4-Channel setup for full 360/side coverage (car park dings?)

BertUK

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I've found a few threads asking similar questions but wondered if technology had moved on at all and if there was now a better/ideal solution for my requirements.

What I'm looking for is:-

- Front/rear (standard) high-quality loop recording with a proper parking mode (G-sensor activated)
- Side coverage for when parked (motion activated), primarily to detect car park damages
- Cloud upload is not essential but would be a perk
- Wi-Fi access to all cameras
- All cameras to be hard-wired and not require manual changing of batteries/battery packs

Note: Temperatures are generally not an issue in my climate so heat concerns haven't come into my thinking yet.

My intention is to achieve good quality footage for my own protection while driving, but also protect against damage (particularly car park dings) when I'm not near the car.

I have a Viofo A129 Duo Pro 4k that I am yet to take out of the box. Before I fit this, I want to ensure it's a good starting point before I add the side cameras and there isn't a more suitable option for me.

My rough plan is:-

- Add another 2ch system for the side cameras with cheaper/lower quality cameras so I don't break the bank. Mounted on the rear-quarter windows, angled slightly forward
- Fit a Cellink B or similar to provide the necessary power for the above, for long parked periods
- Possibly fit a hard-wired mobile hotspot to facilitate cloud uploading regardless of proximity to home WiFi (this is not essential and down the bottom of my list)

Ideally, these side cameras will not be recording constantly but will only start when motion is detected. The plan being that it would take a long time to fill up the SD card(s) if I happen to leave my car in a car park for 3 weeks and want to review footage from day 1. <Decided that this is not important for me

If I get back to my car and find damage, I want to know that the proof of what happened will be

a) Present on 1 or more SD cards (i.e a reliable parking mode)
b) Easily accessible and logically stored

It's not essential for me that I have cloud-based access or push alerts unless the camera can upload footage of a car/camera theft in progress, in which case this would be a welcome addition but not a deal-breaker.

If anybody has this kind of setup (or similar) working reliably I would be very appreciative of any info, tips and advice of which products to go for.

Thanks in advance
 
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...Ideally, these side cameras will not be recording constantly but will only start when motion is detected. The plan being that it would take a long time to fill up the SD card(s) if I happen to leave my car in a car park for 3 weeks and want to review footage from day 1...
This will be a problem for you. Even if not recording the camera has to be active in order to detect motion and uses power in the process. Anything more than a couple of days is out of the question for any standard auto battery, or any standalone battery system.
 
This will be a problem for you. Even if not recording the camera has to be active in order to detect motion and uses power in the process. Anything more than a couple of days is out of the question for any standard auto battery, or any standalone battery system.

Ok thanks, more to think about then. So even with a low bit-rate (possibly low FPS) pair of side cameras and a large battery backup, we would be talking days at most?

The reason I'm more interested in motion sensor activation for the side cameras is that I expect a door ding is unlikely to set off a G sensor, and even if it does, the event would have already passed?

The 2/3 week scenario is a very rare one and 99% of the time I would never leave the car for more than 24 hours, so I guess I can put that down the bottom of my priority list also.
 
For that long you will need a substantial upgrade to your battery capacity if you want to run a couple of cameras, and you would also need to be looking at the larger memory cards, maybe not the very largest ( 1000 Gb / 1 Tb )

I am not quite sure how it works in current cameras in regard to parking mode, i would personally prefer to record all the time with low bitrate, but then also have G-sensor going in the background to lock events it detect in the Read Only folder.
Cuz the constant low bitrate recording i assume just end up on the memory card as the regular recordings, and so are not in a locked up state, so if something have happened you have a lot of footage to look over if you have a week worth of footage to look over to find the actual event.

I am looking forward to trying parking guard myself, but my need are only the the 1 hour or so my shopping take, at home i have CCTV so don't need parking guard there.

TBH i also feel that in regard to door dings, side cameras aimed down the side of the car are best, cuz cameras just aimed out of the side window like i have don't really have what transpire very close to the car in frame.


Of course you could deploy even wider angle lenses on the side cameras, i have also been contemplating this option but i have not yet pulled the trigger.
 
Thanks very much for your reply.

For that long you will need a substantial upgrade to your battery capacity if you want to run a couple of cameras, and you would also need to be looking at the larger memory cards, maybe not the very largest ( 1000 Gb / 1 Tb )

I've decided the long-term recording isn't a priority at all so I've scrubbed this from my requirements.

