$100 budget, dual dash cam -- possible?

[semantics]

don't really care about video quality as long as it's not reminiscent of my motorola razr from 2004. i live in LA, just want to have evidence in case i get hit while parked or driving. doesn't need to have all the bells and whistles.

only requirement is i can't have wires running all over the place, any idea how much to pay for installation? thank you friends.

 

[jokiin]

blacksys is about your only option, decent front cam, not a great rear cam but your budget is a limiting factor

 

[semantics]

how much would i need to raise my budget before the increase in quality is worth the price difference?

 

[semantics]

jokiin and others, would i be better off buying two separate cameras, one for front, one for back? if so what would you recommend keeping price in mind?

 

[jokiin]

jokiin and others, would i be better off buying two separate cameras, one for front, one for back? if so what would you recommend keeping price in mind?

keeping price in mind I'd say you'd be better off buying just one reasonable camera for the front rather than two poor quality ones, and maybe add a second camera for the rear when the budget allows

 

[niko]

while parked

If you want dashcam to record while parked, you need to think of two options:
1. daschams which are hardwired and have prebuffer recording.
2. non-prebuffer ( constant recording ), but in this case you need to look for high capacity memory cards like 200GB which will give you about 25h constant recording before overwriting.
Also you need to think about battery discharge prevention device.

Taking into consideration your wish to have 2channel which would be useful for parking recording, pre-buffer motion detection, I would think closest to your budget would be Blacksys SF-100 like @jokiin mentioned, but you also need to buy a battery discharge prevention device which is about 35-40usd.

You need to decide if you really need good parking mode recording, or not. Good pre-buffer parking mode recording 1ch dashcams are usually +70+100usd more expencive than similar non pre-buffer parking mode dashcams.

 

[SawMaster]

I think you'd do best forgetting the rear cam for now and get a better front cam, since almost everything you need to protect against while driving happens there. LA summer heat means you'll want a capacitor-powered cam; batteries won't last long there. You need a quality SD card which many cams do not include. If you can install a GPS, you can install a dashcam, they're essentially almost plug and play. Hardwiring can be trickier but we can walk you through that. Hiding wires is pretty simple, but the factory PS cable may not be long enough. That may mean getting a separate PS and longer cable. Parking mode doesn't work well with cheaper cams due to start-up delays of a few critical seconds, and pre-buffered cams will exceed your budget.

If you really must have a dual cam, the Blacksys is about your only decent budget oriented choice. It comes with a smaller SD card and everything needed to do the average install. It's pretty good but some have been reported to have died a year or two down the road. Same as anything else, you don't get what you don't pay for which is why I think you'll be better off putting your money into one better front cam. Later on you can do a rear cam, or upgrade the front cam and use the old cam in back.

Phil

 

[semantics]

Thanks everyone. Sorry to resurrect this old thread.

If I were getting just one camera for the front, what would you recommend? Anything that has capacitator-power, pre-buffers to record while parked, and can be easily hardwired with invisible wiring? I'd also like to easily view my recordings. Let's say $100 is not a hard budget, just a hope, but $150 is. What's my best option?