What Are the Most Important Dash Cam Features?

[arcticfire]

Here's a screenshot from the Durite front camera. I would rate it as simply acceptable and it does the job, the bitrate is 1388Kbps. I can't imagine it would be all that difficult for decent 1080p to be achieved if demand was there.

 

[arcticfire]

Anted was the Chinese company I had previously sourced. Here's their mobile DVRs: http://www.antedcctv.com/en/HDD-Mobile-DVR.html

Day Footage here:

Night Footage here:

 

[jokiin]

these types of DVR's have been around longer than dashcams have

 

[arcticfire]

these types of DVR's have been around longer than dashcams have

Aye but I'm sure it was primarily D1 quality, I remember finding it very difficult to find 720p never mind 1080p! Why do you reckon there's not much of a consumer market for these? I'm guessing because they are more complex to install as opposed to plug in to the 12V socket and away you go, but I do seem to be seeing increased demand for such online?

 

[jokiin]

Aye but I'm sure it was primarily D1 quality, I remember finding it very difficult to find 720p never mind 1080p! Why do you reckon there's not much of a consumer market for these? I'm guessing because they are more complex to install as opposed to plug in to the 12V socket and away you go, but I do seem to be seeing increased demand for such online?

they're primarily a fleet market type product, trucks, buses etc, not really designed for consumer use

 

[arcticfire]

they're primarily a fleet market type product, trucks, buses etc, not really designed for consumer use

I think we may have discussed this a long time ago but would it really be that hard for a dash cam to have a USB3 connection to an external hard drive rather than use an SD card? Would it be able to support the data rates required?

 

[jokiin]

I think we may have discussed this a long time ago but would it really be that hard for a dash cam to have a USB3 connection to an external hard drive rather than use an SD card? Would it be able to support the data rates required?

nothings impossible, the impossible just takes longer and costs more

 

[Dashmellow]

nothings impossible, the impossible just takes longer and costs more

Would the chipsets in a typical dash cam support a USB connection to an external drive? Would the supplied SDKs accommodate such a feature?

 

[jokiin]

Would the chipsets in a typical dash cam support a USB connection to an external drive? Would the supplied SDKs accommodate such a feature?

technically it would be possible with a few different chipsets, to be feasible you would likely have to decide on and work with a known USB driver/hard drive combo to have the appropriate drivers to make it work, supporting any USB drive is probably a challenge, not sure that kind of support is available, some of the problem with that as I'm sure you'd appreciate is that even if you decide on which hardware to use that stuff can change over time as well when hard drive manufacturers etc update their products, there's a lot more possible combinations than there is with just using flash memory

 

[Dashmellow]

Thanks for the explanation. From what you say it sounds like the best approach then would be to build a dedicated SSD directly into the camera, but perhaps one that could be removed and replaced with a spare.

 

[jokiin]

Thanks for the explanation. From what you say it sounds like the best approach then would be to build a dedicated SSD directly into the camera, but perhaps one that could be removed and replaced with a spare.

yeah something with an M.2 drive or similar is possibly a better approach, would eliminate the USB related issues with trying to do something external

 

[SawMaster]

That "Durite" is good for 720p vids but we're several steps further along now I think that is a large part of why such systems haven't become popular with the usual dashcam market: We want high-res vids and we can have that without spending the amount of money that system costs

Phil

 

[arcticfire]

Thanks for the explanation. From what you say it sounds like the best approach then would be to build a dedicated SSD directly into the camera, but perhaps one that could be removed and replaced with a spare.

That would be good but would this make the cam too big? I was thinking that by being able to run just a USB cable the ssd could be located elsewhere separately?

 

[jokiin]

That would be good but would this make the cam too big? I was thinking that by being able to run just a USB cable the ssd could be located elsewhere separately?

anything with a hard drive would be more suited as a hideaway unit so size is a bit less of an issue, for practical purposes you couldn't have a USB hard drive close enough to a regular camera in a lot of cases anyway

 

[arcticfire]

I don't know much about storage interfaces but would it be all that difficult? I thinking of sd card readers how they read from an SD card to usb 3 so could the interface in this be used somehow and the card bypassed?

 

[jokiin]

It's not about being impossible, just about being impractical

 

[arcticfire]

It's not about being impossible, just about being impractical

As in physically or from a cost point of view, or both?!

 

[arcticfire]

Here's similar to what I'm thinking, instead of the sd card the wires would go straight to sd interface in the cam. I'm not sure if controllers are needed though at the ssd side or if it's built in?

 

[Dashmellow]

That would be good but would this make the cam too big? I was thinking that by being able to run just a USB cable the ssd could be located elsewhere separately?

I agree with @jokiin that a dash cam with a hard drive would be best suited to a hide away "base station" remote lens camera. On the other hand, there are already some rather small (1.8") SATA SSD drives available that could conceivably be incorporated into typical dash cam form factor product without adding too much bulk. As SATA drives they could be built in a "cartridge" form factor that would be swappable into a slot not unlike a memory card.

 

[Nigel]

Is 2.9GB/s fast enough for a quad 4K camera?
If so then lets just use UFS cards instead of micro SD cards, they use less power for longer parking mode too...

What is UFS 3.0?
UFS Stands for Universal Flash Storage. It is an ultra small storage chip similar to a micro-SD card with a performance equivalent to an SSD drive. According to Samsung, the first UFS v1 standard was published by JEDEC on March 29, 2016. Since then, several iterations of UFS cards have been published, including UFS 2.0, 2.1. UFS 3.0 is the latest iteration of state-of-the-art performance storage chips. UFS 3.0 storage was supposed to debut on Samsung Galaxy Fold, but it will make its market debut in the One Plus 7 Pro.

Samsung revealed at the end of last year that UFS 3.0 would deliver more than double the bandwidth as its predecessor (UFS 2.1), going up to 2.9GB/s. UFS 3.0 modules also consume less power, making it a win-win.