Dashcam to prevent keying.

[MGuedes]

Hello,
I change car quite frequently. At home, someone's clearly monitoring me, I've had 12 cars keyed on the span of a year. Some of them just a scratch on one of the sides, others a full walk around. It doesn't happen every day, and it doesn't happen in a specific spot. But happens exclusively to me. I don't know the culprit.

I need to find a suitable protection, hopefully one that I could easily switch between cars, but one that's mostly aimed at parking mode capabilities. Last car that got keyed didn't get keyed across either the windshield or the rear window, just a full side and half the tailgate, so I'm concerned whether the camera would pick it up (if it picks up the sound then it would always catch the person coming or going).

Car is parallel parked on the street. I usually use it daily, worst case scenario it spends one day unattended.

Moreover,I'd appreciate an affordable solution, because I don't expect it to take that much time to catch the perp, especially after I repaint the car I'm driving currently (he/she only keys cars that have the paintwork in good state).

I know it's a tall order. Can anyone help?

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum MGuedes.

It seem like you have made yourself a enemy in some way, often hard to tell how it happen, some get butt hurt very easy.

Anyway a dashcam you can run in parking guard mode, but you have to drive daily to replenish the power used while parked.
Also if its outside, a dashcam need some light to be able to get a identifying capture, at least like parked directly under a street light

Personally i have a CCTV camera on my parked car, CUZ the back yard i park in only have a tiny PIR light, and it would only backlight people as they walk up to my car.
The CCTV camera have build in IR light, so total darkness turn into day in its footage. and i am zoomed in optical as the camera are attached to my 2 floor balcony door
The system give me notifications on phone and tablet is something Human or vehicle shaped are within 1 M of my car, this is nice so i dont get many false notifications.



Now i do use a football large Pan Tilt Zoom camera myself as i can not always park in the exact same place, so when i get into my apartment i can adjust to where i am parked.
Now i could also do the same manual with a much smaller camera and just adjust it on its mount, of course if you park in the same spot, that's not a problem.

What kind of distance do you have from your apartment to the car, can you see it from there ?

 

[MGuedes]

Welcome to the forum MGuedes.

It seem like you have made yourself a enemy in some way, often hard to tell how it happen, some get butt hurt very easy.

Anyway a dashcam you can run in parking guard mode, but you have to drive daily to replenish the power used while parked.
Also if its outside, a dashcam need some light to be able to get a identifying capture, at least like parked directly under a street light

Personally i have a CCTV camera on my parked car, CUZ the back yard i park in only have a tiny PIR light, and it would only backlight people as they walk up to my car.
The CCTV camera have build in IR light, so total darkness turn into day in its footage. and i am zoomed in optical as the camera are attached to my 2 floor balcony door
The system give me notifications on phone and tablet is something Human or vehicle shaped are within 1 M of my car, this is nice so i dont get many false notifications.

View attachment 70211

Now i do use a football large Pan Tilt Zoom camera myself as i can not always park in the exact same place, so when i get into my apartment i can adjust to where i am parked.
Now i could also do the same manual with a much smaller camera and just adjust it on its mount, of course if you park in the same spot, that's not a problem.

What kind of distance do you have from your apartment to the car, can you see it from there ?

Kamkar, thank you for your welcome and your time!

I apparently indeed have an enemy, I have no idea who or why, that's what I intend to find out. If I have to drive daily I'll drive daily, that's okay.

It's easy for me to park under a light, but I do not have a view from my window to the car, not even the slightest. That would make things much easier!

 

[kamkar]

Okay.

In that case if you can not hide a wildlife camera near the car, a dashcam with parking mode is probably the best, mind you in summer a camera can only tolerate so much heat, so when it reach the limit it will turn off, and sadly most do not come on automatic when things are colder.
Just saying CUZ Portugal are no stranger to hot weather.

Your car can probably be approached from 2 sides, so a 2 channel system is probably best in your case

Parking guard have a few different modes, in general it is:

Motion detect, trigger by the slightest movement so will record all the time on a busy street, even a cat or a bird on a fence far away can set off motion detect.

G- sensor, as keying is not really a big event, i would not rely on this, its more like if someone hit your car while parked, though if someone kick your car, that will probably set it off just fine, but keying are much less force than a kick.

What i prefer to use is low bitrate, this record all the time, and it also record sound, the low bitrate mean the footage take up much less room on the memory card, a downside is it is just treated as regular video, so when the memory card if full it will start to delete the oldest footage on it, which could be parking guard footage.
But if you check your car daily, and buy a proper size memory card ( 256 GB ) this should not be a problem
Low bitrate also have the + as it is low bitrate the camera use less power to encode it, so parking guard should last longer

Many also have time lapse. in a few different FPS options like 5 - 10 - 15 FPS, the downside is this do not record sound, but as it only save a few frames it is also a power saving mode, and of course it also take up less room on the memory card.

Also you should look at a system with capacitors for internal emergency power source, the battery based cameras tend to blow the battery pretty fast as they do not like too much heat or cold for that matter.

I can understand you like to do this cheap, so this is where i run into problems recommending something, CUZ i am not familiar with cheap cameras as such.
Today the best systems have image sensors from Sony, they are now called Starvis 2, but their older siblings was just called starvis, and they should be at more convenient prices now , the difference is simply how sensitive the sensor are under low light, there is a difference of course but its not like the old starvis sensors are useless garbage, they will see PPL if there is a little light, the new starvis 2 also need light still to operate, they can just make do with a little less and do the same.

Maybe one of Viofos older systems, but other brands could be vantrue - Rexing and so on,,,,,, there is like a million brands out there, many however do not give you much or any support, so best to stay away from those.
You should probably look for a camera with a 1440p resolution sensor, in the case of starvis that will be the model name IMX335 from Sony.

Also to do parking guard you need to hardwire the camera, CUZ to operate while parked it of course need power, all the brands have hard wire kits for their different models, this kit is usually connected to 2 fuses in your fuse box, using a so called add a fuse or piggy back fuse adapter, this is totally tool less to install, just need to get the right kind for the kind of fuses your car use, most likely one of the so called blade / ATO fuses, which come in 5 or so different physical sizes.
The hard wire kit will most often also have a switch on it, this is the low voltage cut off value, that will turn off the system at the selected value so it do not deplete your car battery.

Car batteries are not made for deep discharge, so i recommend you use 12.2 V for cut off, with lead acid batteries this is generally seen as a 50% depleted battery, if your car have a AGM type battery, then you can go a little lower, but the lowest many have of 11.8 volts that i would not use, okay in summer your car can start ASO, but that low will eat into the lifetime expectancy of your car battery.

Most hard wire kits today are the 3 wire type, so you need to connect to a +12 V fuse that is only on when you start the car, and then a +12 V fuse that is always on, this is the one that power the system both when driving but also parked, the ACC wire work as a signal wire telling the system what mode to change to / from.
And then of course a ground wire, often there is a place for that close to the fuse box, but any screw with a good ground will work.

 

[kamkar]

This model is a contender i would say.
I have not tested this model, but i do think it have low bitrate mode as a option in parking guard.

VIOFO A129 Plus Duo - DashCamTalk

The VIOFO A129 Plus Duo is a very good buy for a solid camera. It has improved front video quality over the A129 Duo (2K video instead of 1080p) for $10 more.

dashcamtalk.com

 

[kamkar]

O i almost forgot, some brands are a bit fussy what memory card models they like, Viofo are not bad, but i think they have a listing of recommended memory cards for all their models.