SG Dual Camera set up?

[kandrey89]

Yeah I've been wondering why everyone seems so hung up on resolution rather than simply putting larger sensors in at the existing resolutions. I realize the focal length would be affected, but... is there something I'm missing?

Yeah, it's hard to find large sensors because almost every product has been shrinking the pitch. Why? The hype of more resolution is better, mobile needs smaller sensor, smaller die means more die per wafer and more money per wafer.

 

[Dashmellow]

A larger sensor would be nice to have but a larger CMOS even with a clever housing design would require a much larger camera with a much larger optic on it. Such dash cameras would likely be far more expensive than current dash cams in part because they would require custom lenses from the manufacturer rather than the off the shelf M12 lenses common to virtually all dash cams on the market today.

 

[kandrey89]

A larger sensor would be nice to have but a larger CMOS even with a clever housing design would require a much larger camera with a much larger optic on it. Such dash cameras would likely be far more expensive than current dash cams in part because they would require custom lenses from the manufacturer rather than the off the shelf M12 lenses common to virtually all dash cams on the market today.

You could go with C-Mount lenses, they're good up to 2/3" sensor depending on FoV and are used a lot in security applications, however the lens alone is going to cost a lot, from $50 to $500. Depending on lens resolution, quality, manufacturer.
However, provided no DSP tweaking is required to change lenses, the end user could have the option of choosing his own lens based on his budget... which is nice! You could set your own FoV.
Varifocal lenses would cause problems though due to vibration and setup/changes in focus, unless the dashcam could stream to your phone and you could zoom in on the phone to focus the lens, refocusing would be required every time you change the FoV.
I don't think the processor is capable of auto-focusing, otherwise you could change the FoV on the fly and have the dashcam focus it itself.

 

[Dashmellow]

You could go with C-Mount lenses, they're good up to 2/3" sensor depending on FoV and are used a lot in security applications, however the lens alone is going to cost a lot, from $50 to $500. Depending on lens resolution, quality, manufacturer.
However, provided no DSP tweaking is required to change lenses, the end user could have the option of choosing his own lens based on his budget... which is nice! You could set your own FoV.
Varifocal lenses would cause problems though due to vibration and setup/changes in focus, unless the dashcam could stream to your phone and you could zoom in on the phone to focus the lens, refocusing would be required every time you change the FoV.
I don't think the processor is capable of auto-focusing, otherwise you could change the FoV on the fly and have the dashcam focus it itself.

That's the problem. C-mount lenses are generally very costly and they are quite a lot larger compared to what is common in today's dash cameras. Even wide angle versions would protrude from the housing more than I believe would be acceptable because the camera would need to be too far from the windshield glass.

Even the high end Novo modded Go Pro cinema camera designed to accommodate C-Mount lenses requires even the tiniest C-mount lens versions to protrude quite a bit because they require a mounting flange. Imagine a larger camera with a larger housing and you get the idea. And unless there is an "off the shelf" line of C-mount "commodity" type lenses available as there are with M12 and S-mount board lenses I believe it would be cost prohibitive. In fact, the entire class of action cameras and dash cameras basically exists because of the availability of "board lenses".

A larger sensor dash cam seems very appealing but I don't believe it is doable at this point in time in any form that could be priced for the marketplace or that would be stealthy enough.

 

[kandrey89]

That's the problem. C-mount lenses are generally very costly and they are quite a lot larger compared to what is common in today's dash cameras. Even wide angle versions would protrude from the housing more than I believe would be acceptable because the camera would need to be too far from the windshield glass.

Even the high end Novo modded Go Pro cinema camera designed to accommodate C-Mount lenses requires even the tiniest C-mount lens versions to protrude quite a bit because they require a mounting flange. Imagine a larger camera with a larger housing and you get the idea. And unless there is an "off the shelf" line of C-mount "commodity" type lenses were available as there are with M12 and S-mount board lenses I believe it would be cost prohibitive. In fact, the entire class of action cameras and dash cameras basically exists because of the availability of "board lenses".

A larger sensor dash cam seems very appealing but I don't believe it is doable at this point in time in any form that could be priced for the marketplace or that would be stealthy enough.