I am not quite sure how it works in current cameras in regard to parking mode, i would personally prefer to record all the time with low bitrate, but then also have G-sensor going in the background to lock events it detect in the Read Only folder.
Cuz the constant low bitrate recording i assume just end up on the memory card as the regular recordings, and so are not in a locked up state, so if something have happened you have a lot of footage to look over if you have a week worth of footage to look over to find the actual event.

I am looking forward to trying parking guard myself, but my need are only the the 1 hour or so my shopping take, at home i have CCTV so don't need parking guard there.

The low bit-rate recording and a separate folder for significant events would be useful for me. Ideally the recordings wouldn't actually be saved unless motion, at least, was detected.

TBH i also feel that in regard to door dings, side cameras aimed down the side of the car are best, cuz cameras just aimed out of the side window like i have don't really have what transpire very close to the car in frame.


Of course you could deploy even wider angle lenses on the side cameras, i have also been contemplating this option but i have not yet pulled the trigger.

Thanks for the video. Is that your setup? The coverage looks good. From some info I've seen, if I use wide-angle cameras and angle them forward from the back quarter window, I should get coverage very close to the car, certainly enough to see a hard bump with a door if it causes damage. Not sure if this would quality as absolute proof though if I were to try and do an insurance claim without actually seeing the exact location on the door that the other driver hit.


The parking mode is the most important thing for me (to be reliable). I've read some bad things about the A129 Pro Duo parking mode but it's unclear to me if they are now fixed with recent firmware updates.

I'd rather the camera wasn't constantly recording as I assume this will shorten the life of the SD cards and my car battery, but I would rather they were doing that than to miss something.

I also understand that the A129 can take up to 5 mins to enter parking mode if it's being run from a battery bank rather than the car battery. This isn't ideal but hopefully, I'm wrong.

I'm considering returning this camera and perhaps going for the new Thinkware U1000 for my main camera with a cheaper dual setup for the sides, so I'm hoping for some suggestions on which kit to buy that will be reliable for my needs. It seems the Thinkware will only record to the card if it detects motion, combined with standard G-sensor activation also. This seems perfect to me, but the cam is expensive. If I can achieve the same results with a cheaper setup (i.e what I have already!) then that would be great.
 
Thats the footage from 4 of the cameras in my car, the 2 systems are SG9663DC front and rear, and the K2S system i was sent to tests on do the Left and Right windows as it have the smallest camera units and are a dual remote kind of system with both cameras on a wire ( more of this kind of system will come to market soon )

ATM the only way to get a 4 channel system and it being sensible to work with ( not having 4 single or a dual + 2 single cameras ) are the best option to go for, and really you need a dual remote style of system to do the side windows, my cameras are mounted on a small static piece of glass on the back part of my rear doors, i also have the same fixed piece of glass on my front doors, but there it is on the front of the door and right outside are the side mirror that will take up some of the frame if i put a camera there.

I describe my install of the side system here.

We will probably see worth while 4 channel systems in the next couple of years, but i find a 4 channel setup made up of 2 systems are fine too, at least you don't have to run around and retrieve memory cards in single cameras like i and others have done for years.
The way i am set up now i can reach the 2 memory cards in the 2 systems from my driver seat.

If you use 2 similar systems, and power then from the same circuit in the car they should bots start up at the same time and so the footage be in sync too, something i have to tweak a little now as i use 2 different systems.
Just something to be mindful about if you like to go this route. ( not a big deal as you can always tweeak sync in post production,,,, my video software support multi cam sync to sound with a click of a button.

That said it is rare i use footage from my side cameras in my youtube uploads, and my one crash ( rear ending ) and the 1 crash i witnesses first hand was in front of me or behind me.
The side system are just there cus,,,,,,, well i am a dashcam addict.

