4G LTE Built-in Dash Cam

DJ Baek

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Hi I am DJ, just started work at a dash cam manufacturing company and have one question about 4G LTE module.
I was able to find some of dash cams have 4G LTE module embedded for a passenger car but have not seen any dash cams for commercial uses such as a truck, bus or taxi having a 4G LTE built-in module.
For those, dash cam only support 4G LTE with a dongle or external 4G LTE modem.
Are there any engineering reasons to separate the 4G LTE module from dash cam device?

It would be appreciated if anybody reply.

Thanks
 
they would usually want to separate them as it's easier for compliance, you can using an existing dongle which is already approved for sale and not have to worry about the regulatory stuff, another reason is it can make it easier to work in multiple markets where different telco formats are used, just use the device appropriate to that market
 
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Having a camera accessible via 4G and maybe cloud storage, and me not really driving a lot ( dont even drive daily ) that would still entail me needing a data plan.
So while i dont drive much i think i will need a plan with 200 Gb at least, and that will cost me a additional 50 USD every month ( same i pay for my 160/70 mbit cable connection at home )
And if you add cloud storage and that probably having a prize too, then it will get too expensive for this little old Dane.
And 200 Gb would not cut it if the car/ camera should be accessible or steaming all the time, not even sure a 1 Tb data plan could cover that.
People driving a lot every day i can easy see using 32 Gb every day if they wanted to store their driving in the cloud, that will be huge in the time of a month.

But even if i wanted a AP in my car ( other than what my phone can easy provide for normal non camera related stuff ) then i just cant see the need for a camera like that, and surely i can find better things to use 50 USD on every month.

As is i use 2 Gb/mo on the 20 Gb/mo plan i have for my phone, same for the talking part, i think i talk on the phone 2 - 3 hours /mo and my plan give me 30 hours, + i get 300 hours to other users of same provider, so i could more or less be on the phone with my friend 10 hours every day if i wanted to, and since he have the same he could phone me the other 10 hours every day and so we could almost talk to each other all the time every day.

But no doubt a camera like that would sell, many people in here have asked for something like that.
 
Thanks~! It helped me a lot to understand the system.
 
But even if i wanted a AP in my car ( other than what my phone can easy provide for normal non camera related stuff ) then i just cant see the need for a camera like that, (...)
Me neither. Sometimes I get the impression these people think uploading Full HD files (or above) is the same as accessing (anti)social media, uploading photos or sending text messages. Not to mention the stress it causes to the camera's hardware and the card.
 
Today i have been contemplating having a T shirt made for the summer, so on the front should be some stab at social media users and on the back it should say "i get 5 days of operation on 1 charge of my phone"

Though it is rare i dont go driving for 5 days and so i do most often charge more often than that, but its not i like i need it, i have just made a habit of docking my phone in the car when i go for a drive.

Just read this today "Nokia rumored to be working on penta-camera smartphone"

Just silly if you ask me :rolleyes:
 
There's also another big limitation: in most countries (if not all) 4G contracts have traffic caps, usually related with the stability of the network. Here in Portugal it's 15GB/month total (downloads and uploads) and when this limit is exceeded they cut down the client's speeds to 1MB/s or less until the beginning of the following month. I don't drive as much as some people but nevertheless I average between 50 and 70GB of files a month.
 
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We don't have caps here on most plans but once you go over your limit (which might only be a few gigabyte per month) they start charging, typically around $10 per gigabyte or part thereof
 
No caps here either, and you can get 250 Gb plans, or have your entire family on a collective plan with a massive shared amount of data traffic.
One of the providers even offer a free speech + data +text + MMS so pretty much uncapped everything, but the prize for such a subscription are still 3 X more than what i pay for my 20 Gb data + 20 Hour speech ( + 600 hour speech to same provider numbers ) + free text + free MMS.
But its still a additional cost, so i might get a lower and cheaper plan for my phone, but i would still have to get another plan / SIM card for the camera, and some way of saving stuff either in cloud or harddrive and so the latter also putting a load on my home network.

But even the largest data plans will be under hard pressure if you are going to steam all your driving for one or maybe two cameras, and i dont even dare to think what it would cost in cloud storage or how often you would have to put a new HDD in your NAS box if you was able to save to your private "cloud"

I can only see this being usable in relation to a car alarm, so when you get a alarm from your car ( on your phone ) you can at once go to live view and maybe do other things then.
The wanting to save all and everything from a camera is just a misunderstood property of the dashcams by what i lovingly call "wifi addicts", and to me it would be totally useless with the advent of hidden main units with large storage.

