since my current side-cam set-up was never meant to be permanent anyway ;)

My huge old van sits high and with the cams mounted at the top of the windows, they need a good downward tilt to capture nearby images. I can get the more distant images I want too so it's not that bad. but there's just no getting really close-by low images with them and having them at the glass limits their horizontal FOV close-bu as well. Putting them at the bottom of the glass wont help as the body bulges outward which blocks the view about the same, and that doesn't give me the wider close-by view I want either. And the one at the side door is always getting bumped. And they don't cover the back quarters for which there's no solution except 2 more cams for back there. External cams at the very top would probably do well but that gives its own problems as the only ones made which I'd use are too costly and with the van's height they'd be prone to damage and vandalism. So since I'm going to have 2 more cams in he back, they could aim downward to get close-up coverage for most of the length which would be good enough, leaving me free to do something better up front.

There's a dome light inside in just about the right spot to give the horizontal FOV I need, which close-by would be even better than I get now, and with the height of the windows and the current aiming I wouldn't lose much at the bottom of the FOV were I to mount my front side-cams there. The dome light has a 12V constant power going to it which I can access and re-purpose under the dash easily and as I never use the lights it powers, it seems that would make for a great way to power cams mounted there. A hardwire kit could be tucked into the headliner easily enough and the light's mounting screws can hold brackets for everything. And with low-profile cams there would not be any more bumping into to one at the door plus I can make and mount a metal housing for these to protect them from vandalism and damage. The hoary old Mobius would make for a perfect choice for this as it is thin, reliable, small, and I already have one of the two I'd need. It will take some time to gather all the pieces together and do the job, but it seems to be my ideal solution :cool:

And thinking of those with cars who don't have my problems of excessive height and limited glass area, this might be an ideal place for you to mount side-cams too, which is why I wanted to share my thoughts here. Of course there would be a little DIY for the mounting but the more I think about this the more perfect the location and solution seems as the dome light is always mounted out of the way already in every car that has one. Wirinf access is usually easy there and on removal there's no loss of originality nor any damage to the car so resale value is not affected. I'll share pics once I get the process started, which will initially be remounting my G1W-HC side-cams there until I can acquire another Mobius and get another front cam system set up. I want to thank @kamkar1 for starting this thread as I might not have otherwise thought of any of this :D

Phil

Obviously my Tacoma pick-up doesn't present the same challenges as your van but I'm wondering if you've explored other lens for the coverage that you want. After all my experimentation with different side cameras, the Mobius C2 lens ended up providing the exact coverage I was seeking. For me specifically and I think for side cams in general what you want is coverage of the lane and area to the side of the vehicle, coverage of the parking space next to you as low to the ground and as close to your vehicle as possible and coverage as wide as possible. If you revisit some of the previous link (and others) I've posted you can see this at work. HERE I recall how one of my main criteria with side dash cams was to capture as close to the side of my truck as possible.

Even the Mobius B lens was able to cover the side enough to capture an entire vehicle parked next to me. I realize that the van creates addition challenges but I think a Mobius C2 might be able to work around that to some degree if pointed down enough even with a higher smaller window. The rear windows in my truck are quite small, possibly similar to your van. Sometimes the bottom corners of the windows can be included in the image but it doesn't seem to effect the coverage too badly.

In any case, the dome light idea seems very interesting too, and of course would avoid the bumping into problem. The C2 lens would be the way to go with either idea.

leftmobius.jpg
 
I do like your 360 degree set-up, but with the G1W-HC's I now use, there's not enough vertical view to capture both near and far like you do. The curvature of my van means that at ground level, the closest I can capture is around 1M away, and then I currently don't get anything past about 10M, which I feel is more important to me because of the many stop-sign controlled intersections and idiot SC drivers that I deal with ;) What I really want is to see is as close as is possible on both sides of my van plus the distant intersection views. Since it's length dictates 2 cams per side anyway, I can have both views, just not completely alongside of me, by disparate aiming on each side :cool: Any car beside me would partially show up with on rear side cams aimed downward or on the front cam, so using the front side cams for distance would work OK.

I have lots of things I want to do but like Kamkar1 those will require at least a small lottery win to accomplish :rolleyes: I have much more coverage than most dashcam equipped cars do now so with other things being more badly needed, upgrading my cams will have to wait on funding to become available. Nothing new with that :p

Phil
 
M2 (multi-spot)


With a front and rear camera in place, even if it's not what one may consider ideal side footage, at least provides another perspective and kind of fills the gap in between a vehicle passing out of the FOV of the rear camera and into the FOV of the camera in the front.

C2 is wider but as the M1 lacks user selectable metering modes, I think I'll stick to the M2. Tried Centre-weighted and Centre-spot as well, Multi-spot works better.

Looks better in the day too. Will share a day clip tomorrow (once I'm alone in the car).
 
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