Features that may be worth implementing

[gm.outside]

Hello,

There are 3 features I would love to have in a dashcam like B1W that I'd argue will push the bar for most competitors much higher:

1. Aux video output - so you could connect the cam to the factory head unit and see what is going on with the camera live. Most cars nowdays come with a touch screen and reverse camera already attached there, so it would be really nice to have an option to integrate B1W into the head unit.

2. Have an android widget to start/stop recording - this way any android device (be it an aftermarket head unit, phone, Raspberry Pi running Android x86) can be used as remote control for recording.

3. If there is enough RAM implement a mode when the camera alway records into a cyclic buffer in memory keeping preferably last 30 seconds there, so if record button (physical or virtual as in item 2 above) is pressed, the buffer is written down to the card + actual recording from the moment the button was pressed. This would be HUGE since most of the time people don't need all that stuff we record every day. The majority of people need the interesting events only, which are triggering the saving of the video: G-sensor trigger, motion detection, user command. So if we have a memory buffer large enough to keep a minute of a video we can actually save the life of the card considerably, like a lot.

Hope some of these ideas can be implemented in the firmware for the current hardware.

 

[jokiin]

none of that is likely I would think

 

[gm.outside]

Well, item 1 is implemented in many dashcam via special micro-usb wiring (e.g. Mobius cams do that as well as Mini 080x).

Item 2 is purely software implementation given that control protocol allows to issue commands to start/stop the recording (the likelihood of this being allowed is quite high since most likely during Q&A that interface is used to test the functionality).

Finally, item 3 is implemented in many cams that support so called buffered parking mode, however, I never seen it implemented the way I described, so you can use the cam in the most versatile way preserving the life of your SD card.

P.S. I was even considering to embark on a journey of creating my own dashcam product with all these functions (and many more), but at this time I don't have enough experience with hardware manufacturing process and I am trying with a smaller project to gain that experience.

 

[jokiin]

What may be possible on other models doesn't automatically translate to another product, functions are very much hardware dependent, no harm in wishing for certain features, realising them isn't as straightforward as you may think though

 

[gm.outside]

I am more interested in @estore009 response to be honest, since I know exactly what's required for each of the items, but haven't looked into B1W's design to understand what is there. However, I can say it straight away that item 2 (software remote button) is most likely could be implemented right away as a part of the Android app provided for the camera. Item 1 depends on whether proper wiring and logic were implemented on PCB. Finally, item 3 depends purely on the amount of memory installed and firmware implementation.

 

[TonyM]

It also depends whether Blueskysea want to invest the time and money to implement any such features on what is already a good value-for-money budget dashcam. It seems more likely that your ideas could be taken forward into a future product where such features could be planned from the outset.

 

[jokiin]

It seems more likely that your ideas could be taken forward into a future product where such features could be planned from the outset.

that would increase the chances of these types of features happening, the Android feature is perhaps the one feature that is feasible on this current design although it's kind of counter intuitive as it doesn't really suit the purpose of the product where it should ideally be recording anytime the car is in use

 

[kamkar]

Many cameras ( dash and action ) have AV or HDMI out.
And it is quite nice to have if you experiment with lenses or need to refocus for some reason.
But i cant see why you would want a steam of what you are seeing out your windscreen running on the head unit too, and as cameras ( rear ) dont have the functionality of reversing cameras, that's also pretty mute to use a rear camera for that too.
you could of course adjust yourself to use a rear camera as a reversing camera, but really i would prefer the real deal then.

The B1W are build on pretty modest hardware, so i figure the options you have with the SOC are somewhat limited compared to their bigger models ( novatek as i recall in the B1W )
I do think the B1W SOC support a form of AV out too, but adding another plug to the already crammed PCB and a hole for a plug in the little housing will be hard and demand a expensive retooling.

A widget i assume could be made for the B1W, but why would you want to stop /start manually, i can not really see this as useful in a dashcam

 

[jokiin]

The B1W are build on pretty modest hardware, so i figure the options you have with the SOC are somewhat limited compared to their bigger models ( novatek as i recall in the B1W )

they call it Novatek but kinda sort of, the chipset is by Grain Media which Novatek recently acquired, features and functions supported by Novatek chipsets won't necessarily translate onto this platform although the new association may help development somewhat, it is a budget solution though and is already punching above its weight so probably should keep things in perspective

 

[kamkar]

What i would like to see fixed and should also be possible is the need to turn off phone data connection to connect to the camera, must be possible to tell the app to just focus on wifi connections and leave 4G ASO alone for other things on the phone.

In any way i am a huge fan of not using a phone, for anything and if its a must, then that will be a product / service i personally will have to forgo on.
There are already a sickening level of reasons why people are turning into phone zombies, i see no reason to add to that mess.