Motion detect for parking are a bit problematic as it often detect every little motion in front of the cameras, so that lead to a lot of false "positives" recordings, and the additional radar the U 1000 system have i am not sure it better this much ( so far i have just heard of 1 guy in here going that route )
When i get to sample parking guard with the next batch of test cameras i will only use low bitrate always recording as i only need parking guard for the 1 hour or less i do my shopping, at home i have CCTV from my apartment on the car parked in the back yard.
so i will use low bitrate always record on front and rear camera for parking mode, and then have a 1 hour timer to shut off and save my car battery from unwanted load, and i can always change the 1 hour to something else if i need that one day, the low voltage cut off in the hardware kit will ensure i don't run my car battery too low ( stay over 12.2 volts for cut of voltage )

I would like to have G sensor armed while parking too, just to provide a time mark to where a significant event have been, so i don't have to sit and watch a lot of footage to find the event in among the low bitrate recordings.
But i am not sure that's a option or actually doable with current hardware.
 
I should maybe say, that the reason i will not be using parking guard on side cameras are i am not as attached to my car as its just a means of transport and it can do that just fine with a few small dents.
BUT ! i should maybe do that if i was sane, cuz due to taxes on cars here, my little Suzuki that i assume cost < 6000 GBP in the UK well in Denmark i paid +12000 GBP for that stupid little car, so all things being normal i should maybe be extra vigilant about my precious little expensive car,,,,,, but i am not.

So i will just do parking guard on the front and rear system, which is where all offenders approach or leave, and if it is really bad probably also there the big dent will be.
And don't get me wrong i do not want vandals to get off for free, it is one of the reasons i have dashcams in my car, but i also have to keep my feet on the ground, and not go beyond what little my pension allow me to do.
And i also have other hobbies than dashcams,,,,,, which due to my "status" i think you could say, fortunately i been having a steady free supply off dashcams in the past years.
Still if i was to do long time parking guard, i would have to do something about the micro battery in my car, and i would have to drive more to keep a charge.
It is only every 3-4 days i do any significant kind of driving, other than that its just a 1-2 Km drive to do some shopping or get a pizza to eat.
 
I can confirm the U1000 radar module I installed works great to avoid false positive as it detect also people when close by about 1-2m and then wake up the cam but the radar only cover front.
I think Dashcam are bit slow to innovation and motion detection should be better , Blackvue by instance propose motion region detection which is a pretty handy (my Thinkware u1000 start recording everytime my car alarm led is blinking...)
Dashcam makers should innovate more and see what Logitech is doing with their security cams (the circle 2) image is crisp clear and they have algorithm that detect movement if animals, human and exclude foliage or pixel micro movement I have 0 false positives.
 
Well dashcams as in recorders of events in traffic, have been fully developed for a long time, it is just that now people also expect to have wifi there too, cloud thing / APP thing too and i am amazed no one have complained about instant upload to social media.
I will agree that dashcams role as CCTV cameras in parking mode could be better.

Personally i would take a dumb dashcam with better image quality over a smart dashcam with less good image quality. maybe that's due to my intense dislike for wifi and APP or anything that remind me of smartphone which i dislike the most of all "new" things in the world of technology.

AND ! i am aware it is me that are strange, or at least not like the rest of the world,,,,, and that is just fine i like to be truly different.

It is cool in CCTV that you now have shape detection, so a camera that can track and zoom, will do that on a human but not a cow or a dog that walk by in the same place.
The old dumb CCTV camera i had on my car was also able to not alert on little things like a cat or a hedgehog or something close to my car, but if a human got near it the alarm would go off.

Dashcams are not on the agenda with the SOC makers, so we just have to settle with the left overs of CCTV or action camera SOCs, and in action camera SOCs at least there are little innovation and also little competition.

If dashcams was a 2 - 5 X larger market, things would probably change, but for now it is skipped and change from simple action camera SOC and jump strait to autonomous car SOC that are able to do many smart things.
Just look at the drone market, and how things have changed there from the stupid phantom 1 to the skydio 2 today, and from 0 camera's on the phantom to seven 4k cameras where the main filming camera do that in 4K/60 HDR on the Skydio 2.
 
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4k cameras aren't the best choice for parking mode, they're power hungry and generate a lot of heat

Happy to have a reduced quality/bit-rate during parking mode, on the assumption that power/heat would be reduced proportionately
 
I’ve been looking at SG cams but they no longer appear to be easily available in the UK?

I do look after the UK market (2-3 days courier delivery). For more info you may PM me.
 
