Dash Cam virgin needs an education, please be gentle.

[Bjaspud]

First off, I am absolutely ignorant about dash cams. I would love it you could share some of your expertise and educate me. I am planning on taking a trip through the mountains and would like to be able to record a number (15 or 20) one to two hour drives through the hills. With that in mind, here are the list of features that I THINK I need.

2 (or 3) Channel operation
WiFi
Phone app
GPS - for recording routes
Microphone - to record commentary while driving

1. I don't think I need an on-camera display screen but I would not mind one so long as it goes into 'sleep' mode so that the display is not visible all of the time. I think I'd be perfectly happy to control the camera from my phone.
2. Is there any way to run a camera and CarPlay at the same time short of using an auxiliary battery?
3. Please educate me about video storage. I would like to be able to save roughly 8 hours of driving per day. When does the camera begin to record over earlier video. How big an sd card do i need. At the end of the day is everything downloaded via removing the sd card or via wifi? I don't want to dump off of that video onto my cell phone. I don't have that much storage. Are the saved files broken into multiple short files or are they one long, say 1 hour, file size? As you can tell, I don't know how these things record, store or transfer files. Please help educate me.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Vortex Radar]

Welcome!

As far as your features, that sounds pretty straightforward. Lots of dashcams offer multiple channels, app integration, GPS, and a mic.

The display I find mostly useful for things like adjusting settings and angling your lens initially, but you don't use it a ton after that. They almost all have a sleep function to turn off after a few sec.

CarPlay will be a standalone feature. I don't think any dashcams integrate with that, unless you get one of those aftermarket CarPlay boxes that also happens to have a dashcam stuffed inside it.

As far as video storage, manufacturers usually list record times for different models and SD card sizes on your website. For multiday road trips when I wanna save everything, I usually have a pair of memory cards. This way I can swap cards during gas stops or when we're at a hotel and toss the other card into the dashcam. You can always run the numbers to see if you can fit everything onto one card and simply dump everything to your computer each night.

Keep in mind the more channels (cameras), the higher the bitrate (quality), and the higher resolution you select for each dashcam, the more card space you'll use up per hour. Again running the numbers and then getting a big card is often enough, but you will likely want to look into a second card especially if you wanna ensure that you can save everything before the card fills up and the oldest files start getting overwritten.

Dashcams usually record in small chunks, say 1/2/3 minutes. This way you can grab smaller files in case of things like a crash and not be dealing with multi-gig sized files, worrying about a file that gets corrupted and blows an hour's worth of driving recording, etc. You can always combine clips afterwards as needed to turn several short clips into one longer clip.

If you use WiFi you can always transfer individual files to your phone using the app, but to mass download everything on the card, putting the card into a card reader on your computer is gonna be the way to go. It'll be significantly faster, especially when dealing with hundreds of gigs of files.

 

[Bjaspud]

Welcome!

As far as your features, that sounds pretty straightforward. Lots of dashcams offer multiple channels, app integration, GPS, and a mic.

The display I find mostly useful for things like adjusting settings and angling your lens initially, but you don't use it a ton after that. They almost all have a sleep function to turn off after a few sec.

CarPlay will be a standalone feature. I don't think any dashcams integrate with that, unless you get one of those aftermarket CarPlay boxes that also happens to have a dashcam stuffed inside it.

As far as video storage, manufacturers usually list record times for different models and SD card sizes on your website. For multiday road trips when I wanna save everything, I usually have a pair of memory cards. This way I can swap cards during gas stops or when we're at a hotel and toss the other card into the dashcam. You can always run the numbers to see if you can fit everything onto one card and simply dump everything to your computer each night.

Keep in mind the more channels (cameras), the higher the bitrate (quality), and the higher resolution you select for each dashcam, the more card space you'll use up per hour. Again running the numbers and then getting a big card is often enough, but you will likely want to look into a second card especially if you wanna ensure that you can save everything before the card fills up and the oldest files start getting overwritten.

Dashcams usually record in small chunks, say 1/2/3 minutes. This way you can grab smaller files in case of things like a crash and not be dealing with multi-gig sized files, worrying about a file that gets corrupted and blows an hour's worth of driving recording, etc. You can always combine clips afterwards as needed to turn several short clips into one longer clip.

If you use WiFi you can always transfer individual files to your phone using the app, but to mass download everything on the card, putting the card into a card reader on your computer is gonna be the way to go. It'll be significantly faster, especially when dealing with hundreds of gigs of files.

Thanks for the reply. I will have to go read up on maximum files sizes etc.

The CarPlay question has to do with not being able to use wireless CarPlay and a wireless camera simultaneously.

Can you recommend any make / model cameras for me to consider? Thanks!

 

[Vortex Radar]

So with the CarPlay thing, wireless CarPlay often uses WiFi and so you'll need to disconnect your phone from the CarPlay WiFi to connect it to something else (home WiFi, dashcam WiFi, etc.) since it can only connect to one hotspot at a time. CarPlay is sometimes pretty aggressive with trying to grab your phone's WiFi connection so it is sometimes a bit of a headache to connect to a second WiFi device when you're in your car.

As for makes and models, if I was in your shoes, I'd probably go for a Viofo A229 Pro Duo. The front and rear video quality is top notch which is great when you're looking to make scenic road trip videos. They make a 3CH version too that adds an interior cabin cam, but the front cam quality does drop to compensate for the additional data the cabin cam adds.

I talk about the A229 Pro and some of my other favorites here: