Blackvue 900X and door dings

angrygoose

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Hi folks,

I’m new to the forum and I am looking for some advice. I recently got my wife a new Mercedes and she LOVES it (maybe a little more than me). The problem is that our parking neighbor has a 2-door Mustang and had dinged our old truck. Our neighbor put 2 dings and 5 paint chips into the side of my wife’s old car. The camera in the garage aren’t angled to see our cars so our neighbor is basically free to ding our car.

To put our mind’s at ease, I was looking at purchasing the BlackVue 900x camera to monitor the passenger wide of our car from inside the car. I did receive suggestions to place the camera outside the car but I suspect someone will just take the camera. I tried using those door bumpers but they seem to fall off after a few hours since we can’t really keep the door super clean. (The car door is aluminum so magnets

My question to the forum is if it was possible to mount this camera in a way where it can monitor our neighbor opening their door? Or if there a better solution to this problem?

thanks in advance!!

alex
 
Put a wireless household camera (Blink, Ring, etc...) outside of the home, pointing directly at the parking spots. Put the 900X into parking mode with motion detection on. I wouldn't rely on the 900X to do much more.
 
Put a wireless household camera (Blink, Ring, etc...) outside of the home, pointing directly at the parking spots. Put the 900X into parking mode with motion detection on. I wouldn't rely on the 900X to do much more.
That’s a great idea! I did have one challenge I failed to mention. Our parking garage is underground and there’s no wifi and LTE coverage is pretty spotty. Would they affect how the cameras will operate in any way?
 
You will have to have the parking mode G - sensor set to very high, possible higher sensitivity than there is in any camera at the moment.
If someone key the side of your car the camera would probably also not pick up that as it is not really a G event, this is why i use always record low bitrate for parking, and then i have G - sensor on too to lock any actual impacts.

Some of the little CCTV / household cameras are battery powered and have a PIR sensor, and i think they last pretty long so it is at least not a inconvenience, so in essence they work like a wildlife / trail camera.
Many you can also power by a USB wall wart / charger, or a power pack, greatly extending the recording time.
But some of these operate with a cloud for storage, but others also have a memory card in them for local storage

I park outside in the back yard, and as it is very dark at night no dashcam would be sufficient for a identifying recording, so i have a IP camera on my balcony door, which when zoomed in on my car give me a chance day or night.

There is also a lot of nanny cameras out there, you could get one disguised as a smoke alarm or something that would be not too conspicuous in the environment of your parked car.

You could maybe get the other users of the parking garage in on putting in proper CCTV, but that would of course be a additional expense to set up and monthly payments, but it could be leagues better than most other things.
 
That’s a great idea! I did have one challenge I failed to mention. Our parking garage is underground and there’s no wifi and LTE coverage is pretty spotty. Would they affect how the cameras will operate in any way?
Yeah, unfortunately, those two solutions require some kind of cloud connection. A trail camera - type - of surveillance, like @kamkar mentioned above, sounds ideal. Battery powered, recording to a microSD, motion sensor. I don't know anything about them, but that'd be my bet.
 
We use a trail camera with a solar panel to monitor the entrance to our subdivision. Batteries will last months with about 100 pictures per day average.
 
I have a DR900X.

A conventional 1 or 2 cam install isn't going to help you catch the door dinger in the act.

Even if the parking mode g-sensor registers the door ding, the perp won't be in the cam's field of view. You might catch him walking away on the motion sensor but that's it. Not actionable proof.

The parking garage problem is definitely going to make monitoring real-time parking alerts very difficult. Without wifi repeaters in the garage, especially if it's underground, you're probably out of luck.

You need an interior cam that you mount in a side window that will swivel around on its mount. You can look directly out that side of the car and see the ding happen, along with the perp and his vehicle in full view. A Garmin mini or some kind of action cam you can mount looking sideways or nearly so, tweakable so it points exactly where you need it to.

Better would be some kind of semi-hidden external battery powered cam as others have mentioned, pointed right at the target area. No question who did what at that point. A motion-activated IR trail cam, if you could somehow make it inconspicuous, would be perfect.

Best would be talking to your management and getting a different assigned parking spot. Even if you catch the douchenozzle in the act, your new baby's door is still dinged...

Personally, well, if someone was doing that to my vehicle on the regular, my anger management issues would most likely be taking over...
 
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my anger management issues would most likely be taking over...
Be careful with that- jail food really sucks :mad: It's tough, but better to hire such jobs out for plausible deniability. After that a session with a punching bag makes a non-arrestable outlet for the physical part :cool:

Phil
 
The reason I bought a dash cam was a road rage incident. I just laughed at the guy and waved at him. He wanted to discuss my inferiority based on the comparative costs of our vehicles. He was driving some type of older SUV, maybe a Yukon. Also personalized license plates. A rear camera would have been helpful.
 
Be careful with that- jail food really sucks :mad: It's tough, but better to hire such jobs out for plausible deniability. After that a session with a punching bag makes a non-arrestable outlet for the physical part :cool:
The reason I bought a dash cam was a road rage incident. I just laughed at the guy and waved at him. He wanted to discuss my inferiority based on the comparative costs of our vehicles. He was driving some type of older SUV, maybe a Yukon. Also personalized license plates. A rear camera would have been helpful.

Not to worry, I wouldn't be so... straightforward.

People who are serial door dingers might walk out to four flat tires in the morning though.

No permanent damage, that's just not cricket. But four valve stems removed and tossed in the bushes after multiple offenses is sufficient payback with no permanent damage. The really stubborn ones who just don't get the message get their valve stems clipped off altogether in round two.
 
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