First timer to dash cams + accessories

Discostew

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I'm having a hard time deciding among 3 bundles for my vehicle (2017 Honda CRV EXL). They all have their pros and cons, but I tend to buy things to which have lots of features, but end up not using them all and basically wasting money on them.

These three 2-ch setups are what I have looked into....
  • Blackvue DR900S
  • Thinkware U1000
  • Viofo A129 Pro Duo 4K (a more recent finding in my research)
Because Parking Mode is a must for me (no exception), I also plan to buy a battery pack and have that hardwired. The two that come to mind are......
  • Blackvue Power Magic (Ultra)
  • Cellink Neo
I'm leaning towards the Blackvue battery mainly because of the USB port that could be used for a mobile hotspot to keep my dashcam connected to send me notifications if and when something happens while I'm away, though the importance of cloud notifications is something I'm unsure about. I use Xfinity Mobile for my phone (on per-GB plan), so I don't know if I'd even be able to use a shared plan for a hotspot in the car with them.

So, from what I understand, the Blackvue dashcam has the best cloud features, but not necessarily the best picture quality, and may be susceptible to heat more than the others (I live in California, though may move to Idaho later in the year). Its form factor, though, would seem to fit nicely behind my rearview mirror unlike the others. Viofo has the best picture quality and probably is best in high heat scenarios due to the heatsink, but lack various features than both Blackvue and Thinkware offer. It has a screen too, but with my vehicle, wanting to put it right behind the rearview mirror may make using that feature awkward. Thinkware seems good overall, and has been the one I have been eyeing the most. Parking Mode is a must, and while the others have it, the Thinkware also has the Radar Module to provide recording of an incident 10 seconds before/after it happens, while being able to reduce power consumption outside of those periods. Unfortunately, it's limited to the front. That total package is also pricey, and it hasn't gone through a summer to test reliability.

One other thing (kinda offtopic). In August, I'm planning on taking a trip up in northern California on a 6-7 hour drive. One of the things I want to do is be able to record my trip, both going there and coming back (12-14 hours of footage roundtrip). I doubt the max capacity sd cards compatible with the dashcams could hold all that footage (maybe one way). How best should I handle storing that footage when on the road? I had thought about buying a portable wireless hdd that I could plug into one of my car's usb ports in the back and connect to my phone wireless to transfer the footage, or just a regular portable that I directly hook up to my phone (if either option is feasible).
 
As you live in Sacramento i assume you can see nice hot summer days, this will be a major problem with any dashcam if the car is parked in the sun.
And you are looking at 4K cameras, that already are pushing the thermal envelope, so some report problems more are more fortunate, so i suggest you have a look around in the sub forums of the models you are looking at.
A dedicated battery for the dashcam are by no means a bad idea, but that like the car battery if you used that also have to be charged, so if you only have like 2 X 30 minutes driving to and from work every day, and drive little beside that, and expect to run parking mode the remaining hours of the day you might run into problems.
But if you have a fairly normal commute to and from work every day, then you will probably be fine,,,, i just have to mention that as some people tend to forget that.

I am unsure if that idea with a wireless portable HDD will work, but i am as far from a knowledgeable WI FI user as you can get, do not use it at home, do not use it on my phone i barely use ( 5 minutes a day on average )
But the WI FI transfer speeds are pretty slow in dashcams, it are a far cry from what you might have at home, so i think this will be unsustainable for a bulk backup like you are talking about.
Personally i have always put my memory card in my card reader, this was i get the memory cards full read and write speeds at my disposal, and the 15 - 20 MB/s you can get over WI FI are a far car from the max read speed of a memory card around 80 MB/s ( model depending )

If you have the means for reading memory cards at home, it will probably be more easy to just get 2 memory cards, one for the trip out and one for the trip home, after the trip you can keep one of them as backup in the car, many of us have a backup card or two in the car.
In general i recommend at least 128 GB cards for dual systems.

