My dream camera

kissmancz

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Hello friends, could you please help me find my dream dash camera? I am looking for:
  • Remote wireless lock file button (BT LE ideally)
  • LTE Access Point (no additional hotspot device needed, e sim ideally)
  • Tube design like BlackVue cameras
  • Dual camera
  • 4k with great day / night image
  • Capacitor
  • GPS
  • Cloud or remote access
  • Optional polarisation filter
  • not needed but would be nice to have great parking mode
 
Every single item from my list is already invented.... why they dont want to make such a camera? Every camera today is same... no major innovations for 3 years.
 
Well it will probably be there soon, but it will not be the best of dashcams.

On your list i only want 4K myself, but not current 4K
It is is individual what people want, but yes a lot of people seem to gravitate towards the smartest dashcams, only to get a better one when they run into problems.
So those people post about.

1: my notifications suddenly stopped
2: suddenly Alexa dont work anymore, but she did work a few days ago
3: why cant i connect to my camera anymore

And many more questions all related to the smarts, it is actually rare those people talk about image quality, though it is often lower in smart cameras VS regular cameras that just record.

I prefer a dashcam to not need a phone at all, mainly CUZ while i do have a phone right now, i only carry it for my dear old sick mother to be able to reach me, when she are dead i have no reason to carry a phone.
 
Definition of "best" is relative. Actually add LTE AP (internet for crew) to the Viofo A129 Pro Dual and I will be happy enough :) I am not asking for "smart" features.
 
You also talk about
no major innovations for 3 years

I think you mean no major gadget / features in 3 years, and thats also okay if you want stuff like that.
I just want a dashcam that record good footage, my only wish outside good 4K is i would like to move away from micro SD cards for storage, even though that would probably make things slower and more aquard for me if i had to backup my driving from the camera storage to a thumb drive ( i will of course not do that over wifi, no sane person use wifi more than he absolutely need to, and thats not hours every day mmore like minutes / week )
 
no major innovations for 3 years.
How about dual channel cameras,
and triple channel cameras,
and 4K resolution,
and parking mode (no good dashcams had a useful parking mode 3 years ago),
and parking timers,
and hardwire kits with parking mode control and decent cut off voltages,
and Bluetooth remote control,
and IR interior cameras,
and 360 dashcams (an almost complete failure).

Definition of "best" is relative. Actually add LTE AP (internet for crew) to the Viofo A129 Pro Dual and I will be happy enough :) I am not asking for "smart" features.
Maybe wait for their next model, and since it is about 1 year since the Pro arrived, maybe it is nearly time for the release of an A139 with lots of new features?
 
sorry but:

dual/triple is something new in last 2-3 years? no... maybe triple
4k is new? no... (DR900S in 2018, DOD, YI probably earlier)
parking mode? no... (Thinkware looong time ago)
parking timers? not sure what is it...
hardwire kits? no... (BlackVue again, in 2016 i think?)
bluetooth remote controll? no... (RoadEyes cameras at 2016, and some others I cant remember right now)

360 daschcams? we can speak about innovation when something is working really good :D

Maybe wait for their next model, and since it is about 1 year since the Pro arrived, maybe it is nearly time for the release of an A139 with lots of new features?
I am waiting for "their" next model 3 years now... :cry: I know, it looks like I am just crying here, but I hope someone from top brands will read it in the future and they will make something really new...
 
there is no innovation, dashcams are about evolution not revolution, there are incremental changes all the time, things get better each year but nothing groundbreaking
 
dual/triple is something new in last 2-3 years? no... maybe triple
4k is new? no... (DR900S in 2018,
What year do you think it is now?

And I was discounting last century technology analogy rear cameras, they had zero chance of reading plates!

bluetooth remote controll?
There have been RF remote controls for longer, but Bluetooth low energy has only arrived recently.
I am waiting for "their" next model 3 years now... :cry: I know, it looks like I am just crying here, but I hope someone from top brands will read it in the future and they will make something really new...
Their first 4K camera arrived last year, their first dual channel the year before, this year they will have more advances...
Advances have also arrived in firmware, the A129 Duo had no buffered parking mode when it arrived, or low bitrate parking mode, they keep innovating...

If you wait for perfection, and keep increasing your requirements for perfection, you will be waiting forever!
 
Oh to dream...:)

Yes, all this is possible but not today, and mostly because of the way the cams are designed and made. The SOC approach is probably enough to make a really good 4K cam with no features but that's about the limit today. What we need is something more like a PC where you have a board for video, another for audio, and so on which then go through a main processor to compile it all into one end product. But that takes space, and you've also got heat which has to be dealt with. And if you're using a parking mode it takes more power to do this. Remote cams are the way forward here but that only addresses the size issue and to a lesser degree the heat issue. And of course the more you put into a cam the more it costs. So to do something "ideal" today would take a 'main' unit the size of a small book with active cooling and a separate battery of a high amperage for just the cam. And deep pockets too, because such a system would cost at or upwards of $1K US o_O

So maybe someday, when we get super-efficient processors which are more heat tolerant or someone starts building cams taking the 'PC approach' we might get all this but it isn't anywhere in the prospects which the near-future sees, and not even when you look as far ahead as you can into probabilities :( And if such as this ever does get done it is most likely to be something made integral to the cars themselves, sort of how Tesla cams function, which isn't really a "dashcam" anymore.

