Is it necessary to buy a 3-channel dash cam?

[DerrickDFromAsia]

I've been looking to get a new dash cam for my car and found there's 3-channel dash cam on Amazon. I'm thinking is it necessary to get a 3-channel dash cam? What do you guys think?

 

[jokiin]

which 3 channel camera did you find on Amazon?

 

[Nigel]

No dashcam is necessary, you can make do with just insurance, but having a dashcam as well can make claims far easier and save money.

A front camera is the most useful.

A rear camera adds some detail, you can clearly show someone driving into the back of you while holding a mobile phone, show the person behind misbehaving in the run up to a collision, and it may capture his license plate when otherwise it would be missed.

A third camera with IR illumination covering the inside is highly desirable for a taxi since it records the behaviour of the customers.

A third camera covering the drivers window seems to be highly desirable in the USA, and a few other places where the police are not trusted.

A third camera covering the driver can be very useful if you have an accident and someone (other driver/witness/police) claims you were holding a mobile phone, or drinking from a whisky bottle.

A third front mounted, rear facing camera covering the interior will also capture something of the movements of other traffic to the sides of your vehicle that is missed by front and rear cameras, and a fourth rear mounted interior camera facing forwards will capture the remaining side view missed by the third.

All evidence collected may come in useful, assuming the driver of your vehicle is behaving sensibly/responsibly/within the law. Hopefully none of the evidence will ever be needed, just like your insurance will hopefully never be needed, but sometimes it is. Four cameras is ideal, none is absolutely necessary, you have to decide the compromise for yourself.

 

[kamkar]

If you are not doing uber or lyft on the side i would just go for a dual channel camera.

 

[SawMaster]

For driving protection, a front only cam is probably all you need. `That's where almost everything you might need to record will be happening. There are some good 2-chnnel cams out there, both the usual F+R and "Uber" types which have a built-in cabin cam, but 3-channel cams aren't yet being made which I can fully recommend- the two I know of have some issues, with one being fairly awful at the moment And TBH, I'm not sure that with the way dashcams are made that there will be a really good 3-channel cam anytime soon; just too much work for the current processors and SD cards to handle well.

So if you want good performance and reliability with interior and rear coverage too, you are probably better off using a combination of cams such as a single rear with a separate "Uber" cam in front. There are some very good choices out there if you take this approach both for performance and for budget It's the way I'd go.

Phil

 

[cpo]

EDIT: Actully saw SawMaster also recommended this approach (similar) as I was thinking about responding! So a little bit of a duplicate response here

Also worth considering, if you want three channels (front, rear, interior) it may be best to get a good quality 2 channel (front and rear), and a good quality 1 channel (for interior) and just run them separately. For me, I don't see any benefit of trying to feed everything into a single SD card... likely at lower quality/resolution. Just my thoughts. I was thinking about adding a 3rd view for the interior, and this is the thought process I have been going through.

 

[kamkar]

A interior camera are best off if it have IR light aid for at night, at least if you live and drive in a place with little or on ambient light at night.
But in larger light polluted big cities a good light sensitive camera might do okay at night.

Someone should make a single camera just for interior use, that can swivel to the sides too in case someone at you door is doing bad.

 

[SawMaster]

What I feel is the best approach is to use an "Uber" cam, then add a separate rear cam. The A129IR or B2W coupled with a B1W rear (or better) will do almost all that can be done with today's cams at a reasonable price. There are other approaches which will also work to get more than the usual coverage but those will become more complex or more expensive quickly with little to be gained.

I think the main point here is to decide just what you expect from the interior cam. If you're mainly looking for traffic coverage other approaches might be worthwhile, but if you mainly want interior coverage of the car occupants an "Uber" cam will give that best.

Phil

 

[cpo]

If you do go with an uber type of cam, I did a review on the Rexing V3, and I really like it. Just in case you are interested...

 

[HonestReview]

I've been looking to get a new dash cam for my car and found there's 3-channel dash cam on Amazon. I'm thinking is it necessary to get a 3-channel dash cam? What do you guys think?

Only working one that I've seen available is the Vantrue N4. It doesn't have a low bitrate recording mode for parking. Description seems to allude that it only has motion detection when hardwired.

https://www.vantrue.net/Goods/detail/gid/73.html

If you see the Zenfox T3 on amazon, I wouldn't buy it at the moment.

 

[SawMaster]

Both that Rexing V3 and the VanTrue N2 Pro have the cabin lens where it rotates only vertically, which limits it's usefulness in being able to turn it to the sides as may sometimes be desired to capture images there without disrupting the frontal view. The B2W cvabin cam rotates horizontally making this usage easy to do, and in fact is my favorite feature of that cam. I use that ability frequently both while driving and when parked. It's simply a much better way to do things rendering the other way obsolete

Phil

 

[HonestReview]

Both that Rexing V3 and the VanTrue N2 Pro have the cabin lens where it rotates only vertically, which limits it's usefulness in being able to turn it to the sides as may sometimes be desired to capture images there without disrupting the frontal view. The B2W cvabin cam rotates horizontally making this usage easy to do, and in fact is my favorite feature of that cam. I use that ability frequently both while driving and when parked. It's simply a much better way to do things rendering the other way obsolete

Phil

Amazon states that all these use motion detection parking mode. So there's no low bitrate feed to record in real time.

