Looking for opinions on service offering free dashcam and service

[cjones20]

My intention for this post isn't to spam anyone. I'm not selling anything (no urls). I'm doing some market research for a new company I've started and want to get some insight from dashcam users.

I'm designing a dashcam with stereo vision (two forward facing cameras), IMU (accelerometer, gyro, compass), GPS, and it connects to the OBDII connector on your car to record steering angle and speed. The data collected will be used to train computer vision models to help self driving car companies do a better job at predicting what paths vehicles and pedestrians will take, where lanes are, stop signs, stop lights, etc.

The basic idea is that you buy a dashcam (maybe $400, very high end components) and as data is uploaded to the cloud that we can use we credit back the money until maybe after 12 months we've credited back the entire amount. The data would be anonymized. I have no use for any identifying information about the driver. The reason it's not just free to begin with is we want to make sure people don't order them and either not use them, not upload the data, or use them for parts.

The cameras I'm looking at are what's called global shutter (all pixels are recorded at once). Most dashcams use a camera called rolling shutter (each row of pixels is recorded separately). The rolling shutter combined with a slow shutter speed results in motion blur. When you pause the video a picture of a car driving by looks blurred. This is no good for computer vision, we need sharp pictures of pedestrians and cars to accurately classify them.

Are there any particular features in a camera that are must have? Automatic generation of maps of where you've been? Ability to share videos straight to Youtube?

 

[Nigel]

The cameras I'm looking at are what's called global shutter

What sensor is it using?

When you pause the video a picture of a car driving by looks blurred.

Not true, the only issue is that the bottom of the image is recorded a little later than the top, so the car driving passed is a bit distorted in shape if it is going fast, there is no extra blur.

Are there any particular features in a camera that are must have?

1. Auto start/stop,
2. Loop recording,
3. File lock (protection) on g-sensor or user button.
4. Editable video files - ie using a standard format/codec.
5. Photo button (frame grab into jpg file).
6. Audio recording, with sufficient sensitivity to record driver's window conversations.
7. Everyone with an expensive camera requires a parking mode these days, one that doesn't drain the car battery overnight. A good global shutter sensor may be a bit thirsty?
8. Image quality sufficient to read license plates, including in low light/night time, but presumably you have that sorted?
9. GPS overlay information, including time, date, speed, optional location, customisable text (eg vehicle registration number), plus if available acceleration/deceleration rate (people like evidence of when they put the brakes on before the collision).
10. For the price you have suggested, it will need at least a front and rear view, probably with resolutions of 4K front and FHD rear. If you reduce the price a bit then 2K would do for the front.
11. Presumably it will have a built in internet connection? Nobody is going to manually upload all the files every day for you, even if it is reasonably simple.
12. If it has an internet connection then people might expect live location tracking, live view and web notifications of g-sensor triggering while parked.

 

[cjones20]

Thanks for the feedback.

You're right, it's not technically blur. It's a stretching of the image, wheels of a car crossing perpendicular are oval shaped.

Start/stop was going to be initiated with either IMU movement or canbus messages coming in upon startup. Those can be monitored with a simple microcontroller that only turns on the main power hungry system if triggered.

I've gone back and forth on audio. I was going to put in a 4-mic array so it can learn to recognize the location of emergency vehicles but I was worried that people would be concerned about privacy with audio recording.

I'm going to test first with the Sony IMX296C which is 1440x1080 and is global shutter. In production I was targeting the Sony IMX390, it's automotive grade, handles low light well, and has a high dynamic range. Resolution is 1937x1217. Global shutter
cameras that can do 4k are uber expensive.

Likely LTE for real-time GPS tracking and uploading accident video immediately but wifi/5G for automatic offloading of video. Talking to Verizon, 5G is likely not going to be widely deployed for some time though.