 

[jokiin]

What i would like to see fixed and should also be possible is the need to turn off phone data connection to connect to the camera, must be possible to tell the app to just focus on wifi connections and leave 4G ASO alone for other things on the phone.

that's partly an Android problem, I know it's something they are looking at though to try and improve the way the APP works

 

[kamkar]

the app or the G sensor in my phone are also overly secretive, some times a little jolt make the window want to flip to horizontal mode, so that could take a little tweak too if its in the app that issue lie and not my cheap ass Chinese phone.


YES ! i do use the wifi with live steam beating on new cameras, i feel i must do this to load the camera as much as possible ( thermal ) and also to look for APP issues.
I dont do this all the time with a new camera cuz the screen on my phone and tablet are not really that good in daylight / summer time, really wish i could get a OLED screen phone for this kind of work.

On my old analog 4 channel kit i have tried to drive several Km just by looking at my headunit screen displaying the feed from the front camera, this late at night on empty highways out in the country, and really this is damn hard to do and highly dangerous, so not recommended by me.

 

[Nigel]

1. Aux video output - so you could connect the cam to the factory head unit and see what is going on with the camera live. Most cars nowdays come with a touch screen and reverse camera already attached there, so it would be really nice to have an option to integrate B1W into the head unit.

Why not display the wifi app on your head unit?
Then you also get the setup and playback features, and possibly you could download videos onto the head unit's USB stick.
This feature already exists.

The camera is not suitable as a reversing camera though, if that is what you want, it gives the wrong view with the wrong field of view, and via wifi has a time delay that would be dangerous for reversing use, many aux video outputs are also a bit slow to be safe when that child runs behind your car while reversing. I tried using it on an 8" tablet, still didn't feel safe.

2. Have an android widget to start/stop recording - this way any android device (be it an aftermarket head unit, phone, Raspberry Pi running Android x86) can be used as remote control for recording.

The app already has this function, along with "Photo snap". I can't see many people wanting a separate widget, so maybe the communications specification could be published so that people can write (and share) their own widgets.

3. If there is enough RAM implement a mode when the camera alway records into a cyclic buffer in memory keeping preferably last 30 seconds there, so if record button (physical or virtual as in item 2 above) is pressed, the buffer is written down to the card + actual recording from the moment the button was pressed. This would be HUGE since most of the time people don't need all that stuff we record every day. The majority of people need the interesting events only, which are triggering the saving of the video: G-sensor trigger, motion detection, user command. So if we have a memory buffer large enough to keep a minute of a video we can actually save the life of the card considerably, like a lot.

Highly unlikely that is possible in the cheap little B1W, I doubt it has the memory or processing power required, there are reasons why buffered dashcams cost several times more than the B1W.

 

[gm.outside]

@kamkar1,

Many cameras ( dash and action ) have AV or HDMI out.
And it is quite nice to have if you experiment with lenses or need to refocus for some reason.
But i cant see why you would want a steam of what you are seeing out your windscreen running on the head unit too

Well, I did not want to dive into details, but let's say I am doing real-time image post-processing from 4 external cameras (to get 360 bird's-eye view in my case) that are of inferior quality in comparison to B1W + I have computational capacity to do OCR on number plates and object tracking. My idea is to be able to use the camera as additional visual input. Currently, I am using Mobius camera to automatically update my Nav maps with the speed limits as it is on the road (in Australia it is too often that maps are out of sync with the reality). However, B1W just looks nicer and has a much better sensor

The B1W are build on pretty modest hardware, so i figure the options you have with the SOC are somewhat limited compared to their bigger models ( novatek as i recall in the B1W )

Yes, and this is a beauty of this particular product. My research shows that there is a lack of basic down to earth dashcam with a good sensor and an interface to control them. It seems that everybody is so consumed to create an all-in-one monsters, which cannot satisfy all. In the spirit of micro-usb model, it would be just a dream come true if the was a manufacturer that could focus on the core function of a camera and provide the marked with a truly extendable camera. Well, the dream product would be a camera + accelerometer + 2+ GB of RAM and enough firmware to do basic dashcam stuff, but also expose a full API to control it. The application of something like that is just without boundaries: want more sophisticated functions? Hook it up with Raspberry Pi and control it the way you want. Not enough computational power, hook up so-called CarPC and do whatever you want (this is what I do in my car).

I do think the B1W SOC support a form of AV out too, but adding another plug to the already crammed PCB and a hole for a plug in the little housing will be hard and demand a expensive retooling.

Why? All other cameras which support it use the same USB connector that is already there for AV out.

