Replacement dual camera dashcam help requested

Truchaos

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I've owned a Lukas 9700 dashcam for a couple years and I'm simply worn out trying to resolve the endless bugs, firmware and hardware issues. Also the polarized camera lens makes night recording worthless.

Looking at all the dashcams has left my head spinning and I'm hoping your expertise and experience can help me make a decision. I'm a bit nervous since I spent a good amount of money on the Lukas 9700 and got burned.

I need/want a dashcam because twice I've had two drivers hit my pickup truck and lie to the police claiming I swerved and hit them (they changed lanes without looking).

Here's my situation:
High summer heat
Winter temps down to 0 degrees F

What I'm looking for:
Reliability
Good video quality
Dual camera, small profile is preferred but not a deal killer (remote or hidden DVR/control???).
Good to excellent storage capacity (larger SD cards???)
WiFi to iPhone would be very nice

LOW priorities:
Parking cam
GPS

HIGH priorities:
Stability
Reliability
Image quality
Ease of viewing recorded video

Thanks a million
 
There seem to be build in compromises in all current dual cameras, up coming ones will be a better, at least in regard to image quality.
But even the new ones have issues, one thing is they are new so they will not be fully polished at launch.
Up coming SG products seem interesting, but parking guard will not be supported from day 1 and it is not even sure it can be done down the road as i understand it.

WIFI to iphone seem to be a little problematic with some cameras, the fruit company support seem to be second to Andriod support.
Also with a fruit company phone or tablet you cant just put the memory card in the devise for playback.
Maybe you have a multimedia head-unit in your car that can play a micro SD card in a converter to regular SD size, or maybe a USB to memory card converter, my cheapo Chinese head-unit can play media files from both SD card and its USB in plug.

Or i think you can get something you can plug into a fruit devise and then a card reader in the other end, but thats not easy i know.
 
In all the 2ch dashcams made so far, each has what I would consider at least one serious flaw. That is why many of us just use single-channel cams and deal with the hassle of extra cards and extra wiring. There is no excuse for high-priced 2ch cams which cannot match the reliability of a cheap Mobius and match or exceed the IQ of a relatively cheap A119S :mad: Whoever makes a 2ch cam that meets those performance marks will find themselves hard-pressed to keep up with the flood of orders as the current makers of the 2ch cams we've been stuck with will discover that nobody is buying their overpriced crap anymore. A lot of good awaits someone and perhaps the new SG will be that cam; we will soon find out :)

Until then all I can offer is condolences and my recommendation of using single-channel cams.

Phil
 
Up coming SG products seem interesting, but parking guard will not be supported from day 1 and it is not even sure it can be done down the road as i understand it.

for sure it won't be there on day 1, it can be done but will it be done depends on how well it can be done, if it can't be done well then it won't be done ( or won't be done until such time is it can be done properly) would rather not have a feature if it can't work as expected
 
Well as you know i am not that big on parking guard anyway, in spite of my cars being vandalized two times.
But that was at home and here i now have okay coverage of my car.
Okay i also have a pretty down to earth relationship with my expensive motorized shoebox sized car, but i understand people with nicer cars and relationships with them feel different.
 
In all the 2ch dashcams made so far, each has what I would consider at least one serious flaw. That is why many of us just use single-channel cams and deal with the hassle of extra cards and extra wiring. There is no excuse for high-priced 2ch cams which cannot match the reliability of a cheap Mobius and match or exceed the IQ of a relatively cheap A119S :mad: Whoever makes a 2ch cam that meets those performance marks will find themselves hard-pressed to keep up with the flood of orders as the current makers of the 2ch cams we've been stuck with will discover that nobody is buying their overpriced crap anymore. A lot of good awaits someone and perhaps the new SG will be that cam; we will soon find out :)

Until then all I can offer is condolences and my recommendation of using single-channel cams.

Phil

Okay, if I were to go the two DVR route, do you guys have suggestions? I'm not opposed to doing a little extra wiring.
 
