Parking mode usable for driving

dashing_gentleman

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Hi,
I am currently thinking about buying the B1W. However, In the country I am from (Germany) it is not allowed to shoot constant video as this would invade the privacy rights of other drivers and pedestrians. I was thinking it might be feasible to use the parking mode while driving to only record under heavy breaking or after an impact. Has anyone tested the parking mode while driving and what are your experiences? This mode might be prone to errors or may not record every accident rendering the camera useless.
My second idea would be to reserve around 85 percent of the space on the sdcard (4 gb) via the app-setting and have the camera only record two or three short clips and then overwrite them with new footage immediately.
This way the data would be written to the same blocks of the memory card over and over and therefore the sd would have to be formated quite often to expand its lifetime. Maybe it's possible to release a firmware that starts with wifi off and has a format sd option upon double click or something similar. However I think it is still not legal to save any data to video in Germany. The better solution might be to have the camera write to ram and only save the video once the user presses the lock video button on the camera. It's probably not possible to exchange the ram of the B1W (how big is it anyways?) but this might be a good idea for a future model.
 
However, In the country I am from (Germany) it is not allowed to shoot constant video as this would invade the privacy rights of other drivers and pedestrians.

you might want to check on that, according to our distributor in Germany it went to court on the 15th of this month and dashcams are ok there now, even admissible as evidence in court
 
This b1w camera cannot support 4Gb card, it is too small to take recording.
And you need to switch normal recording mode to parking mode manually in its APP.
 
Can you record constant time lapse video? It doesn't record any sound, but can keep a decent record of what is happening depending on the time interval between frames.
 
you might want to check on that, according to our distributor in Germany it went to court on the 15th of this month and dashcams are ok there now, even admissible as evidence in court

Yeah, it can indeed be used in a court of law. However, you can still be fined for recording people and archiving that footage. (Fines will typically be around 200-1.000 Euros)


This b1w camera cannot support 4Gb card, it is too small to take recording.

Why? Does the camera not accept 4 gb cards? I only want to record a few minutes at a time, I think 4 GB is already way too big for that. That's why I wanted to reserve most of the space for saved videos.

Can you record constant time lapse video? It doesn't record any sound, but can keep a decent record of what is happening depending on the time interval between frames.

I think this would still count as "constantly archived video", which would be a fineable offence.
 
Why? Does the camera not accept 4 gb cards? I only want to record a few minutes at a time, I think 4 GB is already way too big for that. That's why I wanted to reserve most of the space for saved videos.
.

the camera has recycling and file handling to consider as well as being able to do that once some files are saved, 4GB is not enough room for that to happen, you have some unusual requirements you're trying to achieve but you need to take into account that's not part of the design brief for this type of product, it needs a larger card, I don't know that you'd even find a suitable speed card in such a small size, not even sure you'd find it in 8GB, even 16GB is getting to be challenge these days
 
Using a 4GB card would not work for long anyway.

If a 64GB card has a 12 month lifespan, a 4GB card would have a 3 week lifespan!

(Assuming that they achieve the same number of write cycles per cell.)
 
the camera has recycling and file handling to consider as well as being able to do that once some files are saved, 4GB is not enough room for that to happen, you have some unusual requirements you're trying to achieve but you need to take into account that's not part of the design brief for this type of product, it needs a larger card, I don't know that you'd even find a suitable speed card in such a small size, not even sure you'd find it in 8GB, even 16GB is getting to be challenge these days

I see. I already own the 4 gb card so I would give it a try anyways. (I don't know the cards speed). I necessary I would format a 32 gb card to the smallest amount possible (to guarantee a working camera) and leave the rest of the memory unallocated. In my opinion it should not be an unusual design goal for dashcams to keep privacy invasions to a minimum and still be able to reliably do their job recording accidents. I think this could be achieved by only saving two or three one minute long clips at a time and immediately overwriting them afterwards. Or as I said record only to ram and save to sd only upon user interaction.
 
I see. I already own the 4 gb card so I would give it a try anyways. (I don't know the cards speed). I necessary I would format a 32 gb card to the smallest amount possible (to guarantee a working camera) and leave the rest of the memory unallocated. In my opinion it should not be an unusual design goal for dashcams to keep privacy invasions to a minimum and still be able to reliably do their job recording accidents. I think this could be achieved by only saving two or three one minute long clips at a time and immediately overwriting them afterwards. Or as I said record only to ram and save to sd only upon user interaction.
What's the difference between recording 2 or 3 one minute clips, and recording 20 or 30?

Only the length of time they are stored for, and unless your law specifies a time period then it will make no difference as long as you are storing them for hours rather than months/years. Even a 128GB card is just a circular temporary buffer, if you want to keep something then you have to remove/copy it off the dashcam for archiving.
 
Are there any dashcams that only save a video when you press the event button (or an event is triggered by the g sensor)?
 
Are there any dashcams that only save a video when you press the event button (or an event is triggered by the g sensor)?

there's a USA company that had a product like this that had some patents around the first dashcams, the product only saved on G-Sensor event or manual event, everything else was dumped, not sure they still exist though
 
What's the difference between recording 2 or 3 one minute clips, and recording 20 or 30?

Only the length of time they are stored for, and unless your law specifies a time period then it will make no difference as long as you are storing them for hours rather than months/years. Even a 128GB card is just a circular temporary buffer, if you want to keep something then you have to remove/copy it off the dashcam for archiving.

That's a good argument. However, German law is very unclear at the moment to what constitutes as "constantly archived video". I think the feature I am looking for in a dashcam is called (pre-)buffered parking mode, where the camera saves the last ten seconds before an event triggers the g-sensor to the video file. Unfortunately these dashcam seem to start at 250 $, which is way to pricey for me. I just ordered the B1W and will install it above the drivers head, so it can't be seen from the outside and will not trigger a police inspection. I will experiment with parking mode as the standard mode while on the road.

My 4gb card is rated as a class 2 but can write at 15 MB/s which is above the specs of a class 10 card (10 MB/s). I'm not convinced 4gb is too small to record video. My guess is it will just be looping faster than a 16GB card. I'll definitely give it a try before investing money into a new card.
 
My B1w arrived yesterday and I am very happy with it so far. I just wanted to confirm my 4 gb sd-card is working fine with the camera and can record around 20 min of footage before the first clip gets erased. (I reserved 50 % of disk space for saving clips (semi-)permanently). It seems these "permanent" clips get looped as well.
 
It is better to get a big SD card for this dashcam...
 
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