I received the BlueskySea B1W dashcam towards the end of November 2017.
This I purchased through eBay from here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192351454135YouTube sample video:
Delivery time was about 2 weeks. The packaging was good and the box came wrapped in bubble wrap in a sealed plastic bag.
This is a lovely camera with good quality video, sound and very discrete and compact.
It has voice notifications of what the camera is doing. Eg. ‘SD card detected’, ’Recording start’, ‘system going down’….
Opening the box revealed the contents:
1. BlueSkySea B1W camera with a 3M self-adhesive pad
2. Power adapter with
micro-B USB cable and connector and with a USB Type A female outlet.
3. USB type-A plug to USB
micro-B plug cable
4. 2x spare 3M self-adhesive pads
5. User manual (English)
6. Lens cleaning cloth
Reading through the user manual was quick and painless with very easy to understand instructions.
Initial steps:
Format a micro SD memory card on your computer using FAT32. I used a 32Gb Samsung class 10 card which worked very well.
Download and install the B1W-CARCVR application onto an Android device from the Google Play Store - this application is about 21Mb in size.
Remove the protective film from the B1W camera lens.
Insert the formatted micro SD memory card into the camera.
Find a good position on your windscreen to install the camera.
Note:
· If you wish the camera to record videos looking out through the windscreen (normal) the camera needs to be installed with the lock button on the left and the card and power connection on the right as below.
· If you wish the camera to record videos looking inside the vehicle, the camera needs to be installed with the lock button on the right and the card and power connection on the left.
The camera image (as far as I’ve discovered) cannot be inverted using the software. So if you have the lens pointing forwards through the front windscreen, it is not possible to rotate the lens pointing into the vehicle without the video image being inverted. – There does not appear to be any facility in the software to invert the image which is a downside of the software. You would need to unmount the camera and install it in the opposite direction.
UPDATE: Since this posting in December 2017 there have been firmware updates to accommodate the orientation of the camera.
Please refer to this posing -
Blueskysea B1W Firmware
Rotate and orientate the lens by firmly holding the mount and twisting the other end until the lens is pointing correctly. The camera can also be detached from the mount very easily by sliding the camera towards the power connection/SD card slot.
Connect the USB charger to the camera and power outlet/cigarette lighter outlet.
The camera will automatically start recording when the ignition is turned on. A green LED light will appear on the camera housing and will blink at about 1 second intervals when it is operating.
Within the WiFi connections on your Android device you should see the B1W camera
Select the B1W camera and enter the
default password of 1234567890 then select connect
The B1W-CARCVR application can then be started on the Android device.
Press the Connection button.
A video image of what the lens is seeing should appear on the Android device.
The B1W camera settings can be changed on the B1W-CARCVR application menu.
Eg. I noticed that Video segmentation was at 1 minute by default, I changed this to 3 minutes.
All the other settings were at the default setting.
Operation of the software was easy and simple.
Another useful feature of the camera is that it takes a still jpg image before each recording (see listing with the red asterisk
* below). This feature is very useful for indexing and finding certain video segments.
The power connector uses a
micro-B USB plug NOT a mini USB plug which most people are used to.
The camera could be set to operate in
parking mode by installing a
hard wired power adapter but it would be a good idea to wire in a switch to turn off power to the camera when you do not want the camera to operate.
The
hard wired power connectors can be purchased quite reasonably from eBay, AliExpress or Amazon.
Bottom line:
Is the camera worth the purchase price – Well ‘Yes’ I think it is.