Thats the footage from 4 of the cameras in my car, the 2 systems are SG9663DC front and rear, and the K2S system i was sent to tests on do the Left and Right windows as it have the smallest camera units and are a dual remote kind of system with both cameras on a wire ( more of this kind of system will come to market soon )

ATM the only way to get a 4 channel system and it being sensible to work with ( not having 4 single or a dual + 2 single cameras ) are the best option to go for, and really you need a dual remote style of system to do the side windows, my cameras are mounted on a small static piece of glass on the back part of my rear doors, i also have the same fixed piece of glass on my front doors, but there it is on the front of the door and right outside are the side mirror that will take up some of the frame if i put a camera there.

I describe my install of the side system here.

We will probably see worth while 4 channel systems in the next couple of years, but i find a 4 channel setup made up of 2 systems are fine too, at least you don't have to run around and retrieve memory cards in single cameras like i and others have done for years.
The way i am set up now i can reach the 2 memory cards in the 2 systems from my driver seat.

Thanks for explaining that - it's interesting and might be the way to go for me. The costs do really add up when you add the extra battery (or 2!) but I guess I have to decide if it's worth the cost of repair(s) in the event of damage while I'm not with the car.

If you use 2 similar systems, and power then from the same circuit in the car they should bots start up at the same time and so the footage be in sync too, something i have to tweak a little now as i use 2 different systems.
Just something to be mindful about if you like to go this route. ( not a big deal as you can always tweeak sync in post production,,,, my video software support multi cam sync to sound with a click of a button.

I'm not too worried about synchronisation, as long as I actually have the footage. I'm more than happy to trawl through whatever I need to find an incident.

Motion detect for parking are a bit problematic as it often detect every little motion in front of the cameras, so that lead to a lot of false "positives" recordings, and the additional radar the U 1000 system have i am not sure it better this much ( so far i have just heard of 1 guy in here going that route )
When i get to sample parking guard with the next batch of test cameras i will only use low bitrate always recording as i only need parking guard for the 1 hour or less i do my shopping, at home i have CCTV from my apartment on the car parked in the back yard.
so i will use low bitrate always record on front and rear camera for parking mode, and then have a 1 hour timer to shut off and save my car battery from unwanted load, and i can always change the 1 hour to something else if i need that one day, the low voltage cut off in the hardware kit will ensure i don't run my car battery too low ( stay over 12.2 volts for cut of voltage )

Yeah I'm really interested in the parking mode side of things. The radar sounds really interesting, as my understanding is that it allows the camera to operate in a very low state of power drawer and "wake it up" for 20 seconds. I'm looking into this now. The trouble, of course, is that this would not be able to "wake up" the side camera also. I'm really looking foward to somebody releasing a modular system where additional cameras can be added to the same system.
 
For a while i have been talking about a system that had some form of bus, so you could daisy chain several cameras systems, and maybe a alarm together on one bus.
That way you could get 1 thing at the time, for instance front and rear cameras, and then later add 2 more cameras for the side without needing to also hard wire that, and in the and you could put a alarm.
And that's about all the gadgets i could come up with that could benefit from working together, i see no need to tie in say a entertainment system, that might as well sit on its own, and are pretty much stock these days in cars.

Running parking guard on 4 cameras i feel will take up too much power, so i would only run the front and rear camera, which should be fine for the big stuff, and not so useful for parking lot door dings.
 
I made my own 4 channel with Two 2 channel. They work great and are in sync so no need to worry about timing. Description has more links to different sample videos like parking mode.

 
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I want to end up with the same thing, but so far I haven't managed to get a decent 360 working to my satisfaction.

A pair of A129 Duo's might work good, but I have had a few issues which meant my A129 is now sitting in a box.
Currently I run a mini 0906 front and back, and 2 b1w's in the side.

But even with this there are still issues.. The mini 0906 timelapse modes are a bit rubbish (not enough frames to capture something), and the motion detection is only on the front camera. Plus the motion detection is very sensitive.

I am running the low-bitrate beta firmware on the b1w's. I can just get 8hours of footage (just enough) on a 32GB card. I use a powerbank to power these. (swap the powerbank over every 2 days). However, they badly interfere with any gps and I am worried they may prevent my tracker getting a good signal if the car is stolen.

I think the K2S might be a good solution for side cameras, but I am nervous to buy yet another dashcam to find out it interferes with the GPS
 
32 Gb very low i would not use less than 64GB, i would not use smaller than 128 GB for a dual system.
I think your car must have a sensitive GPS, using the B1W i never noticed any interference with other dashcams or GPS in Phone / tablet for navigation.
 
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