Is there such thing as a side view dashcam? (For your car doors)

I was going through some older footage before deleting it and realized there was a good demonstration of the value of side facing cameras. With the proper lenses with adequate FOV you can essentially achieve 360° coverage on all sides of your vehicle with four cameras. In this instance I've only saved video from three cameras - front, rear and right side window but you'll get the idea. Note the cars shown with the RED arrows and you can observe how the coverage from the three cameras overlaps by a decent margin.

In this example the cameras are SG9665GC (front) - Mobius B lens (rear) and mini 0806 (right side rear window). - (I have another Mobius B lens camera on the left side - not shown)

Front
Front-.jpg

Right side
right-rear.jpg

Rear
rear.jpg
 
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Dashmellow said:
It's really pretty easy to temporarily mount a dash cam in a rental vehicle. Many of us do that often. The Mobius is a good, very portable and inexpensive candidate for an easy to install temporary dash cam using a suction cup type mount, ...
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My Mobius was delivered yesterday. I have tinkered with a little. Going to visit the family next weekend in a rental.
 
GTA Driver said:
My Mobius was delivered yesterday. I have tinkered with a little. Going to visit the family next weekend in a rental.
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I'm sure you will enjoy using it. I would suggest doing some testing if at all possible with whatever mounting scheme you decide to use before leaving on your trip so there are no unpleasant surprises.
 
Dashmellow said:
I'm sure you will enjoy using it. I would suggest doing some testing if at all possible with whatever mounting scheme you decide to use before leaving on your trip so there are no unpleasant surprises.
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The mobius will be more than just my rental DC. I am going to expiriment with placing it around the car, as a side cam. I may also use it for time lapse photography for the back yard bird feeder. But as my trip is just a week away, I am focusing on using as a front cam and see what settings I work for me. My Iroad has a narrow view and I am missing cars running stops signs coming from my left. The mobius, with its wide lens has me covered. But as a side cam, it needs some work and some additional investment.
 
GTA Driver said:
The mobius will be more than just my rental DC. I am going to expiriment with placing it around the car, as a side cam. I may also use it for time lapse photography for the back yard bird feeder. But as my trip is just a week away, I am focusing on using as a front cam and see what settings I work for me. My Iroad has a narrow view and I am missing cars running stops signs coming from my left. The mobius, with its wide lens has me covered. But as a side cam, it needs some work and some additional investment.
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Yeah, the Mobius is quite versatile. That's why I enjoy them so much as I use them in many different ways other than as dash cams. I assume by additional investment you are talking about a super-cap, an appropriate mount, a suitable cable of the right length and a power adapter, if you haven't got any of those items already. I'm not sure quite what you mean by "needs some work" though. My side mounted Mobius cams at the moment have "C2" lenses and low profile mounts but nothing else special is required.
 
By extra work and investment, I mean on my part. I was trying to avoid this , but I may need the 8 inch lens extension.
 
GTA Driver said:
By extra work and investment, I mean on my part. I was trying to avoid this , but I may need the 8 inch lens extension.
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It depends on your particular vehicle. I've tried DIY remote lens extension mods (this one too) but found that a well mounted Mobius cam is preferable for my side cameras. One can place a mount on the headliner with the camera peeking out the topmost portion of the glass, tilted down slightly. On the other hand, the fact that the lens extension is available is a great feature of the Mobius as it opens up many unusual possibilities not otherwise doable with other cams.
 
I will take photos of the side of my Rav4. If the side drink holders behind the back seat (if that makes any sense) were elevated just a little more ... I could have made it work . I believe @Gabacho has a Rav4
 
GTA Driver said:
I will take photos of the side of my Rav4. If the side drink holders behind the back seat (if that makes any sense) were elevated just a little more ... I could have made it work . I believe @Gabacho has a Rav4
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Of course, I don't know which Rav4 year or model you own but looking at an interior view of the 2016 Rav4, if yours has those recessed fixed panels it would the ideal place to mount side facing cameras from above. That is similar to the rear windows in my Toyota Tacoma pick-up where I've mounted my cameras.

rav4.jpg
 
Hasn't changed much from a 2012 to 2016. What did you use to place on the trim above the glass on the windows.
 
GTA Driver said:
Hasn't changed much from a 2012 to 2016. What did you use to place on the trim above the glass on the windows.
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I plan on using foam tape to mount my spare a118/118c on either side of my 05 Tacoma once I find time to run power cords into the rear suicide doors. It has similar deep window frames.
 
