E360 testing

[kawayanan]

I recently received a E360 ACE to test out. Currently, I have been using a Vantrue S1 Pro and a Viofo A229 in two of our family cars (post here) . Both have been working well, and we have been happy with them. I purchased the Viofo A229, and had it installed first in my daily driver. I also have a parking battery and solar setup (discussed in this very long thread). My daughter now has a car, so the E360 came at a great time. She'll be getting my A229, and I am putting the E360 in my vehicle with the parking battery and solar setup.

I'm won't do a "unboxing", but one thing I noticed is that Vantrue products seem to be packaged very well. Both the S1 Pro and the E360 had nice sturdy boxes that were well designed for all of the bit. And speaking of bits, Vantrue has been nice in including more than just the dashcam. In this case, I received a microSD card and the hardwire kit. Additionally, I like that the hardwire kit comes with a variety of fuse taps covering the common fuse types. I'm not sure if it is standard, but I also receive duplicates of a few items. As you may be able to see in the picture, there were two bags of fuse taps (8 total), as well as two front windshield mounts and static films. This would let you put a mount in two cars and easily swap it (assuming you are just using the cigarette lighter adapter and not a rear camera). More likely, it allows you to screw up the install and redo it 😉. There was also a second sticky for the rear camera lending credence to the "second try" idea.

This is the first 360 camera I have used, so I started out trying the "non-dashcam" function. It has a handle/tripod with and internal battery (and came with a nice bag). This lets you take 360 degree video either stationary or on the move. I went with the stationary to start, and experimented a little. It took a bit to try to get it uploaded to YouTube, and I'm not sure I did everything right. It looks like the quality suffered compared to what I could see on my computer, so YouTube may be doing some conversion. I did notice that it defaulted to a very low resolution playback for me, but you can manually set it to up to 4K. I hadn't tried 360 video in YouTube before, and its interesting to be able to use your mouse to turn and pan and look in any direction. (it starts looking sideways, so you need to pan to see anything)

I have now installed it in my vehicle, and will come back and post more about how its daily usage goes.

 

[kawayanan]

Edited 3/1/2025:

I have not used the Vantrue E360 Dashcam in my vehicle for over a month and wanted to provide some sample videos and pictures, as well as my thoughts.

As with the other Vantrue Dashcams I have used, it was easy to get setup with my phone. The app connects to the dashcam easily and works well. It also is easy to update (no need to remove and connect to a computer or anything). I have it hardwired via a Vantrue kit, and it was easy to install and work as expected.

For setup, there a wide variety of video setting, even more than usual because of the 360 degree front unit (two cameras). I personally find the panorama or fisheye views a bit strange, so I opted for the 2592 x 1944 resolution on all cameras (front, interior, and rear). I believe that this is what dashcams sometimes call 2.7K or 1944P. Aside from not being fisheye or stitching the front and interior into a panorama, this is the highest resolution setting for all cameras.

Here are examples of the day and night recordings. Aside from putting the different camera views of the same time periods back to back (front, then interior, then rear), I tried not to edit the video (except for blurring my face, I kept the same resolution, etc.)

I think these videos are pretty representative of the video quality I have generally gotten. For the night video, there had been some rain previously, so there is some dirt and spotting on the windows that effected the video, but that’s also a common occurrence with dashcams. The ability to make out license plate numbers is similar to other dashcams I have used, meaning hit or miss with more miss if the vehicles are moving or at any distance. Here are some snapshots from the videos take at the same time (if you click on the image, you should be able to see it in full resolution).

While these videos are the same resolution as other Vantrue and Viofo dashcams I have used, it should be noted that the view is much wider. This means that while you see more of the action (full view out the windshield from pillar to pillar), since you are spreading the same pixels over a larger area, the resolution on any object is a little less. The difference is not major, and I think the added width of the view more than makes up for the difference. I also picked snapshots that showed some glare from the sun. This is not a major or common problem, but right now, I don’t see a filter available for this model, if you generally like to use them.

There are a couple things I have noticed that I would like to note. First, I couldn’t find a way to change the video setting when using event recording while parked. Even though I had the driving recording set to 1944p for all camera, the parking recording changes to the 5.2K Panoramic View (stitching together the front and interior cameras). Not a deal breaker by any means, but It would be nice to be a ble to control it. Here is a parking snapshot.