And this doesn't even get into the related issue of 'wireless' connectivity for remote viewing and saving to cloud. As we over-use wireless where we shouldn't, the available network space for everything gets reduced and costs more. There's only so much radio spectrum available- we cannot make more. So yes, let's dream but let's also be realistic and understand that we can't have what we dream of, and by the time it becomes possible an entirely different approach will be taken. IMHO we're in "the golden age" of dashcams right now and the future is bright but not long-lived because in another 20 years every car built will already have it's own dashcam system with few if any options given to us, which is good for the people overall but not so good for the cam manufacturers who will either have to change over to building the systems for car manufacturers instead of us, or find another business field to venture into.

Whatever else may happen, the only certainty us that the future will be different from today in ways we can't yet see, driven there by the dreams of today :cool:

Phil
 
Please dont understand me wrong, I dont want to blame manufacturers or anyone (and also my English is not perfect as I am not a native speaker). I just want to have great discussion. By "they" i meant all the manufacturers, not only Viofo. Seriously, from technical point of view, it is not a problem to build device with all mentioned features from my first post today. Actually my 5 year old smartphone can do all the things I mentioned and it is even smaller. But it is not proper "appliance". Price is also not a problem. No problem to spend $1K for such a great camera. If people can spend money for overpriced cars and mobile phones.

Question is, they cant or they dont want to? I sent my "wish list" to the Thinkware and to the Blackvue three years ago. Both replied with message "we are working on this, all the requested features will be there soon". And three years later?
 
I think much of the problems is the brands work with the same few options from novatek and maybe Ambrella.
If qualcom made their new ISP ( normally found in 865 based phones ) available with a lesser CPU at lower prices, then people could do wonders with that in a android based system.
ANd since it was Android people could code all manner of things for those connected cameras.
 
Question is, they cant or they dont want to?...
The most likely answer is they don't want to for the simple reason there would be a very limited market for such an 'upscale' high-priced product. For most people dash cameras are a 'novelty' item with very little to no return on investment (unlike a mobile phone that's used every day) so low cost is a significant factor when making a purchase decision. In order to make your dream camera profitable the fixed costs would have to be spread over a relatively small number of cameras thus raising the price even higher and shrinking the potential market even further.
 
I think much of the problems is the brands work with the same few options from novatek and maybe Ambrella.
If qualcom made their new ISP ( normally found in 865 based phones ) available with a lesser CPU at lower prices, then people could do wonders with that in a android based system.
ANd since it was Android people could code all manner of things for those connected cameras.
Blackvue uses Hisilicon and chip used in DR750S and DR900S has plenty of power to cover all those features (there is probably no reason to not use it in the next gen again).
 
yes but dont Hisilicon also lock you into a SDK that is managed and supplied by others ( the SOC maker ), and so you can just do what they allow you to do.

Of course i have no clue if a camera in a Android devise are a free for all that let you tap into all powers of a sensor chip, and have horsepower left to also analyze that footage real time.
I just noticed there seem to be several App's for phone cameras, so people with programming skills must be able to do some things

With Novatek and Ambrealla it always seem to be " thats not in the SDK yet" if you aks in to a little more off the shelf capabilities or features.
 
Ok, back to the ground ;) I am really looking for camera, but I am very limited with mounting options.... my car has a big RaCam module and curved screen, so I cant mount above the RaCam. Only option is to mount just below the RaCam unit to the center (directly to the glass or to the RaCam cover - inverted angle), so cylindrical camera is logical choice (but I dont like BlackVue prices because of ther low image quality). 2ch, GPS, capacitor and bluetooth button would be great. Any tips for great device?
 

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Have you tried a Viofo wedge shaped camera? If you haven't seen one, they are smaller than they look in the photos, so check with a measure...

Not sure that a cylindrical camera would actually be any better since you couldn't push it right up against the "RaCam".
 
Many people have mounted a wedge shaped cam off the bottom of their sensor housing plastic, the minus is you can not see the screen there so you have to take the camera off the mount to do changes or use a APP if thats a option.
This also make pressing the on camera button a bit problematic when you can not see it, but you can glue something to the bottom to make it taller and more easy to feel.

To mount a camera there the plastics have to be reasonably flat, and you probably have to get some other sticky tape / pads than what are supplied with camera as it is meant for glass install so actually dont work super well on plastic trim panels.
 
I can mount cylindrical camera below the RaCam unit, It will not be visible from driver or any seat because shape of the cover. Check my drawing, blue is window, black RaCam profile. And Viofo is so long for this placement - will be visible too much. Btw. I dont care about the display, thats the reason why bluetooth button would be great ;)
 

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