But no doubt if you could make it some people would probably buy it, but personally i cant see the reason to do it and i will not pay the prize for such a additional data plan when the one i have attached to my phone are plenty for my general data needs when mobile.
 
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We're not talking about the same thing: you're talking about data plans (for mobiles, for instance), I'm talking about a 4G-based internet-only contract with a SIM card which, from what I understood, is what the OP is aiming at.
 
We're not talking about the same thing: you're talking about data plans (for mobiles, for instance), I'm talking about a 4G-based internet-only contract with a SIM card which, from what I understood, is what the OP is aiming at.

you can get broadband only plans here but they are also restrictive and have the same types of limitations as the mobile plans, neither would be cost effective for this type of setup
 
True i was looking at mobile plans and not the "clean" mobile data plans, cuz the phone plans are actually cheaper and it is the only place where you can get uncapped flat rate plan with no extra charge if your data go thru the "roof"
I assume you can use such a phone plan SIM in a WIFI mobile router too ?

The clean data plans max out at 200 and in a few cases 250 Gb, and while i think thats plenty for a pesons moobile data plan, then i have my doubts if you are going to be steaming video over that modem all the time, or at least all the time you are driving, and factoring in the person would drive around 3 hours daily ( i think thats a fair average amount for commuting to from work and what ever on the side )

I dont get why the phone data plans are cheaper, after all you get speech and MMS/txt on top of the data, sure there are also many more mobile phone users than mobile data users, but in general to me its the same.

The flatrate plan i mention while it is aimed at phone it even have free 6Gb/Mo data in the EU as per the newest rules cranked out by the EU and providers having to deal with.
 
you can get broadband only plans here but they are also restrictive and have the same types of limitations as the mobile plans, neither would be cost effective for this type of setup
I don't know how 4G works in the potential markets for this camera but that's pretty much what I've been trying to say.
 
I assume you can use such a phone plan SIM in a WIFI mobile router too ?
Over here, no. Each SIM card has a number and you can't have a broadband service with a number that's also used for calls and texts.
 
I assume you can use such a phone plan SIM in a WIFI mobile router too ?
Over here, no. Each SIM card has a number and you can't have a broadband service with a number that's also used for calls and texts.
We have a mix here, some are locked to a particular service type, others can work either way, none are really cost effective for the potential usage from this type of device though
 
okay, just go to prove this Celluar thing are of very little interest to me, i would just think you just forgo using voice - TXT and MMS if you use the SIM from a phone plan in a wifi router.

One of the providers pages i was on yesterday a chat box popped up and at once some guy tried to sell me something, i dicked around with him for a little while before i said " i have 20 - 20 ( data GB - hour speech ) for 90 Dkkr / Mo you guys sell the same for 149 DKkr :giggle: why the hell would i want to pay 60 kr more for something i use 5% of every month.

But it was the same guys that had the flat rate plan for 199 DKkr/Mo, not bad as it also include a lot of garbage i would never use like E-books - newspaper & magazines - Tivoli in Copenhagen - and Friheden in Aarhus thats also a amusement park like Tivoli in Copenhagen.
To be honest i dislike when they bundle stuff like that, cuz i am pretty much always on the outside of people wanting those services.
 
To be honest i dislike when they bundle stuff like that, cuz i am pretty much always on the outside of people wanting those services.
It's called "creating solutions for needs that don't exist, therefore creating the needs". They assume everybody needs/wants all those things in the bundle, much like the dangerously growing assumption that everybody has or has to have a dumbphone.
 
Or a social media account
 
I'm on completely unlimited plan (voice, txt, lte data) and still find no use to upload all the video from camera to cloud. On my setup all 20 second videos saved by remote trigger are automatically downloaded to phone when camera is connected to phone via wifi. From the phone those files are automatically uploaded to cloud storage services which
auto synchronize with my computers.
 
saving events i can do with, that sound like a reasonable thing to do " if you can get the event thing to work for you, which seem problematic with many dashcams "
But there are many people over time asking for steaming all the time, and i assume saving it too in a cloud or at home, and to me that just seem silly at least for normal users.

Your system sound elaborate, though i always dock my phone in the car when i go driving, but it is rare i have its WIFI on i must admit as i dont really like wifi.
But for sure these things like dashcam start to record with key on, should be automatic to prevent human error.
 
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