As with my other Vantrue dashcams, the voice prompts work surprisingly well. There was one I would like to work differently though. There is a voice prompt for “Show Front Camera” and Show Rear Camera”, which work like you expect (showing the view on the screen), but there is also a “Inside Video On”. I was hoping that this would be to toggle the interior camera on or off (i.e. if you had it only set to record the front and rear (not interior), you could use this voice prompt to start recording the interior camera. This is not what it does, instead this just shows the interior camera on the screen (maybe should have been “Show Interior Camera”. Since I don’t drive for Uber or anything like that, I don’t generally need the interior camera, but I would want it on if I was pulled over by a policeman (recording out the side windows to catch the interaction). It doesn’t seem to be possible to easily toggle the interior camera on or off, so I had to leave it on. As you can see from the pictures and video though, you do get a pretty good view through both side windows (up to the windshield pillar on each side). You should note though, that unless you have parking recording setup, if the police ask you to turn off the car or remove the keys, your recording will stop.

 

[egonvdv]

Nice.
How did you manage to upload it as a 360 video ?
When i upload the original file it shows up as a normal video ...

 

[EricSan]

Nice setup to demonstrate the stitching ability with the dog running from one lens to the other! I guess it is somewhat scene- and angle-dependent, but I've been pretty impressed with the stitching algorithm. In some shots that I've made, I can only see part of the stitch, usually at the very bottom of the frame. Sometimes there is a slightly darker area where the blending happens, but overall that some pretty impressive processing!

 

[kawayanan]

Nice.
How did you manage to upload it as a 360 video ?
When i upload the original file it shows up as a normal video ...

I all honesty, I don't remember my exact process. I tried a couple of different methods and one worked 🤔 I'll have to try again and may more attention, then post the process.

 

[Nigel]

Interesting Vantrue logo up in the sky!
And an unreadable time down in the grass.
Things seem a little thin?

 

[kawayanan]

Interesting Vantrue logo up in the sky!
And an unreadable time down in the grass.
Things seem a little thin?

Funny, I had never even noticed that. It looks like it has the Vantrue and the time placed as if it was in one side, and it gets messed up by the stitching into a 360 video. I'll have to look at the car videos. Since I didn't like the panoramic view (to strange), I have gone for the dual view where the two videos look almost like a normal video, just very wide view (almost 180). I'm guessing the labeling in those is essentially what is getting distorted when being stitched.

 

[egonvdv]

I all honesty, I don't remember my exact process. I tried a couple of different methods and one worked 🤔 I'll have to try again and may more attention, then post the process.

hi @kawayanan , did you manage to figure it out ?
I"m about to upload some footage for my review and prefer to do it in 360

 

[kawayanan]

hi @kawayanan , did you manage to figure it out ?
I"m about to upload some footage for my review and prefer to do it in 360

Sorry for the very slow response. Life has been very busy. I had to go back and figure out what I did again. It appears that you need some sort of software to stitch the file into a 360 degree video that players understand. I ended up doing this with VSDC Video Editor since it is free and seemed reasonably easy (but still took some fiddling). They have a page explaining the process (https://www.videosoftdev.com/free-360-video-editing). I didn't do anything special, just clipped the video and did the export with the “Embed 360 video information into file” box checked (I used equirectangular as the file type). Here is a little longer video I created while trying this again.

 

[egonvdv]

Cool, thanks so much

 

[kawayanan]

I updated the second post in this thread with some video examples and thoughts from using the Vantrue E360 for over a month (see above).

Since my only recording in 360 degree handheld mode was with the E360 stationary, I decided to try it moving. Not really having an idea of what to record with it, and not wanting to video myself walking around, I strapped it to the corner of my truck bed and recorded driving around (novel for a dashcam, right 😛).

I'm not sure how much I'll use this capability, but its interesting to play with. The stitching does a pretty good job, but the corner of the truck where it is mounted gets puckered in a funny way. This was stitched with VSDC Video Editor as explained above. It would be nice if the E360 (or its app) could output 360 degree video ready for YouTube though.