derf

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Hi guys,
I just bought a U1000, which is a major upgrade for me from my old Mobius action cam as a dash cam. I'm pretty excited, I hope I made the right decision. I was on the fence about a DR900-S, a A129 pro, and the U1000. In the end the U1000 got the nod.

I have a couple questions for you guys...

1) As I understand, the optional radar module helps reduce the need for large capacity memory cards and improve power efficiency by not running the camera in time-lapse mode, or in low-power mode. The camera is essentially "asleep" until the radar wakes it up and it starts recording to the internal memory buffer. If an impact is detected, the buffer is written to the card as well as some time after the impact. Now, if no impact is detected, there is no recording saved to the card, and the buffer is simply erased. Is that correct?
2) if using the optional radar, but the radar does not detect an object or movement, but there is an impact, the camera will wake up (after ~1 second) and start recording, but you won't get the 'buffered' parking memory recording written. So you might still see a car that bumped you, but not have the whole before/during/after event.
3) Can you help me decide if my use case warrants looking into getting an optional battery and/or radar module?
- I drive to work 5 days a week, and I also use my car on weekends. Should give plenty of charge-up time to not let deplete my main car battery.
- I don't leave my car for long periods of inactive days really; aside from two holidays a year that I take for vacation. But, occasionally I drive to NYC and park in the street when visiting the in-laws.
- I park in a private driveway at my house, and not on the street. At work I have an assigned parking space in an off-street lot that I pull into and has a wall in front of me to the business. Seems like the radar wouldn't be much use at home or at work.
- In all my years of driving, I've received almost no front/rear accidents while I'm parked, but I've received MANY door dings and bumps to the sides of my car, mostly when I leave it in a parking lot for the grocery store or walmart or whatever. I don't think the front or rear camera, or the radar will help with that though.

4) Given all of the above what parking mode would be best for my use case?

5) Do I really need a huge memory card like 512GB? Why do some people care about storing 20 hours of continuous footage on their camera? I only drive 30 minutes to work, one hour a day. In a week I'd only need 6 hours or so. My old Mobius only had a 32GB card and when I had an accident when driving I would just pop out the card after the cops left so nothing would be over-written, copy the files to my home computer, and then put the card back in the next day.

6) What do you guys think about protecting yourself against door dings from cars parking adjacent to you?

7) how responsive is Thinkware to suggestions? Or to updates with the firmware?

I'm sure I'll see you around more once it shows up and I have questions.
 
Hi guys,
I just bought a U1000, which is a major upgrade for me from my old Mobius action cam as a dash cam. I'm pretty excited, I hope I made the right decision. I was on the fence about a DR900-S, a A129 pro, and the U1000. In the end the U1000 got the nod.

I have a couple questions for you guys...

1) As I understand, the optional radar module helps reduce the need for large capacity memory cards and improve power efficiency by not running the camera in time-lapse mode, or in low-power mode. The camera is essentially "asleep" until the radar wakes it up and it starts recording to the internal memory buffer. If an impact is detected, the buffer is written to the card as well as some time after the impact. Now, if no impact is detected, there is no recording saved to the card, and the buffer is simply erased. Is that correct?
2) if using the optional radar, but the radar does not detect an object or movement, but there is an impact, the camera will wake up (after ~1 second) and start recording, but you won't get the 'buffered' parking memory recording written. So you might still see a car that bumped you, but not have the whole before/during/after event.
3) Can you help me decide if my use case warrants looking into getting an optional battery and/or radar module?
- I drive to work 5 days a week, and I also use my car on weekends. Should give plenty of charge-up time to not let deplete my main car battery.
- I don't leave my car for long periods of inactive days really; aside from two holidays a year that I take for vacation. But, occasionally I drive to NYC and park in the street when visiting the in-laws.
- I park in a private driveway at my house, and not on the street. At work I have an assigned parking space in an off-street lot that I pull into and has a wall in front of me to the business. Seems like the radar wouldn't be much use at home or at work.
- In all my years of driving, I've received almost no front/rear accidents while I'm parked, but I've received MANY door dings and bumps to the sides of my car, mostly when I leave it in a parking lot for the grocery store or walmart or whatever. I don't think the front or rear camera, or the radar will help with that though.

