Looking for a discrete setup with good parking for hot climates

[joylove]

Hey,

Thanks for keeping a forum. I've read the guides and some reviews. I'm a little conflicted about where to set my budget, since I want to do a setup for both my car and the wife's. We live in NorCal where it can get to 100F (high 40C) when parked and 40F/5C overnight. Here's the specs i want

+Front and rear cameras for each car
+Good parking monitoring (buffered recording)
+Very discreet - install, hardwire, and forget
+WiFi for viewing recordings when returning to the vehicle
+Good iPhone App
+Budget ~$400 total. Ideally lower since I'm not sure we actually will ever need them (like any insurance right?)
+Low vibration mount
+No GPS


Here's the things I can't decide on and why I'm looking for advice
+Supercap or USB battery pack LiFePO4. Worry here is how many days a supercap can keep the camera ticking.
+Two ~$80 cameras per car or one ~$200 set. Are the camera sensors better if I buy two of same; rather then F+R combos
+Am I dreaming that I can install and forget? Will they get stolen?
+Will I have a hard time finding USB powered camera to go with a battery pack (vs 12V)

Thanks!

 

[kamkar]

and forget

It is a very bad thing to forget your dashcams, we have seen it so often with people doing that only to find when they actually need footage off the camera it stopped working / recording months ago.
Some do claim to be set and forget, but there are no way in hell i would trust that, i prefer to have a look at my memory cards at least once every month, and doing so on the computer it take me about 5 minutes to verify the integrity of a 128 Gb memory card.
Capacitors are the only way to go in a hot climate, any form of batteries usually break after a little while.

ATM the best overall sensors are the Sony IMX 291, they are better at low light level recording.

Dashcams can install quite stealthy but it do depend on the camera type choosen and the actual layout of the windscreen, some newer cars have stupid large sensor arrays taking up most of the prime real estate on the windscreen.
you may want to have a look in the "where did you mount the camera" thread, start wit the newest posts and move your way backwards.
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threa...ra-post-your-pictures.502/page-54#post-394867
It have up until now been rare we have heard of stolen dashcans, i have run several for years and i havent even seen anyone just notice my cameras.
So stolen cameras are not really a issue, but in a good camera the memory card are the weaakest link, and i have had top noch cards from the best makers go sour on me really fast, so important to get genuine cards and from a place where you can get a quick and problem free RMA ( i have used one of the EU Amazons ( fulfilled and sold by ) and it have been real good to me )

Inspecting a memory card in my card reader i focus on the first and last file in drive sessions.
I look for.

1: The drive starting and stopping in a reasonable place ( at home - at work and where ever you go, personally i seem to do the same drives over and over mostly )
If a drive start / end in the middle of the road some place that's a reason for closer inspection.
I just check those files can launch with my default media player on my windows 10 computer, if you have a MAC there are as i understand it extra procedures if your memory card have been in contact with such a contraption.
After i have inspected all drive sessions ( first and last file ) and i have about 30 or so of those on a memory card, then i do a little random spot checking too, again just seeing if files can launch and play in my player, no need to watch the whole 3 minute file, cuz if it can launch it are also okay from a file integrity standpoint, so i just watch like 10 seconds of each file i inspect.

It is easy to see what is what on the memory card the files are named after time/date of creation, so the file structure are just one drive after another so just scroll down thru the list and check a file here and there.

Today most dashcams are 5 V powered, so no problem using a USB power bank for power, only power banks are filled with lipo batteries and so not the best mix for cars in a really hot or cold climate.
If you hard wire you will have to use a unit with Battery Discharge Protection so the cameras can not discharge your car battery too deep ( regular car batteries are not really meant for deep discharge it will ruin their life if you do that too often )

You will probably realize that wifi in dashcams ate painfully slow, so using it for much more than setup ( which ideally you will only do once ) is a pain.
So if you have a good memory card with a 90 MB/s read speed, well you will get that on the computer with a good card reader, but via wifi you might see 5 MB/s transfer speeds.

Dashcams with screens are not larger due to that fact, and normally you can set the screen to go black in seconds after you start your drive, leaving only a lit and or flashing LED.