micro sd cards for dash cams need to be longer

[petercl14]

My card goes deeply into the slot of my nextech camera. This makes it hard to get in and out. I use a biro. Others on this site using paper clips and edges of adapter cards to get them in and out. What would be wrong with a longer card so you can easily grip it with your fingers? The manufacturers need to get off their backsides and make longer cards to suit these types of cameras. I have now lost one card and nearly lost others. Is this the manufacturers way of getting you to buy more cards from them?
I wish I was a manufacturer. I could monopolise the market for micro sd cards. These other short card makers would hopefully go broke for all the trouble they have caused us.

 

[Kremmen]

They are tricky. I put the card in once and use the whole dashcam as a card reader to offload the footage.

 

[DashCamMan]

microSD cards have to meet a specific standard including dimensions. The standard is here:

SD Standard Overview | SD Association

www.sdcard.org

Longer cards wouldn't fit in some devices like phones causing a whole other set of problems if manufacturers deviate from the standard.

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum.

Seem like you have stumbled on a age old problem, and yes the memory cards do seat deep in most cameras, and as a consequence of this many of us have had one or several " UMCL " ( Unintentional Memory Card Launch ) so much so we could easy make a club for the people that have tried this.
And the request for more accessible memory cards ( not so deep sockets ) are one of the oldest unfulfilled requests in the dashcam industry.
What many have done is to put a little tap on the card made up of tape, this was you at least have something to hold onto while you retrieve or insert the card in a camera, CUZ the spring loaded mechanism in the socket will make sure to do its best to foil and not perfect handling of the little cards.

Dride are using a SIM card like tray on the back of their new 4K system, for both the SIM card but also for the memory card.
Picture without the rear plastic cover installed, but even with that the trays seem more accessible to me, or at the very least as the memory card are parralel with the back of the camera, there are a lesser chance of it launching i think.

Memory card not fully inserted in this picture, i would assume it stick out a little into the cavity to at least to be able to eject it with a finger nail.

TBH i have wondered a lot why no dashcam maker have used a SIM / memory card tray exactly like you would see on the phones that do support one or more SIM cards + a memory card.
I can only assume it is due to this kind of slot / tray are actually not meant for "frequent" opening and closing, and / or this kind of tray are more expensive and so would cut into earnings.

 

[Dashmellow]

We all know that inserting and removing memory cards in dash cams can be tricky. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has had a microSD card go shooting off into some dark recess of my vehicle never to be seen again.

The problem won't get fixed by changing the size and format of the cards themselves but conceivably some clever engineer could devise a better design for installing and removing the cards in dash cams (and other gadgets).
I picture something like a small swing out tray to hold the card that closes with a secure mechanism.

As I was composing this post I see that @kamkar mentions something along those lines but I think it could be integrated into a more traditional dash cam design without having to remove the whole back of the camera case, especially if you want to leave the camera installed and just remove the card.

Another option would be to use something like we see on some professional still cameras. Many DSLRs have a door with card slots inside. The cards don't insert all the way so they can be grabbed easily for removal and have a mechanism where you press a button that slowly and securely pushes the memory card out of its slot behind the door. These are mostly done with larger memory cards but could easily work with microSD.

 

[kamkar]

@Dashmellow i updated my post with a pic of the back of the dride 4K installed, the 2 cards are accessible in a cavity in the back.
The camera are powered by a plug into the housing, so you should not need to unplug it to retrieve the memory card if that is needed, just slide it off the mount.

 

[Dashmellow]

@Dashmellow i updated my post with a pic of the back of the dride 4K installed, the 2 cards are accessible in a cavity in the back.
The camera are powered by a plug into the housing, so you should not need to unplug it to retrieve the memory card if that is needed, just slide it off the mount.

OK. That sounds better than I imagined from the photos. I like the innovative approach!

 

[kamkar]

Yeah seem pretty simple, and i think at least with the wedge shaped cameras you should be able to incorporate something like that.
The systems that do have the GPS in the mount and so already a connector on the back to get to that, it would probably be more problematic to do.

The phone like trays seem like they cost a few bucks, but i will gladly pay that to have a more secure and easy access to my memory card.

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Using such a tray would also make insane much sense if you are making a smart camera that need both SIM and Memory card, the only downside i can see of the phone like trays is that the SIM and Memory card are not really seated in the "prong" they lie in, so you would probably have to hold it all level when you insert it into a phone / dashcam.

 

[DAP]

The problem is not with the memory card, but with the choice of socket in the cameras.
The cameras use a latching socket because they do not want the memory card to get knocked out of the socket in an accident. They do not want any part of the memory card sticking out when the memory card is latched in place because if it were, customers would grab the memory card with pliers and yank out the card without releasing the latch, resulting in a broken socket and a returned camera.
There are non-latching memory card sockets where the card does stick out, but camera makers don't use them because the memory card could get knocked out in an accident.
I always found that my finger nails worked fine for ejecting the memory card. I have, so far, never launched a memory card from the socket.