 

[Nigel]

I'm going to test first with the Sony IMX296C which is 1440x1080

That's not much more than 720 HD resolution in width, either it's not going to read license plates or it will have not enough field of view. This may not be a problem for your use, but nobody is going to be impressed at spending $400 and then not being able to read any plates. Unless it can read plates it is unlikely that anyone is going to allow it to stay in their car. The Viofo A129 Pro Duo gives high quality 4K front + FHD rear at $250! https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/viofo-a129-pro-dual-dashcam-4k-front-1080-rear.40094/

Not sure why you need the global shutter sensor, it does remove a bit of shape distortion, but only when things are moving quickly across the frame in low light, most things that need to be recognised like street signs are hardly affected.

Sound recording from one microphone is needed for the user, the uploading of sound could be optional, I guess most people would agree if there was a reasonable incentive.

 

[Nath]

I think Nigel has mentioned everything important but i would add "Buffered recording".

 

[cjones20]

That's not much more than 720 HD resolution in width, either it's not going to read license plates or it will have not enough field of view. This may not be a problem for your use, but nobody is going to be impressed at spending $400 and then not being able to read any plates. Unless it can read plates it is unlikely that anyone is going to allow it to stay in their car. The Viofo A129 Pro Duo gives high quality 4K front + FHD rear at $250! https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/viofo-a129-pro-dual-dashcam-4k-front-1080-rear.40094/

Not sure why you need the global shutter sensor, it does remove a bit of shape distortion, but only when things are moving quickly across the frame in low light, most things that need to be recognised like street signs are hardly affected.

Sound recording from one microphone is needed for the user, the uploading of sound could be optional, I guess most people would agree if there was a reasonable incentive.

I need video in all weather conditions, rain, dark, snow. In a test last night with a Sony IMX219 the distortion at dusk was really bad at 1080P.

pause and you can see it. Excuse the camera position, this was the first test.
Looks like my vendor will have the IMX226 available soon. Resolution is 4072 x 3046, it's global reset, not full global but it might be good enough.

 

[jokiin]

IMX219 has 1.2 micron pixels, never going to be great in low light, IMX226 at 1.85 micron isn't much better though, you need a bigger size sensor

 

[cjones20]

IMX219 has 1.2 micron pixels, never going to be great in low light, IMX226 at 1.85 micron isn't much better though, you need a bigger size sensor

The nice thing about the IMX390 is that it's 3 micron pixel but resolution is only a bit better than FHD.

 

[jokiin]

if you want low light performance you need bigger pixels, if you want detail you need bigger resolution, budget may be the decider as to which is more important

that aside the processor they're used with can make a world of difference also, there's cameras out there now that use the same sensors yet deliver very different results due to different chipsets used, anything is a sum of its parts

 

[Nigel]

pause and you can see it. Excuse the camera position, this was the first test.

Nearly all the distortion I can see there is from motion blur due to slow shutter speed, that is what is making the wheels oval, there is so much of that that I can't see any rolling shutter distortion!

You need a much more sensitive sensor to remove the motion blur.

 

[cjones20]

Nearly all the distortion I can see there is from motion blur due to slow shutter speed, that is what is making the wheels oval, there is so much of that that I can't see any rolling shutter distortion!

You need a much more sensitive sensor to remove the motion blur.

Interesting. My first thought was this was due to the rolling shutter. This is a super cheap module, definitely didn't intend on going into production with it. The other reason I need global reset/shutter is that I need to synchronize the cameras and none of the rolling shutter modules support that.

 

[Nigel]

My first thought was this was due to the rolling shutter.

Rolling shutter would create ovals that are close to vertical, tilted at up to 5 degrees depending on the speed of the object with the bottom tilted in the direction of travel. Motion blur from horizontally moving objects results in horizontal ovals which is what I see. You would get a much better result from any of the Sony Starvis sensors, but there will always be a bit of motion blur at night on fast moving objects. Don't know anything about synchronisation, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible with a rolling shutter sensor, just that it's not normally a requirement for the modules that use them whereas it often is for global shutter sensors.