I am looking for the BEST day/night quality camera with buffering parking mode.

[liquidshade]

Hi all,

So I've recently entered the market for a Dash Cam.

What prompted this? Apart from the hordes of bad drivers and car park damages received I also had my motorcycle stolen which was parked right in from of our car a few weeks ago.

Link to buildings terrible motion activated CCTV footage here:

Hence, I am looking to buy a Dash Cam with very good daylight/low light video quality and only other crucial requirement is decent parking mode.

From what I read, I need the parking mode to "buffer" so it captures video before someone walks in front of my car.
Also need parking mode to be able to run for at-least 12 hours while my car is parked in the car park overnight.
And lastly, I understand I will need a Magic Power kit so by battery doesn't drain dead, is this right? (Sometimes we park at long-term parking at the Airport when going overseas)

Edit: Also, it would be great if there was a dual camera option that recorded parking mode on both front and back cameras? (not sure if this is available but thought I would throw it out there!)

I started looking at all the Dash Cam websites and YouTube reviews but was overwhelmed with the amount of cameras available.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

- Mike

 

[jokiin]

look for a camera that supports large memory sizes and just leave it running, don't rely on motion detect in low light as you still risk missing things

 

[liquidshade]

look for a camera that supports large memory sizes and just leave it running, don't rely on motion detect in low light as you still risk missing things

I didn't know this was an option, that sounds like good advice. Thank you!

How long could one that stays running record for? Would it risk draining my battery overnight?
Also, do you know of any that you could recommend that do this?

 

[jokiin]

128gb card at a good bitrate can give you about 18 hours of recording

 

[liquidshade]

128gb card at a good bitrate can give you about 18 hours of recording

Wouldn't 18 hours of recording drain my car battery?

 

[jokiin]

Wouldn't 18 hours of recording drain my car battery?

even if you were using motion detect mode it still needs to be powered so no different, it's about how long do you need to monitor things for and how much footage do you need, if you had a 32gb card and only had the last 4 hours or so that event that happened at 10pm would already be overwritten when you go to work at 7am, if you have a card capable of running through the night without overwriting and you came down for work and saw the bike gone then you know you'd still have your footage

some sort of battery management device is worthwhile in case you were leaving the vehicle for an excessive amount of time, some cameras are more power efficient than others but you'll find decent cameras will use about the same amount of power as having your glovebox light left on, it's quite minimal, if everything is healthy running overnight each night is no big deal

I got robbed in a similar type scenario when I lived in a unit and had parking downstairs, I never had a good nights sleep from that day forward until I moved house, every noise I heard would keep me awake at night, it's a terrible feeling

 

[dash riposki]

What about some sort of alarm on the bike? I had front disc lock on my DR650, but some idiot still managed to get a block away with it, by lifting the front wheel off of the ground. Would have been interesting to see how long it took him. (Picking front wheel off the ground, inching it away.) He ran off when the cops the neighbors finally arrived in the area. Dropped the bike, headed into a nearby large apartment complex.

 

[efoo]

The thing a dashcam or a dozen of them couldn't help you is stop your car from getting stolen.

 

[dash riposki]

Sometimes, when it comes to motorcycle theft, they damage the bike without ever stealing it. Like with front disc locks. If they don't notice the front disc lock and try to move it, they can chew up an expensive rotor, then usually end up dropping the bike and running.
An 'anti-tamper' alarm kind of makes sense, but won't stop the damage.
You also get people who see a cool bike and want to sit on the damn thing, and go 'vroom vroom'. They can drop it, also.

 

[liquidshade]

So does anyone have any suggestions for Dash Cams?

 

[petepete]

cant see as a dashcam will help as you already have a link to the culprits via the suspect tenant who can provide all the information you need...

however, as far as dashcams go there is a good choice that is always overlooked...

The gt680w has a 5 fps 1080 hd rate that gives 24 hours of constant recording on a 32g card and in that lighting will give a crystal clear video when played back through VLC - its also very reliable.

( If they had given it an auto switch to 5fps on ignition off there wouldn't be a camera on the market to beat its overall performance and usefulness )

 

[BMbler]

My experience only as it goes to GT680W and what it has really good:

sensor adapts to bright/low light environments well

night footage is really decent (aka good)

you can set variety of fps modes (no sound with pictures), size of SD will cover great time period.

frugal in power consumption, in practical terms less than 500mAh (my cheapo external battery 2200mAh given almost 5hr recording and my screen set/goes of in one minute)

(does have a screen,) so in case something of importance recorded, you can review it.

mine doesn't, I don't want GPS, and if to add the module it still will not help with idea of "automated security/parking" mode.

(bad) it does have motion detect feature, but it's not good. In low light room, it doesn't start recording until you are 4m away and it is already kinda too late.

it is impossible to have it automated, so each time you parked, you'd have to get in to menu to turn it on, there is no button to get in to such mode at one click either.

Internal battery is shambles, only enough to save recorded last file.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Get something with the Sony IMX322 sensor and a super capacitor.