SgtRemo
New Member
I wanted 360 coverage and just don't trust Viofo to last and I'm going for max reliability and redundancy here within a budget, so buying 2 blackvue systems were out.
I added little heatsinks to the mini 2's and like how they all sync if there is an event or I trigger one via the button or voice command. (i.e. I push the button on the front one, and all 4 of them respond & record the event and save it.) So far the app has worked alright, sometimes it'll show one of the cams not connected, but it's strange that I can still live view it. I am not sure what Garmin is doing to have these autosync to each other for events, are they pairing to each other via bluetooth or wifi? For example if I hit the event button on the front cam, how do the other 3 instantly know I pushed it? It seems pretty easy to download an event to your phone via the app and use the TRIM/PIP function which I think is pretty cool. I also have wifi at the office and at home within range so the vault clips upload periodically, I'm just using the free tier on this.
I have them hooked up to always on power using the cigarette adapters and (I have 2 of these in my car that are always on -one up front and one in back). I am not interested in multiple $300+ dashcam batteries from neolink/blackvue so I replaced my measly 520 CCA factory battery with a 800 CCA/140min RC Duracell AGM ($179). I am debating using parking guard versus just disabling that and leaving them record 24/7. From what I'm seeing on the draw the mini's 2 use about 1.75watts or less, so take that 4X and I think that puts me at around 48 hours to get my AGM battery to 50%, and I will be testing this further. May use a Rhundo to cutoff the cams if the voltage drops too low. I'm already using my OBD port for something else so the Garmin adapter for that is a no go. I am also using Sandisk high endurance 128GB ~$20 on Amazon. (Which kinda tricked me as these were in exFAT and needed to be formatted in FAT32 before the Garmin would recognize them. Used a freeware AOMEI partition assistant on windows 10 to accomplish that since windows 10 did not want to.)
I hope Garmin adds some more functionality to the cams like turning off the beeps (or at least lowering the volume), and a remote live view enhancement would be nice via your home or hotspot wifi. Right now the remote live view only works if you wifi directly to the cam itself from your phone. I mean come on, the cams can use home/hotspot wifi to upload clips to the vault so why not build in the remote view this way also? I would actually subscribe to the vault service if it had this.
So for around $800, (4 mini 2's, 1 CPL on front cam, 4 SD Cards, 1 upgraded AGM car battery) I have 360 coverage, redundancy, & 48hrs of parking recording.
I added little heatsinks to the mini 2's and like how they all sync if there is an event or I trigger one via the button or voice command. (i.e. I push the button on the front one, and all 4 of them respond & record the event and save it.) So far the app has worked alright, sometimes it'll show one of the cams not connected, but it's strange that I can still live view it. I am not sure what Garmin is doing to have these autosync to each other for events, are they pairing to each other via bluetooth or wifi? For example if I hit the event button on the front cam, how do the other 3 instantly know I pushed it? It seems pretty easy to download an event to your phone via the app and use the TRIM/PIP function which I think is pretty cool. I also have wifi at the office and at home within range so the vault clips upload periodically, I'm just using the free tier on this.
I have them hooked up to always on power using the cigarette adapters and (I have 2 of these in my car that are always on -one up front and one in back). I am not interested in multiple $300+ dashcam batteries from neolink/blackvue so I replaced my measly 520 CCA factory battery with a 800 CCA/140min RC Duracell AGM ($179). I am debating using parking guard versus just disabling that and leaving them record 24/7. From what I'm seeing on the draw the mini's 2 use about 1.75watts or less, so take that 4X and I think that puts me at around 48 hours to get my AGM battery to 50%, and I will be testing this further. May use a Rhundo to cutoff the cams if the voltage drops too low. I'm already using my OBD port for something else so the Garmin adapter for that is a no go. I am also using Sandisk high endurance 128GB ~$20 on Amazon. (Which kinda tricked me as these were in exFAT and needed to be formatted in FAT32 before the Garmin would recognize them. Used a freeware AOMEI partition assistant on windows 10 to accomplish that since windows 10 did not want to.)
I hope Garmin adds some more functionality to the cams like turning off the beeps (or at least lowering the volume), and a remote live view enhancement would be nice via your home or hotspot wifi. Right now the remote live view only works if you wifi directly to the cam itself from your phone. I mean come on, the cams can use home/hotspot wifi to upload clips to the vault so why not build in the remote view this way also? I would actually subscribe to the vault service if it had this.
So for around $800, (4 mini 2's, 1 CPL on front cam, 4 SD Cards, 1 upgraded AGM car battery) I have 360 coverage, redundancy, & 48hrs of parking recording.
I did have one failure to start on the hottest day after work. Swapped the power from the 57 which was working but no go. Went back to the original powering and still nada. 15 minutes later when I got home unplugging and re-plugging the cam got it going. 6 other cams had no issues then or ever in the same heat or higher. Make of it what you will, I'm still planning to do a measured heat test when I can get access to the functioning of this cam so I can set up parking mode.