On one side I've used one of my DIY low profile mounts as seen in this photo and that you can read more about HERE.

mount3.png

On the other side I've used a helmet mount with the strap and base plate removed, as seen in these photos and available HERE. (and elswhere)

mount2.png

Mount.png
 
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Gibson99 said:
I plan on using foam tape to mount my spare a118/118c on either side of my 05 Tacoma once I find time to run power cords into the rear suicide doors. It has similar deep window frames.
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That'll work well. There's plenty of room for an A118 on the "ceiling" of the recessed cowling for it.

Edit: The rubber weatherstrip around those rear Toyota doors makes it easy to hide a cable running up to the window. A strain relief loop can be left at the bottom to allow for the door to open without stressing the cable and still be fairly well hidden.
 
Dashmellow said:
That'll work well. There's plenty of room for an A118 on the "ceiling" of the recessed cowling for it.

Edit: The rubber weatherstrip around those rear Toyota doors makes it easy to hide a cable running up to the window. A strain relief loop can be left at the bottom to allow for the door to open without stressing the cable and still be fairly well hidden.
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I intend to run a piece of speaker wire into each back door via the flexible boot in the hinge, right alongside the factory speaker wire. Except this will carry switched 12v from the fuse box (likely the power window circuit, readily accessible in the lower kick panel on each side so no need to fish wires up into the dash) and I will probably take apart the lighter adapters to make my own hard wire kits so the wiring will be completely hidden except where it comes back out to plug into the cameras. Probably just use some old 16gb cards in them, might even run at 720p to save space, will see... plenty of other, more important things to do first, like some fluid changes, hooking up the autodim\temp mirror, rear brakes, etc etc... in no particular order of course.
 
Gibson99 said:
I intend to run a piece of speaker wire into each back door via the flexible boot in the hinge, right alongside the factory speaker wire. Except this will carry switched 12v from the fuse box (likely the power window circuit, readily accessible in the lower kick panel on each side so no need to fish wires up into the dash) and I will probably take apart the lighter adapters to make my own hard wire kits so the wiring will be completely hidden except where it comes back out to plug into the cameras. Probably just use some old 16gb cards in them, might even run at 720p to save space, will see... plenty of other, more important things to do first, like some fluid changes, hooking up the autodim\temp mirror, rear brakes, etc etc... in no particular order of course.
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Sounds like an interesting plan, albeit quite a project. Then again with your background of working on Toyotas it should be a piece of cake.

I've done some experimentation with 720p on my side cams as you can shoot 60fps with the Mobius set to 720 and this enhances side cam detail capture and reduces motion blur. Not sure if an A118 can do that though.

In this day and age where you can buy quality memory cards at such low prices I see no reason not to use larger cards. I would hate to accidentally overwrite something important during a days driving, especially since I've learned that with lateral facing cameras one often captures remarkable things that you didn't even realize had happened or been captured until you review the footage. One example was the crazy kid on a bicycle who caused me to have to panic stop when he came racing across an intersection right in front of me in traffic. Reviewing the side camera footage that evening I discovered that I captured him speeding like a maniac all the way down the side street towards that main road I was on before he crossed my path. This would have been very useful footage had something bad happened as it would have shown what led up to the panic stop that was not in the FOV of the front facing camera or my personal field of vision as a driver. I was amazed to realize I had caught that and it made me realize how potentially valuable lateral facing footage can be.
 
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For my side mounted moobius i have folded over a pice of sheetmetal so it can slide over the headlined and in under the rubber seal that hold the headliner in place.
I have then mounted 2 small neodynium magnets on the mobius camera, they are a bit hard to keep in place so i have both glued them and then put some black tape around them too.

This way i can just unplug the camera and yank the camera out, instead of messing with the micro SD cards in the car.
 
Yes I plan to leave enough slack in the power cords to be able to unplug them and simply lift the camera of its mount. I figure it'll take me about 30-45 minutes per side to install them, including wire. Will probably have to label which one is left and right for when I take em out.

And yes cards are cheap but I'm just using parts I already have to keep it "free". I think I have a couple 32gb cards so may use those, and have a 64 in the a119 in front.

Definitely have to check if the 118 can do 720p60 but I don't remember seeing it. Course I haven't updated the firmware on them so maybe it's there in a newer one? Not that important, esp if I put in a 32gb card and just run 1080.
 
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