 

[kamkar]

By design alone cameras with 2 units in one ( front unit ) are a no go for me if i was to spend money on it, they are simply too visible / not stealthy.
Even if it is more work then i would prefer a dual remote with the one camera with IR light, or as viofo have done conventional design but wit the option to use the rear camera as a interior camera with IR light.
In my car even with its pretty much optimal layout ( no sensor housing and rear view mirror mounted off sealing some way behind the windscreen )
I would have to insist on the rear camera being a kind i can mount on my mirror stalk, which in my car are the ideal place for a cabin camera.

 

[SawMaster]

Cars vary so what works stealthily for one might not for another, and stealth itself is a variable issue. Dashcams are so uncommon here that even visible ones go unnoticed by most people and there is not yet a market for stolen cams so stealth is more a preference than a necessity where I live

I run my B2W continuously 24/7 in regular recording mode at a medium bitrate. Even with the summer heat here I have not had any problem doing this except for some slight focus shift on the hottest days, and that goes away once I start driving and letting a bit of wind cool things back down. It's not a method recommended by the manufacturer of any dashcam and it will void your warranty so you're on your own if you take this approach

Just know that it will probably work with most or all of the good-quality cams which use supercaps- I've done it successfully with several different cams Do NOT do this with cams using a LiPo battery; at best battery life will be very short and at worst you may need to use the fire insurance coverage on your car

Phil

 

[cpo]

I run my B2W continuously 24/7 in regular recording mode at a medium bitrate. Even with the summer heat here I have not had any problem doing this except for some slight focus shift on the hottest days, and that goes away once I start driving and letting a bit of wind cool things back down. It's not a method recommended by the manufacturer of any dashcam and it will void your warranty so you're on your own if you take this approach

You must have one heck of a power source!

 

[HonestReview]

You must have one heck of a power source!

You can buy cellink neo batteries and daisy chain them together.

 

[SawMaster]

You must have one heck of a power source!

Not really, just a nearly new 80A mid-grade regular lead-acid starting battery. That's large in comparison to what most cars have, but I've done the same in cars with smaller batteries. As long as I start the engine at least every 24 hours and let it run several minutes everything does just fine; a daily drive does this by itself.

I AM discharging the battery lower than what is optimal so I get maybe a 20% loss of battery service life, but I'm fine with that It's a common and relatively cheap battery size here so in doing the math it may cost me $0.50 per day in lost battery life to get my 24/7 recordings which I feel is well worth it. The number will vary for every vehicle and if your car's battery is an expensive one you may not want to try this. The same goes if you live in a climate where deep battery reserves are needed for starting.

When I came to DCT there was apparently nobody doing this, and all the experienced members advised against trying it. And TBH their advice was and is good- this is NOT a recommended practice- but I took it upon myself to discover firsthand whether this was possible and what the results would be knowing what I was risking. Having a good used spare battery on hand helped me decide to try it And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I wasn't going to need parking modes or powerbanks or low-voltage protection I could not afford to achieve my desired 24/7 coverage The downsides were that I did end up with a dead battery when I forgot to run the van and recharge the battery daily more than once and that has a big impact on battery life and it's usable capacity, plus it was sometimes mighty inconvenient to deal with And doing this with one cam which uses a LiPo battery instead of supercaps got me a quick reduction in the LiPo's capacity, but that cam still has enough oomph to work correctly and I plan to use it again, but not recording 24/7 And should you need footage, you might have to spend hours viewing your vids to find the incident you seek because in regular recording there's nothing to tell you where that is, but you are positively going to have it because of the continuous recording whereas with parking modes you might not capture an event, and with low-bitrate you may not capture it well enough.

AFAIK nobody has yet followed my pioneering trail and again I do not recommend that anyone does, but i do share my findings and put the info out for anyone who might be considering such an approach same as I do with any aspect of any cam. So you decide- do you want to take chances like me or do you want an approach which has less risks and less losses? It's your choice and don't blame me if you get different results than I do. Just know what is possible and do as you wish from there.

Phil

 

[DerrickDFromAsia]

Only working one that I've seen available is the Vantrue N4. It doesn't have a low bitrate recording mode for parking. Description seems to allude that it only has motion detection when hardwired.

https://www.vantrue.net/Goods/detail/gid/73.html

If you see the Zenfox T3 on amazon, I wouldn't buy it at the moment.

Thanks for the information. I just checked the Vantrue N4 and it seems like a solid dash cam to me

 

[kamkar]

Thats 2X the size of the battery in my little car, a car that probably also fit in the back of your van if you emptied it out of the tools of the trade,,,,,,, and that waterbed.

I dont think anyone in here have tried that N4 model, but the people that have tried other vantrue models dont seem all that unhappy.
You have to be careful about what Amazon and so on "customer" reviews say, these are often fake or paid for in some way.

 

[SawMaster]

DCT Member "Sunny" reviewed the N4 HERE and he's pretty unbiased and well experienced with dashcams.

And @kamkar1 I'm going to empty it out this week so if you'll drive across the ocean to here we can see if it fits. Make sure you fill the tank before leaving as there are no gas stations open on the way

Phil