Need A Better Dash Cam After Car Being Hit On Christmas Eve

[No1VIPER]

I woke up Christmas morning to find that my car had been hit. Not a very Merry start to my Christmas [emoji35][emoji22]

To make things worse my current dash cam, the Aukey DR02 D, which I've only had since July, didn't capture the incident. So now I'm looking for a new dash cam. I've done quite a bit of research and I think the VIOFO A129 Duo is the one I'm going to go for. I was debating going for the Thinkware F800 Pro, but I don't think the difference in price is worth it.

The main question I have is, does the VIOFO have an option for buffered impact parking mode? As I park my car on quite a busy street, so having the motion detection on just results in it constantly recording and draining the car battery more quickly, as well as filling the SD card with with needless files. The other reason I need such a mode is because I work nights, and they are long shifts 12 and half hours. So the car is sat parked up for a long time whilst at work, then again once I finish and go straight to bed. It can also be sat for a few days without being used too.

Also is there an OBD-II cable available for the VIOFO A129? As I currently use one for my Aukey DR02 D and would prefer to use that instead of having to hardwire it.

Any help or suggestions would be very welcomed.

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[kamkar]

Damn he / she heard that for sure.
You have to drive some when you use parking guard on a dashcam, so if you are using parking guard for 23 hours and only drive 1 hour, that's probably not going to work.
It look like you drive a small car, so just like my small car it probably also have a small battery, this fact and the state of it put limitations on how long you can run parking guard, i do not get 12 hours with a 12.2 V cut off setting, i really need to put a new and bigger battery in my 2012 car,,,, even if i really don't plan to use parking guard as such, its just something i have tested lately with a camera i was sent to test.
At home i have a CCTV camera on my car parked in the back yard behind the apartment block, so not really any traffic back there, but my car have been vandalized 1 time by a D cell battery thrown into the air and landing on my roof.

I am going to use constant recording of low bitrate when i get to test parking mode with other cameras, and then have a 1 hour timer cut off as i pretty much just need parking guard when shopping.

 

[No1VIPER]

Damn he / she heard that for sure.
You have to drive some when you use parking guard on a dashcam, so if you are using parking guard for 23 hours and only drive 1 hour, that's probably not going to work.
It look like you drive a small car, so just like my small car it probably also have a small battery, this fact and the state of it put limitations on how long you can run parking guard, i do not get 12 hours with a 12.2 V cut off setting, i really need to put a new and bigger battery in my 2012 car,,,, even if i really don't plan to use parking guard as such, its just something i have tested lately with a camera i was sent to test.
At home i have a CCTV camera on my car parked in the back yard behind the apartment block, so not really any traffic back there, but my car have been vandalized 1 time by a D cell battery thrown into the air and landing on my roof.

I am going to use constant recording of low bitrate when i get to test parking mode with other cameras, and then have a 1 hour timer cut off as i pretty much just need parking guard when shopping.

It's a VW Polo Blue GT. The battery is 320A (59Ah) from what I could find when searching online.

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[kamkar]

Daum that's larger than the one in my little Suzuki, as i recall it is just 40 Ah maybe 45

 

[joe384]

I ran my A129 for a little while using the 12.4v cutoff on the hardwire kit.
The first week or two it would last 8 hours before hitting the cut-off, but I wasn't doing enough driving over time so my battery would last less and less.

Assuming CCTV is not an option, I would probably consider getting a couple of power banks to use when parked.
You could have one charging at home while using the other in the car.
It's not very elegant, but like kamkar1 said the amount of parking time depends on the amount of driving you do and the battery size.

 

[kamkar]

Also you have to factor in the weather, raindrops - dew - frost - snow on the windscreen will render a dashcam in parking mode useless, or at least make a already not optimal scenario worse.

And yes it suck but it is hard to safeguard against everything, and sadly the dashcams are by no means flawless in what they can do for us.

 

[joe384]

Visibility at night is also a problem, if I park in a dark car park, my side facing B1Ws pickup almost nothing!

 

[No1VIPER]

Does the VIOFO have a function like this:

"Intelligent Parking mode is an option that can be selected in the menu of EVERY new Series 2 Dash Cam. As soon as you park and your ignition is turned off, the Dash Cam will automatically switch into “parking mode” by shutting down everything except the G Force sensor. The sensitivity of the G force sensor is then increased dramatically." This is from Nextbases website.

Or

"Energy Saving 2.0 – Enters “sleep mode” during parking mode to conserve car battery life and “wakes up” when an impact is detected to save the footage instantaneously. *** If used with the RADAR, all clips will be recorded like Motion before the moment of impact. "From Thinkwares website.

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[kamkar]

That bit from nextbase sound like a old fashioned camera, so with no pre - buffer, and really the buffer is what you need to get footage from before the trigger event.

As i understand it a camera in parking mode still have everything going, it just don't save anything unless there is a trigger, so when they say shut down everything but the G-sensor, that to me mean there must be a wake up period,,,,,,, which might be faster than a regular boot but still you loose time.

Lets hope some of the viofo users chime in, i am only familiar with the brand from info in here, never owned one of them.

 

[joe384]

When the A129 goes into parking mode it will still be on, except it only writes to the card when there is a event (motion detection).

There have been some issues with the g-sensor in parking mode which will hopefully be fixed soon so I am not too sure myself how the g-sensor works in parking mode.

The A129 probably uses a little less power in parking mode but not by much.

I am not sure how the nextbase or thinkware parking modes work, I am sure someone on the respective forums will know.

It seems every manufacturer has slightly different ways of doing parking mode, each with there own drawbacks and it's not always 100% clear.