Personally i don't use any forms of event creating things while driving, why should i ? The camera record all the time, so for little things i just press the event button to make sure i can find the event again ( have used memory for many years and this is flawed with my memory )
Should i get knocked out in a big way, one of the first things people rushing in to help should do is turn off the car, but with a significant sized memory card, you can go offroad and not be found for several hours and your accident will still be there in among the regular files.
I would only use sensors for parking mode, but here when i get to try it my plan is to use always recording low bitrate, and with a 1 hour times cuz longer than that i don't park out on the town, and if need be i can just increase the times if a cute girl invite me to the movies and a dinner.
 
Thank you for your response. The heat situation is an issue, but I wonder. For any of the 3 I listed, do you know whether I can set parking mode to not record at 4k? 4k while the car is on (would it even know if it was connected to a battery with the battery hardwired?), then 1080p in parking mode. Also, one reason why I was leaning towards the Thinkware as it has the Radar module, to which the camera would not record (and so won't heat up) until the sensor detects something. That would also reduce power consumption while parked so the amount of time to charge while the car is on would be less than without that module.
 
I am not familiar with any of the brands or models you have mentioned, but common sense make me think they would scale down to a lesser resolution ( on the front camera ) during parking mode.
For thermal reasons.
You better make sure to verify such questions in the sub forums for the model that in the end seem most interesting to you, after all it is also high end expensive cameras you are looking at.

Just noticed your nic,,,,,, and the avatar i use to tell my real name :)
 
Lots of ground to cover here, but welcome to DCT @Discostew and let's see what we can do :)

First the powerbanks. The Cellink Neo needs 45 minutes to fully charge, all the others take hours so how long your drives are and whether you can do at-home charges will decide that for you. Of course adding a mobile hotspot is going to reduce run-time. You might also want to have a look at the B124 powerbank extender. The best solution is an added AGM battery and a RV-type battery isolator but that's advanced DIY stuff and more than most will consider do-able.

Now the cams and a disclaimer: I have none of these but I'll share what I've learned from others ;) All these 3 cams have overheating issues of some kind, either in early shutdown or in anomalous operation (Viofo). It seems to go with the territory of 4K cams at present because the processors and micro SD cards are being pushed to their limits. Until a newer better crop of processors and a better memory system come along I don't expect to see any real changes with that. All these cams can be set to a lower resolution which will let them run cooler, but then why have 4K? Maybe you can use 4k while driving with the A/C on to record your trips but otherwise it may not be the advantage you think it is. Lots of other non-4K cams become viable choices then with some having excellent vid quality :cool:

For saving all the trip footage, the cheapest most reliable method is having more SD cards. Dashcam wifi is slow and many connectivity issues can happen too. The U1000 is so new that I'm not sure how well it will do. The DR900s is probably tops in connectivity right now; you'll need more than a casual acquaintance with programming and setting things up to get all it can do for you, but it can happen here. Threads on doing that are here on DCT so you can probably manage it. The Viofo loses out here- it has only basic connectivity in comparison to the other two :(

Now my opinion- Unless such wireless connectivity is a must-have, I'd point you toward the Viofo Duo (not "Pro") or the Street Guardian cams as being far more reliable in heat, far better developed in software, and in having excellent non-4K video quality. Parking modes vary and are just about an entire topic all by themself. For that you'll need to investigate each cam individually and decide which method is right for you (as well as how reliable each is in use) an also how the use of parking mode might affect other cam recording functions. I like the U1000 radar method, and maybe best is the low-bitrate method, but each way has it's good and bad aspects. Since this is very important to you I'd suggest that you open your search to all the good 1080P or higher cams, thin down the list by parking mode, then thin it down further by looking at raw video (day and night recordings). From there you'll have only a few cams left to consider and one of them will probably be your clear winner based on everything else.

The perfect cam has never been made and never will be. Each has it's virtues and drawbacks, but there's almost certainly one which will fit your needs reasonably well.

Phil
 
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