A widget i assume could be made for the B1W, but why would you want to stop /start manually, i can not really see this as useful in a dashcam

Well, this one really plays if you can memory buffer at least 30 seconds. What's the point of constantly wearing out an SD card if you can save a record starting 30 seconds before the interesting event (e.g. triggered by accelerometer, motion detection, user request when you've just seen something worthwhile recording, etc.). The primary issue I have with ever recording ones is that I need to keep track of the approximate write cycles to the card and not to forget to replace the card now and then. In most of my dashcam (and I had quite a few) cards died usually after half an year or so and several times I discovered it the hard way -- when I really needed the footage to be there.

Additionally to the above, constantly writing to a card requires quite a lot of power which is wasted most of the time since 99% of the recorded content is overwritten (if not 99.9% -- we are using dashcam as a last resort option, aren't we? To prove our innocence or to find a root cause of an accident, usually).

Anyway, my goal was to share an idea, not to convince the community that something is wrong or that a product has a deficiency. I just think that for a low budget product like this the mentioned 3 features would attract quite a big DIY community (like RC community that was built around Mobius -- the problem with that one is that RC enthusiasts do not care about the visual appearance of the product -- it flies somewhere quite far away from the owner, but a car owner really cares about the look of their dashcam). I look at my Mobius camera every day for 5 hours and although I am really happy with the DIY aspect I hate the view to guys and I wish I could have something elegant as B1W instead

 

[jokiin]

Why? All other cameras which support it use the same USB connector that is already there for AV out.

cameras that do AV out over USB are in the minority, most often there's a separate output, or no AV out

 

[kamkar]

Yes cameras with a in USB AV feature are generally action type, to please the FPV guys out there, dashcams most often have a separate AV ( 2.1 or 3 mm plug headphone type ) or HDMI plug micro or mini, the HDMI is much preferred as it is nicer to deal with messing with lenses and focus.

And please do keep throwing balls out there
I do that too and have done so for years, some have been curb balls coming bad to hit me, but i also think i have thrown a good ball now and then proactive camera makers have taken note off.
Nobody here to diss your ideas, its just some things can be done some cant, and like i have often realized what appear pretty simple and strait forward are often not the case.

 

[gm.outside]

Why not display the wifi app on your head unit?
Then you also get the setup and playback features, and possibly you could download videos onto the head unit's USB stick.
This feature already exists.

I already covered this in my previous reply, but in short I need a near real-time feed to do post-processing, I don't need the picture on the screen when I am driving, but I would not mind to have it while I am not moving to be able to use my HU to work with the camera (e.g. review saved material).

The app already has this function, along with "Photo snap". I can't see many people wanting a separate widget, so maybe the communications specification could be published so that people can write (and share) their own widgets.

My HU is running Android as it's UI and a widget would allow me to have a button on the screen to trigger that functionality without launching an app (it is dangerous to do more than a single tap on a touch screen when you are doing 100kmh).

Highly unlikely that is possible in the cheap little B1W, I doubt it has the memory or processing power required, there are reasons why buffered dashcams cost several times more than the B1W.

Yep, this is unlikely, but don't you agree that it would be a really cool feature to have. Adding a couple of GB of RAM will add less than $20 to the price, but will set this cam so far apart from any competition

 

[gm.outside]

Yes cameras with a in USB AV feature are generally action type, to please the FPV

Well, you are forgetting that many phones were also doing that. There is also a standard how to do it properly, IIRC it's called MHL. If _that_ was supported I would be at cloud nine ))

 

[estore009]

1. Aux video output - so you could connect the cam to the factory head unit and see what is going on with the camera live. Most cars nowdays come with a touch screen and reverse camera already attached there, so it would be really nice to have an option to integrate B1W into the head unit.

Its chipset supports CVBS output, but due to PCB design flawless, there is no more place to add a hole at the end of the camera.

2. Have an android widget to start/stop recording - this way any android device (be it an aftermarket head unit, phone, Raspberry Pi running Android x86) can be used as remote control for recording.

Its APP can do that, and you can download its APP to your Android head unit if necessary.

3. If there is enough RAM implement a mode when the camera alway records into a cyclic buffer in memory keeping preferably last 30 seconds there, so if record button (physical or virtual as in item 2 above) is pressed, the buffer is written down to the card + actual recording from the moment the button was pressed

After a check with my team, they told me that it will take too many firmware works to implement.But cannot sure we can succeed!

 

[itsnogame]

I wish that since the camera can tell by speaking when it starts recording, it should also say when it stops recording. I ran into a bug with my 64GB non-sandisk microsd card and 5 minute videosthat the recording had not looped. The card was 70% full, the emergency folder was empty at the set 30%.

Every time I restarted the camera, it would say that the card is detected and recording starting. But the led stopped flashing immediately and nothing was recorded. I was able to fix this by formatting the card, but this is a very serious bug for me and I fear it will reappear. Also, I had to format on pc, since the android app said that something failed when formatting with it.