I wonder if it worth people trying to get better documentation together on the parking modes available, I find myself looking up the user manuals to try and see what various ones do

 

[joe384]

For nextbase "With only the G Force sensor active the power consumption is incredibly low, using the internal battery the dash cam to detect any knock or bump to your vehicle for over a week. "

I didn't realise this, seems pretty cool. It is very unlikely to be buffered though, and it's not clear how much of a delay there will be from the impact and the start of the recording.

Like I mentioned not much documentation around since I don't think parking mode is not that popular for a lot of people (it is for me though!)

 

[No1VIPER]

For nextbase "With only the G Force sensor active the power consumption is incredibly low, using the internal battery the dash cam to detect any knock or bump to your vehicle for over a week. "

I didn't realise this, seems pretty cool. It is very unlikely to be buffered though, and it's not clear how much of a delay there will be from the impact and the start of the recording.

Like I mentioned not much documentation around since I don't think parking mode is not that popular for a lot of people (it is for me though!)

I could only find a video for the lower end/older models. But based on this, it seems to be pretty much instant.

I've had a look a some reviews and videos of some Nextbase dash cams, and for my needs I'm thinking they're probably the best bet. I'm leaning towards the 522GW with the additional rear mounted camera.

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[SawMaster]

Just some thoughts here

With any non pre-buffered cam the time between detection of whatever type and start of recording is a crucial factor. My B1W g-sensor is near perfect but recording start lags ~2 seconds, and not all B1W's seem to behave as well as mine does. The Vantrue T2 has a very good 'radar' detection but lags so long between detection and recording that it's darn near useless however it does have a very long runtime in that mode It seems only Blackvue and Thinkware do a really good motion detect with pre-buffering, but even they are not 100% reliable and not too much else about their cams impresses me. So same as always we're still left with only some form of continuous recording being the only positive way of capturing parking video without fail. Low-bitrate recording is great for this with more and more cams featuring it as time goes along but we're still needing a good bit of power to do this so parking runtimes are still rather limited using it

Still no perfect parking mode solution and probably never will be; so my advice is to get as much of what you want most and be prepared to compromise (or compensate for) the rest. And research deeply among as many users as you can, for not every example of any given cam will assuredly give you the same results; if your luck is like mine you'll get one of the 'lesser' examples and end up unhappy over that if you expect too much Even if we can't get 'perfect' we can get pretty darn good with most detection modes we prefer now save for 'radar' which is still rather new in the development stage. Once it matures it might be best overall for long-term parking protection. Just gotta wait and see!

Phil

 

[No1VIPER]

Just some thoughts here

With any non pre-buffered cam the time between detection of whatever type and start of recording is a crucial factor. My B1W g-sensor is near perfect but recording start lags ~2 seconds, and not all B1W's seem to behave as well as mine does. The Vantrue T2 has a very good 'radar' detection but lags so long between detection and recording that it's darn near useless however it does have a very long runtime in that mode It seems only Blackvue and Thinkware do a really good motion detect with pre-buffering, but even they are not 100% reliable and not too much else about their cams impresses me. So same as always we're still left with only some form of continuous recording being the only positive way of capturing parking video without fail. Low-bitrate recording is great for this with more and more cams featuring it as time goes along but we're still needing a good bit of power to do this so parking runtimes are still rather limited using it

Still no perfect parking mode solution and probably never will be; so my advice is to get as much of what you want most and be prepared to compromise (or compensate for) the rest. And research deeply among as many users as you can, for not every example of any given cam will assuredly give you the same results; if your luck is like mine you'll get one of the 'lesser' examples and end up unhappy over that if you expect too much Even if we can't get 'perfect' we can get pretty darn good with most detection modes we prefer now save for 'radar' which is still rather new in the development stage. Once it matures it might be best overall for long-term parking protection. Just gotta wait and see!

Phil

This is what I've come to learn from my brief time researching over the past few days, unfortunately [emoji3525] Thanks for your input and advise though.

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[IAmATeaf]

Damn, where was the car parked when it got hit? It looks to me from the damage that somebody hit whilst reverse parking so the front of their car hit the back of your car.

Must have made a hell of a noise, at the point where you can see the red paint, it looks like they’ve then aborted the park attempt and then fled.

 

[No1VIPER]

Damn, where was the car parked when it got hit? It looks to me from the damage that somebody hit whilst reverse parking so the front of their car hit the back of your car.

Must have made a hell of a noise, at the point where you can see the red paint, it looks like they’ve then aborted the park attempt and then fled.

This is where it was parked.

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[No1VIPER]

Does anyone know whether this ODB-II cable will work with the VIOFO A129?

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JB4JB3Q/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_CqxdEbQGG0CD0

 

[jokiin]

maybe, I wouldn't use it though, these generic power supplies most often do not have very stable output voltage, doesn't do 3 wire parking and won't have selectable voltage cutoff points, very likely it uses the same generic 11.6v low voltage cutoff solution that these cheap power supplies all use

 

[No1VIPER]

maybe, I wouldn't use it though, these generic power supplies most often do not have very stable output voltage, doesn't do 3 wire parking and won't have selectable voltage cutoff points, very likely it uses the same generic 11.6v low voltage cutoff solution that these cheap power supplies all use

The 3 wire parking isn't really an issue anymore though, is it? Didn't a recent firmware update change the switch over time to something like 3 minutes now? And I'm sure I read that it switches after 5 anyway, with a 2 wire hardwire kit. I currently use an ODB-II cable for my Aukey DR02 D and would prefer to keep using one over hardwiring.

Are there any official ones available for the A129?

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[jokiin]

not a fan of these but why not use the one you are using now in that case?

yes it can do parking mode on a 2 wire power supply, the low voltage cutoff point is the problem with these though, 11.6v will leave you stranded at some point