Just bought my first DashCam, the 7900

[Mikef74]

Impressive little device. At first I thought the voice and audio prompts would be annoying, because every DashCam video I saw they were really annoying. But it wasn't too loud -- they obviously just seem louder in the videos because the microphone is so near the speaker. I do like that you can turn off all audio and lights.

My biggest gripe which keeps this from being a device that meets all my requirements is that it wasn't designed to swivel. I mistakenly thought it swiveled around its base -- I know the clear mount has a tiny bit of swivel, but that isn't really what I want. I want to be able to flip up my mirror and swivel the device so I can record my driver's side door in the even that I am pulled over by the police.

I like that it can take 64 and 128GB SD cards. Does anybody know if the 256GB ones work as well ? Not that I'm crazy enough to spend nearly $500 on a 256GB card.

The only other thing that would have been nice is WiFi, but I also understand that would have jacked the price up closer to the BlackVue which I wasn't really looking to pay. Speaking of WiFi, it would be nice if the firmware had an option for "Eye-Fi compatibility mode" which would use folder and filenames compatible with the Eye-Fi so whenever I park in my garage, all of the videos are uploaded to my home server and removed from the SD card after upload (the Eye-Fi card firmware itself would take care of the deletion after upload).

 

[Mikef74]

Below is the email I just sent to Lukas with my Eye-Fi suggestion. I hope they consider it.

Could you please add a firmware option via configuration for “Eye-Fi compatibility mode”? The Eye-Fi device is a combination SD Card with built-in WiFi capabilities. As long as files are written to this card in the same way photos and videos are saved to a digital camera (using certain folder names and filenames), then this device could be used with the DashCam to automatically upload videos to home computers whenever the car is parked at home. The Eye-Fi card would automatically (optionally) delete all videos that were transmitted. You’d have to look up the rules, but I think they’re rather simple. I think all you would need to do is place the three existing video folders under a root DCIM folder and then name the videos in a VID_####.AVI format.

I suppose a paranoid person could also transmit the video to a very small computer or tablet hidden in the car. This might prevent destruction of video evidence.

 

[cbamity]

Regarding the swiveling issue: I decided to use all-weather fasteners by Scotch, which are the same fasteners used for my EZpass tag (use for tolled roads in my state and others), to secure the camera mounting bracket. The fasteners are a bit like velcro, but instead of hooks and loops, there are plastic projections that snap into eachother. It is definitely strong enough for the camera (could probably hold a couple of pounds) and has the added advantage of being removed and repostitioned very easily. To point the camera in another direction you could either place another strip of the fastener in a different location, or depending on the direction you needed, just remove and reattach the camera after rotating.

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