Seeking dash cam for 24/7 surveillance

[jomanjee]

am looking for a reliable dash cam to stick on my front windshield (maybe on side windows/rear too) to monitor 24/7 what happens around my car when parked, no need to record 24/7 but maybe just motion detect and record, i will need it as well for daily recording when driving and it should have standard functions, really clear 1080p recording during day light, good night image, and all standard functions for a reliable dash cam including:-
- start/stop recording automatically when driving,
- good angle view

not looking to pay a lot on this since its gonna be mainly to record 24/7 around my car (1 or 2 days max) when parked to detect kids potential accidents while parked...

thanks,

 

[kamkar]

you will not get good night image unless there are some degree of light, like a street light near by.
And using motion detect you will get a event recording everything larger than a bird move within the frame of the camera, and these are event files so can fill up memory card leaving no room for regular driving footage.

start/stop recording automatically when driving - that's standard for any dashcam.
good angle view - all dashcams have vide angle lens.

Not sure a car battery can run a camera for 2 days, you will want a BDP unit for sure ( Battery Discharge Protection ) to make sure your car battery dont get too low voltage to be able to start your car.

If it is only going to be used at your own house or driveway a CCTV camera are much better, and can have IR light if you dont have any "natural" light near by.
Some new consumer grade cameras can work individual and store footage like a dashcam, and also it can be accessed by wifi to review footage, these can also be quite small in case the law there dont allow for such cameras.

 

[jomanjee]

how about this ??
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B073S5QGW7
i think it can monitor the car within 24 hours max can u confirm that or advise on something similar ?...

 

[SawMaster]

There are a ton of cheap cams which make claims they cannot fulfill and that is one of them It costs a bit more than that to get one decent single-channel cam and you're not going to find a decent 2-ch cam at those prices, much less cams to provide coverage in 4 directions. You don't get what you don't pay for Kamkar1 is right in recommending a security cam mounted outside the car- then one cam could provide all the coverage you want. He's right about lighting too- no economy cam does much without some light The average car battery can run one single-channel cam for 4-10 hours at the most before the car won't start

-If you can park in the same spot every day an external cam is a much better choice- is that possible?
-What will the lighting be like? (ie streetlamps nearby, porch lighting from the house, no light at all)
-What is your maximum budget?
-If it must be cams mounted inside the car, can you make do with less than covering all 4 sides?

To get coverage on 4 sides of my workvan cost me well over $200US and the side cams are marginal, almost worthless at night. Those are old prices which have increased and my cheap side-cams are no longer made so to equal it today would cost at least $250. My van also has a huge battery but even it won't support more than about 8 hours of 4-cam recording. This too points toward using an external cam where possible as being a much better choice, and that will cost a whole lot less too

Something can be done for you but it won't be everything you want without you making changes. Let us know the answers to my questions and we will see what we can do from there

Phil

 

[jomanjee]

There are a ton of cheap cams which make claims they cannot fulfill and that is one of them It costs a bit more than that to get one decent single-channel cam and you're not going to find a decent 2-ch cam at those prices, much less cams to provide coverage in 4 directions. You don't get what you don't pay for Kamkar1 is right in recommending a security cam mounted outside the car- then one cam could provide all the coverage you want. He's right about lighting too- no economy cam does much without some light The average car battery can run one single-channel cam for 4-10 hours at the most before the car won't start

-If you can park in the same spot every day an external cam is a much better choice- is that possible?
-What will the lighting be like? (ie streetlamps nearby, porch lighting from the house, no light at all)
-What is your maximum budget?
-If it must be cams mounted inside the car, can you make do with less than covering all 4 sides?

To get coverage on 4 sides of my workvan cost me well over $200US and the side cams are marginal, almost worthless at night. Those are old prices which have increased and my cheap side-cams are no longer made so to equal it today would cost at least $250. My van also has a huge battery but even it won't support more than about 8 hours of 4-cam recording. This too points toward using an external cam where possible as being a much better choice, and that will cost a whole lot less too

Something can be done for you but it won't be everything you want without you making changes. Let us know the answers to my questions and we will see what we can do from there

Phil

Thanks for the advise,

actually i wasn't hoping to cover all 4 sides under 200$ either, but i was looking to spend maximum 5-65$ at first for a single cam or maybe less coz ill have to pay shipping fees overseas, anyways, i got the potential to CCTV my car 24/7 that's pretty much doable but the reason i was asking is because id like to have a dash cam it some point since am using my mobile and autoboy blackbox to record while driving and its not reliable all the time, also having something that can monitor my car while parked (motion detection) can indeed by useful to me if it can monitor upto 24 hours, not sure about the power though can it fulfill its claim for 24 hours detectng moving objects on its small battery ?!? also am sure connecting to car cigarette lighter input cant keep providing power when car is already parked and engine turned off, so if this was the case ill throw 60$ on that cam and give it a try, but if as u said i feel like most cams at this price range are total scam can't fulfill half the features mentioned on the box including 24 hours parking monitor feature.

sorry to make this long ,,,

 

[SawMaster]

Dashcam batteries aren't meant to be the primary power source; most only provide a few minutes stand-alone power. You would either plug their adapter into a cigarette lighter socket or install a hardwire kit. But with the heat in the UAE you'd need a capacitor-powered cam anyway as these batteries can't tolerate high heats. Motion detect in cams at this price level (and many more expensive ones too) doesn't often work well, either being too sensitive or not sensitive enough. The G-sensor function follows along- only some work well while many don't. Most car batteries won't power a cam for more than roughly 4-7 or 8 hours without risking a no-start. But all is not lost- read on

If your car battery is large and relatively new, and you use a large enough SD card, you might be able to record continuously for maybe 8 hours time instead of relying on a balky motion sensor. You could also use a powerbank to run the cam. For those, you need roughly 500mA per hour of camera recording time. And there are a few dashcams which might fit your budget here. The cheapest ones I can recommend are the Viofo A118C (just Viofo, no other brands), the G`W-S, and the maybe the vest choice is the B1W. All these use capacitors, not batteries and the first two have a good record of reliability in high heat. The B1W is new and well-made but there's no real-world experience with it in high heat yet. I personally think it will do well there but I could be wrong. These are the cheapest cams I'd trust to both work reliably and to last awhile in high heat climates. As you probably know, suction cup mounts don't like heat either and all these come with adhesive mounts too You can try the motion detect with these- you might get lucky and find that yours works OK, just don't expect that. The G-sensor in the B1W is darn near perfect but I can't speak of the others. These cams come with a cigarette-lighter plug adapter.

Beyond this, you'll need an appropriate Micro SD Card, nut not just any cards will do. Dashcams are write-intensive devices which require high card speeds. The ones most of us use are Samsumg Evo plus or select, Transcend 400X, or Kingston with a Class 10 U3 rating. 8GB capacity equals roughly one hour recording time before the oldest files are overwritten. These cards aren't cheap but lesser cards usually give problems. Avoid the red/gray Sandisk cards. Only a couple of their best cards work OK in cams and those aren't cheap. The older Lexar 633 cards were good but newer ones aren't and Lexar is out of business now anyway.Micro SD cards are in short supply right now so prices are high- a 64GB card for 8 yours recording time will cost half as much as these cams do

I hope this explains how these work and what to expect well enough, and we're here for any more questions you may have. Just remember that with anything you don't get what you don't pay for and dashcams are no exception to that rule

Phil

You can risk cheaper cams and cheaper cards if you want to try, but avoid battery-powered cams no matter what.