Packetfire
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2017
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- United States
After looking at a half-dozen different dashcams, I can't find a unit that does not force the user to keep buying microSD cards forever.
What is needed is an internal RAM buffer for roughly 20 minutes of video and audio. As the car moves down the road, this buffer can be overwritten in 5-minute segments, so at any one time, one has the most recent 15 mins of video.
Now, something happens - an accelerometer triggering indent (accident collision) or the driver presses a button, because he just got pulled over by the cops. THIS is when the contents of the RAM should be saved to the microSD card, thus saving the prior 15 mins of video. If the button is held down for a bit, perhaps the unit continues to write to the microSD until it is manually stopped with another button press.
But driving is a lot like parking mode - most of the time, the video is of no interest, and need not even be written to the microSD. If not written, it is not overwritten, and wear on the mircoSD goes way down.
I am looking at buying a $300 to $400 device, and here I am pointing out a basic and costly error made by every maker of these devices. I don't want 18 hours of a boring drive across country, I want the ability to document what led up to an incident of importance to either the car (accelerometer) or to me (button pusher).
Why is every device chewing up microSD cards with video that will never be watched, and might create serious problems for the owner? I'd have to take special care to turn off microphones and/or erase footage simply to keep confidential conversations (on phone or with a passenger) confidential!
Does any unit have enough internal memory to handle this sort of approach? Will any vendor offer this as an option? I'd pay more, as my cost of ownership would be lower, and my reliability would be higher.
Maybe I am missing something basic here, but who wants video saved when nothing of interest happened?
What is needed is an internal RAM buffer for roughly 20 minutes of video and audio. As the car moves down the road, this buffer can be overwritten in 5-minute segments, so at any one time, one has the most recent 15 mins of video.
Now, something happens - an accelerometer triggering indent (accident collision) or the driver presses a button, because he just got pulled over by the cops. THIS is when the contents of the RAM should be saved to the microSD card, thus saving the prior 15 mins of video. If the button is held down for a bit, perhaps the unit continues to write to the microSD until it is manually stopped with another button press.
But driving is a lot like parking mode - most of the time, the video is of no interest, and need not even be written to the microSD. If not written, it is not overwritten, and wear on the mircoSD goes way down.
I am looking at buying a $300 to $400 device, and here I am pointing out a basic and costly error made by every maker of these devices. I don't want 18 hours of a boring drive across country, I want the ability to document what led up to an incident of importance to either the car (accelerometer) or to me (button pusher).
Why is every device chewing up microSD cards with video that will never be watched, and might create serious problems for the owner? I'd have to take special care to turn off microphones and/or erase footage simply to keep confidential conversations (on phone or with a passenger) confidential!
Does any unit have enough internal memory to handle this sort of approach? Will any vendor offer this as an option? I'd pay more, as my cost of ownership would be lower, and my reliability would be higher.
Maybe I am missing something basic here, but who wants video saved when nothing of interest happened?