4) Given all of the above what parking mode would be best for my use case?

5) Do I really need a huge memory card like 512GB? Why do some people care about storing 20 hours of continuous footage on their camera? I only drive 30 minutes to work, one hour a day. In a week I'd only need 6 hours or so. My old Mobius only had a 32GB card and when I had an accident when driving I would just pop out the card after the cops left so nothing would be over-written, copy the files to my home computer, and then put the card back in the next day.

6) What do you guys think about protecting yourself against door dings from cars parking adjacent to you?

7) how responsive is Thinkware to suggestions? Or to updates with the firmware?

I'm sure I'll see you around more once it shows up and I have questions.

1) Yes, this is correct.

2) If no motion is detected then the impact footage will not be buffered.

3) The iVolt Mini and Radar are by no means necessary. As you do not leave your car unattended for long periods, it may not be a huge benefit to you. Also as long as your vehicle has a relatively new and strong battery it should be fine. If you are noticing that you are not getting as much parking recording as you'd hope for you can always add an external battery pack after the fact.

4) I recommend the traditional motion detection.

5) We can only recommend Thinkware Micro SD cards up to 128 GB. Our micro SD cards are partitioned so that if an event does happen it will not be overwritten by the continuous recording as the clips are saved in different folder files.

6) It's tough to catch door dings as the side of your vehicle is a blind spot for front and rear dash cams. We do have a 5 channel solution in the works.

7) Your feedback is important, we (The North American Thinkware Office) try to gather as much customer feedback as we can and present it to the development team in Korea.
 
Thanks for the reply.

I'm interested to hear more about the 5-channel solution - when can we expect to hear an official announcement?
I'm also interested to know what the best method of submitting feedback is? Is there an email address, or should we just make a post here on the forum?
 
Thanks for the reply.

I'm interested to hear more about the 5-channel solution - when can we expect to hear an official announcement?
I'm also interested to know what the best method of submitting feedback is? Is there an email address, or should we just make a post here on the forum?
No official announcements at this moment. You can send your feedback to our support team! You can shoot them an email (support@thinkware.com) or give them a call (1-844-865-9273).
 
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5) We can only recommend Thinkware Micro SD cards up to 128 GB. Our micro SD cards are partitioned so that if an event does happen it will not be overwritten by the continuous recording as the clips are saved in different folder files.
I did notice in the memory card settings the boxes next to each individual setting are checked that can be overwritten. Does that mean parking mode incidents can also be overwritten once that partition is full? I unchecked the box to see what would happen if the parking mode detection would get overwritten, and over the course of a few days the parking I mode incidents partition became full because the option to overwrite was not checked and an alert was announced through the camera. Something to the effect of, “parking mode detection is full. Cannot record event”. So does that mean when the alotted space for the parking mode incident is full the oldest file in that partition gets written over? Is that the same for continuous impact detection?
 
I did notice in the memory card settings the boxes next to each individual setting are checked that can be overwritten. Does that mean parking mode incidents can also be overwritten once that partition is full? I unchecked the box to see what would happen if the parking mode detection would get overwritten, and over the course of a few days the parking I mode incidents partition became full because the option to overwrite was not checked and an alert was announced through the camera. Something to the effect of, “parking mode detection is full. Cannot record event”. So does that mean when the alotted space for the parking mode incident is full the oldest file in that partition gets written over? Is that the same for continuous impact detection?

Yep, you're right. Unchecked = no overwriting. When the box is checked it will overwrite the oldest clip in the folder. It is the same for all of the different file folders.
 
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