I would go for a top of the line front camera, it alone can do one thing really good and thats documenting what you are doing, including being lied about swerving all over the place or any lane changes.
If buyer safety and support is big in your book the outright winner is Street Guardian, on average support questions to their cameras in here are replied to in minutes, if not by the owner then any one of their retailers or users.
The SG9665GC is their most popular model, its a wedge shaped camera that hug the windscreen, if you have room in front of RVM then that is a optimal design.
For a rear camera its problematic at night at least out of town, cuz out there you dont have any ambient light so the camera will only film darkness or headlights at night.
So for that i would still say the little Mobius is a good choice, it perform okay when there is a little light around, and it is a extremely proven and reliable little camera, and its also fairly cheap.

If money are not tight for you, you could also just go for the one front camera now, and then later in the year when the new dual models are out and matured some they might be something for you.
And you can then move the single camera to another car, friend - family or whatever enjoying the concept of giving.

A front camera i think should be enough in most cases, but a rear camera is also nice, not least if you will exposing the dumb asses on youtube, there is a lot WTF going on back there.
But the sideswipes you had should be disproved by a single front camera and lane markings or roadside, documenting that in relation to those in footage features you are rock stable in your lane and so did not pull out into any lying dumb asses.
 
I would go for a top of the line front camera, it alone can do one thing really good and thats documenting what you are doing, including being lied about swerving all over the place or any lane changes.
If buyer safety and support is big in your book the outright winner is Street Guardian, on average support questions to their cameras in here are replied to in minutes, if not by the owner then any one of their retailers or users.
The SG9665GC is their most popular model, its a wedge shaped camera that hug the windscreen, if you have room in front of RVM then that is a optimal design.
For a rear camera its problematic at night at least out of town, cuz out there you dont have any ambient light so the camera will only film darkness or headlights at night.
So for that i would still say the little Mobius is a good choice, it perform okay when there is a little light around, and it is a extremely proven and reliable little camera, and its also fairly cheap.

If money are not tight for you, you could also just go for the one front camera now, and then later in the year when the new dual models are out and matured some they might be something for you.
And you can then move the single camera to another car, friend - family or whatever enjoying the concept of giving.

A front camera i think should be enough in most cases, but a rear camera is also nice, not least if you will exposing the dumb asses on youtube, there is a lot WTF going on back there.
But the sideswipes you had should be disproved by a single front camera and lane markings or roadside, documenting that in relation to those in footage features you are rock stable in your lane and so did not pull out into any lying dumb asses.
+1
 
I looked up the SG9665GC and the reviews look good and the specs seem inline with what I'm looking for.

Thank you!

Jerry
 
Ditto all the above- you can't go wrong with the SG9665GC. I had my heart set on one for a couple years now, but I've decided to wait for their soon-to-be-released 2ch cam since I've got 4 cams running now :cool:

I like a rear cam because it will show what kind of crazy driving someone was doing before they hit you when they passed. Your front cam will protect you well by itself, but that rear cam might just help the Police to get those kind of idiots off the road for good ;) And should your front cam fail, your rear cam shows your lane position equally well :)

Here in SC you can't have too many cams; we're the 3rd worst State in the US to drive in, and nobody is doing anything to improve that :mad:

Phil
 
Well, I bought the Street Guardian and a 128GB micro SD. I'm surprised by just how small it really is, the images don't give a good size reference. I installed it, set it up and recorded some video and verified it was viewable on my laptop. So far everything is working as it should. I like it's small profile but on the other hand I don't like that it takes a computer to view the video. Having said that, it did come with a mini USB to USB connector which according to Street Guardian is used to view videos on an Android phone (which I don't have).

The video quality is good, not spectacular but certainly good. We'll see how it works long term. One thing I noticed is that since I have it set to motion detect to conserve resources and I don't manually turn it off so it stays on at night. It recorded video in my yard at 2 AM one night and I thought, hey what's that about. I checked the video and it was me taking the dog out in the middle of the night and I had forgotten about doing it.

It seems very stable so far, easy to install, GPS was a breeze. I even did a firmware update.
 
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