iPhone App - CarCamApp

Paul M

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Dash Cam
iPhone 4s - CarCamApp
Hi all, first of all thanks to DashCamMan for allowing me to post up like this, very kind.

I'm part of a small design studio, and in our down time we've developed and recently released our own iPhone dash camera app, called CarCamApp. Here's the app website, and here it is on iTunes/The App Store.

I'm active on a few car forums and had some great feedback, and early adopters have also been really helpful, but as this seems to be one of the biggest Dash Cam communities, I'm hoping there are other angles you may be able to help us cover?

What it does and doesn't do, and we hope and plan for future releases.

Inspiration:

  1. My colleague hates bad drivers, and wanted to have an easy way to record bad driving around the town we live in.
  2. I'm a bit of a car enthusiast and having shot a lot of car video on the past, think it's a really cool option to just be able to use my iPhone(s) to do it better, in 1080p HD.
  3. Ease of use. My colleague tried a load of the dash cam apps on the market when this idea first came to him, he didn't find any particularly easy to use, so this was a major factor in CarCamApp, so a clean interface, voice activation and such were priorities.
  4. Accident capture, insurance purposes. Just having a dashcam speaks for itself in this regard, but it wasn't our primary thinking.

What it does:

  • Works on iOS devices (full list on App Store). YES we want to do Android, Windows Phone etc, but iOS was the most simple and lowest risk for us to start with.
  • Captures video for set time intervals, or until you hit "stop".
  • Captures stills.
  • Embeds geo-location data and time live into video (or photo) as it captures.
  • Allows background music.
  • Captures Audio (or not, option).
  • Allows switching between front and rear camera (even during recording, if rear camera quality set to same as front).
  • Captures time-lapse with various capture rates and playback frame-rate options.
  • Allows voice activation of recording and picture taking (have to press "stop", as we found background noise could provide false positives).
  • Allows export straight to Dropbox.
  • Allows export to iOS photo library.
  • Allows export via iTunes.
  • Probably other stuff I'm not remembering right now.

What it doesn't do:

  • Work on Android etc. See above. ;)
  • Record or display speed data. We were slightly concerned about people using it for bragging rights (I know people who may), but feedback suggests we should add this in.
  • Have focus lock. A popular request to stop "drift" of focus, planned for future release.
  • "Looped" recording. This seems like a no-brainer based on more insurance based apps, and we plan to implement it in some form in the future, but remember this wasn't the App's raison d'etre to begin with, lots of way to do this too, not sure what's "right".
  • Have full screen iPhone 5 support. This is coming, iPhone 5 still works 100% as 4s does, just with black bars.
  • Tonnes of other stuff I'm sure I've missed, some we've thought of or had suggested, lots probably not even crossed our minds.

Demos

I have a full YouTube playlist of videos and stop-frames I've captured using the App, you can view that here.

Here's a few examples taken from the above:

Rough country lanes, Beetle, high speed.

Town at night, speed bumps but smooth roads, Ford S-Max, low speed
Audio disabled on recording, kids in the car! ;)

Night time time-lapse. Capture 1 image per second, playback 30 fps
Audio is YouTube free stuff, not part of recording.

Anyway, thanks if you managed to get through that post, and thanks if you have any thoughts, suggestions etc, I'll do my best to feedback and keep you in the loop. It's (very) early days and the feedback so far as been very encouraging, so feel free to give it to me straight, good, bad and ugly!

Paul
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's been a while since I've been around.

CarCamApp has just today been updated to version 1.1, and is currently on offer for free in the App Store.

Many small tweaks and bug-fixes in place since the initial launch, feel free to ask any questions or post any feedback at all if you do try the app.

Thanks,

Paul
:)
 
Paul M said:
It's been a while since I've been around.

CarCamApp has just today been updated to version 1.1, and is currently on offer for free in the App Store.

Many small tweaks and bug-fixes in place since the initial launch, feel free to ask any questions or post any feedback at all if you do try the app.

Thanks,

Paul
:)

downloading now
 
Did you implement loop recording? And does it work in the background? Or maybe there is an option to use iphone for navigation while it works as a dash cam.
If you implement loop recording please leave an option to choose how much data can be looped (ex. 100mb, 500mb,1gb,2gb) and an option to lock a file would be nice..
Thats been my 2cents.
 
Why not try for yourself, it's FREE after all. ;)

Looped recording is still on the future to-do list, and the most popular choice has been to make it time based (say 5 minutes max), as really for an accident (if that was your purpose) you'd probably only need a short time to see the situation unravel, and your average user may find the interface giving them various "size" limits a tad confusing (when you consider that would be different lengths depending on the quality settings).

Background use of camera not allowed in iOS.

Navigation/blackout/other options are in pipeline still, but no ETA.
 
jokiin said:
Paul M said:
Navigation/blackout/other options are in pipeline still, but no ETA.

do you code for any other platform or just iOS?

Personally I'm a web guy who's picking up iOS, however "we" as a company have the ability to code cross platform.

As this is an early stage internal project it seemed that Android phones (not really the platform) would be far more complex to develop a decent camera app for than iOS.
 
Paul M said:
jokiin said:
Paul M said:
Navigation/blackout/other options are in pipeline still, but no ETA.

do you code for any other platform or just iOS?

Personally I'm a web guy who's picking up iOS, however "we" as a company have the ability to code cross platform.

As this is an early stage internal project it seemed that Android phones (not really the platform) would be far more complex to develop a decent camera app for than iOS.

wasn't thinking about a camera app, another project
 
jokiin said:
wasn't thinking about a camera app, another project

Feel free to DM me if you'd like to discuss, we have good Android folk if that's what you require.
 
Looped recording should have been the #1 feature. With out that, it's not a CarCam app.
GPS & Speed too please.

I'm still shopping around, thanks for being part of the DashCamTalk community at least. (great interacting direct with dev's)
 
I like the app overall. I wonder is there a way to adjust brightness of the recording? I'm using an iPhone 4s and the video in some situations is just too bright. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or it's my old phone.
 
went to the app store, looks like this app has been pulled, anyone know why?
 
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