Hi all, just wondering if there is such thing as a side view dash cam that will watch the sides of your car? Like the doors and stuff
To answer your question directly an succinctly, no.
No one has designed a "dash cam" to be side mounted
in the Retail Market. That fact alone blows my mind when majority of vandal activity will happen to the side of your vehicle! However, there are 4-Channel Camera Systems that have been produced for the
Commercial Market and some of them ship with their own solid state DVR unit. I have not seen one that is both 4-channel and that offers Cloud Service for remote viewing. However, I have seen Commercial Market cam systems that have 2-channels and that do offer Cloud Service for remote connections.
Having said that, on the Retail side there are several good examples of people taking the initiative to do what the current crop of Retail Dash Cam makers won't do. Here are a couple great examples where people took 2-channel systems, added a second set of 2-channel cameras to create a 4-channel system. Unfortunately, with great regret, I cannot find anything out there that offers this potential with Cloud Service for remote viewing outside of Blackvue. Lord knows I am not a paid shill for Blackvue, but this is the only way to go until Thinkware gets its act together with their F800 Pro, alleged to ship with Cloud Service once released outside of Australia. It is my understanding that right now, Thinkware customers in Australia have access to the F800 Pro and Cloud Service. However, I have not confirmed this with anyone actually living in Australia.
Fairly common side mount approach:
Pretty common side mount strategy:
This one in particular has an interesting side mounting strategy:
Here's a side mount strategy that makes absolutely no sense in the world to me - but it is not my vehicle:
There is one other very good example of using two (2) dual channel cameras rolled into one system on YouTube that I can't seem to find anymore. It shows day time footage of how 360-degrees of coverage was achieved combining both systems into one.
I think full 360-degree coverage is absolutely essential, if you are also concerned about Vandals, but also if you are concerned about illegal and unsafe lane changers who don't know how to drive, don't care to learn properly and who then lie to the highway patrol after they cause a collision - stating that you crossed over into their lane instead. That's just one example of when having 360-degrees of coverage would come in handy.
Tying it all together under one Cloud Account and being able to quickly toggle from Front & Rear Cams to R-Side & L-Side Cams, at least in my mind, is the essential ingredient. And, like I said above it is very unfortunate to note that Blackvue is the only source for this right now and the reason why I still use their product (sadly).