Dash Cam for HGV's

[ronaldis]

Hi, looking for some recommendations for dash cams for our fleet of 16 HGV's. We live in a remote location so this will have to be an internet purchase as there are no local dealers near us. Looking for a camera with good quality day and night recordings and that can accept a high capacity SD card. Looking for something that should be pretty reliable as these will be in operation for long periods for at least 5 days per week. Any advice welcome, thanks.

 

[kamkar]

Depending on how much each truck drive every day it will be hard and expensiv to find SD cards large enuff to hold a whole week worth of driving.

If you say driving is 8 houres every day well then you will need somthing like a 64 Gb or larger SD card in that camera to just hold that one day of driving, and i think the largest SD cards out there now is 512 Gb but those have a monumental prize tag.

if you by the 5 days just think in relation to durable cameras then thats not a problem with the good cameras out there, but no matter what you still need to look after the SD cards as they are the weak point, so it is recomended to take them out of the camera now and then to look if the recordings made match what have been driving in the truck lately.
And do a clean format so the filesystem on the card get reset to zero.

If you want me to say a name well then it have to be Street Guardian, ther cameras is good and ther service and customer care is outstanding.
And they do have "local" sellers in @niko
I am sure he will be able to give you a good package deal on that substantial buy you are looking to do, with memory cards and all it is after all a serious deal.

For a deal like this i think its best to shop local, and over there on the isle there is a fjew options at least.

O and welcome to the forum ronaldis.

 

[niko]

Welcome to forum @ronaldis !
Besides able to work with large capacity memory cards, what other requirements do you have to dashcam?

 

[Deleted member 46308]

Welcome to DCT @ronaldis

 

[ronaldis]

Thanks for the replies, as you say once the cards are above 64GB they start to get expensive especially when you need 16, I know I will only get about 8 hours recording on a 64GB card but I don't really want the drivers swapping cards themselves every day are these are small and delicate and will soon get lost as different drivers are on different vehicles on different days. The other requirements are that it is easy to install into a 24V vehicle and I would like the cameras to be pretty much install and forget (apart from reformat every so often), something I can set up and basically the driver need not to touch the camera thereafter unless there is an incident. Our vehicles already have GPS trackers. I don't know too much about dash cams but have heard some are capable of remote viewing, I don't know how well this works or how expensive it is. As we have our telephone number on our vehicles we do get some calls from the general public complaining about drivers, it would be great to be able to review the incident from the office straight away if this is possible rather than have to wait for the vehicle to return to base, especially if the event ended up getting overwritten. The public and the driver always have different versions of the event so you never know who to believe.

 

[sludgeguts]

If you wanted to keep costs down, I can wholeheartedly recommend the mobius for durability & longevity. it also takes a 128GB card which gives around 20 hours' recording time at maximum settings. Lower the bitrate & you'll get even longer!
If you want remote viewing etc etc then you're looking at the specialist market.
There are companies out there that specialise in supplying fleets - but you pay a specialised price tag.

 

[niko]

Thanks for the replies, as you say once the cards are above 64GB they start to get expensive especially when you need 16, I know I will only get about 8 hours recording on a 64GB card but I don't really want the drivers swapping cards themselves every day are these are small and delicate and will soon get lost as different drivers are on different vehicles on different days. The other requirements are that it is easy to install into a 24V vehicle and I would like the cameras to be pretty much install and forget (apart from reformat every so often), something I can set up and basically the driver need not to touch the camera thereafter unless there is an incident. Our vehicles already have GPS trackers. I don't know too much about dash cams but have heard some are capable of remote viewing, I don't know how well this works or how expensive it is. As we have our telephone number on our vehicles we do get some calls from the general public complaining about drivers, it would be great to be able to review the incident from the office straight away if this is possible rather than have to wait for the vehicle to return to base, especially if the event ended up getting overwritten. The public and the driver always have different versions of the event so you never know who to believe.

There are some remote viewing systems on Korean market. On so called "western market" it's still a new technology and not so widely used. There are many vehicle DVR systems which record to HDD ( hard drive ) 500GB / 1Tb ?, but recording quality is not that grate, mostly VGA or in some cases maximum 720p at low FPS and low bit-rate.

128GB memory cards might do the job for 2-3 days without being overwritten ( around 16h or recording 1080p / 30Fps / 12Mbps, or 24h at 1080p 30Fps 12Mbps bit-rate). This will ensure you will be able to react on any calls from public on driving which is happened within past 2-3 days. In case of emergency situation where there is a need to save and lock some important scene, most dashcams have option to "lock the file" into special memory card folder where it will not be overwritten.
I believe the solution for you might be 256Gb memory card. You can record around 48h at 1080p 30Fps / 12Mbps, or around 38h at 1080p 30Fps 15Mbps bit-rate.
Full size 128Gb SDXC cards cost around 30GBP. 256Gb are around 80GBP. Of course flash memory cards prices go always down.

 

[ronaldis]

Thanks, I did think remote viewing would very likely be impossible especially on my budget, as we have to buy 16 I'm limited on what I can spend per vehicle. To give you an idea my budget is likely to be in the region of £100 - £120 per vehicle for the hardware and I would like to be able to install it myself. Is this a realistic budget for a decent camera and card?

 

[niko]

Thanks, I did think remote viewing would very likely be impossible especially on my budget, as we have to buy 16 I'm limited on what I can spend per vehicle. To give you an idea my budget is likely to be in the region of £100 - £120 per vehicle for the hardware and I would like to be able to install it myself. Is this a realistic budget for a decent camera and card?

I think its possible within your budget. I have few ideas / suggestions. Will put together and replay with more details soon for you to review.