View attachment 28405

I disagree on the "too far from windshield", what's too far? Camera body or lens, makeup your mind, who cares about camera body, no one, the lens can be where ever you mount it.

Sure it might not be stealthy, but I'll take a large 2/3" sensor with C-mount in a remote metal body over a ****ty <=1/3" sensor with M12 housed in a flashy Korean style bling bling any day because I care more about image quality and can afford it.

 

[Dashmellow]

I disagree on the "too far from windshield", what's too far? Camera body or lens, makeup your mind, who cares about camera body, no one, the lens can be where ever you mount it.

Sure it might not be stealthy, but I'll take a large 2/3" sensor with C-mount in a remote metal body over a ****ty <=1/3" sensor with M12 housed in a flashy Korean style bling bling any day because I care more about image quality and can afford it.

Good for you.

 

[jokiin]

A larger sensor dash cam seems very appealing but I don't believe it is doable at this point in time in any form that could be priced for the marketplace or that would be stealthy enough.

I think you're quite right, probably why there's no support for the larger sensors as it's not really a practical application at this point in time, hardware is constantly changing so who knows what might come later on

 

[kandrey89]

I think you're quite right, probably why there's no support for the larger sensors as it's not really a practical application at this point in time, hardware is constantly changing so who knows what might come later on

The problem is that the commercial mass market drive has been for the mobile market, which has 2 requirements of pertinence to this discussion, it's smaller sensor and higher resolution. The volume and economies of scale have carved out a path for M12 and small sensors, so it's not surprising that that's what dashcams have been feeding off of since dashcams are a niche market. Had there been a market drive towards a moderately large sensor with good optics and small form factor, then we'd have much better dashcams. Unfortunately, even the security market has a weak enough pull and kind of goes with smaller and better because it can be hidden. Sure there are some high end solutions, but they can't make it into a dashcam because of lack of demand.

Sometimes the niche market remains stagnant until someone decides to make a product, that at the time has low demand, until the product shows a significant advantage in the niche market. Just like when there were VGA webcams and then you have a few people with 1080p webcams and suddenly everyone wants the super high resolution good looking webcam, except in this case it might be image quality and low light even if it is in a 1080p resolution.

 

[jokiin]

The problem is that the commercial mass market drive has been for the mobile market, which has 2 requirements of pertinence to this discussion, it's smaller sensor and higher resolution. The volume and economies of scale have carved out a path for M12 and small sensors, so it's not surprising that that's what dashcams have been feeding off of since dashcams are a niche market. Had there been a market drive towards a moderately large sensor with good optics and small form factor, then we'd have much better dashcams. Unfortunately, even the security market has a weak enough pull and kind of goes with smaller and better because it can be hidden. Sure there are some high end solutions, but they can't make it into a dashcam because of lack of demand.

Sometimes the niche market remains stagnant until someone decides to make a product, that at the time has low demand, until the product shows a significant advantage in the niche market. Just like when there were VGA webcams and then you have a few people with 1080p webcams and suddenly everyone wants the super high resolution good looking webcam, except in this case it might be image quality and low light even if it is in a 1080p resolution.

the mobile market is huge so obviously gets more attention from manufacturers, dashcams are an evolution of the DSC/DVC product which effectively died once decent camera phones happened, really only the GoPro/sport cam market kept it alive the past few years or it would have died off completely and a lot of what's available is centered around that type of product requirement, had the GoPro form factor been different perhaps bigger sensors would have got some attention, should of, would of, could of there's no point getting upset about what we don't or can't have, it is what it is so for the most part we just have to work within what's available to us, there's no player that is big enough in this category of the market to influence change

 

[kandrey89]

It takes somewhere between $10-$20 million dollars to design a new sensor from scratch. A customization of an existing sensor with larger pixel sizes could be cheaper, maybe $5 million, and this is Non Refundable Engineering cost. So yeah, you'd need to be pretty big to plump down this much NRE just for the sensor, or convincingly promise/sign up for a large volume contract to get a new sensor done based on your specs. With the dashcam market so fragmented because everyone is leeching from the cheap Chinese products and economies of scale from the mobile market, it's hard to stand out or commit to a switch.

 

[jokiin]

Yeah just a touch out of our budget [emoji14]

 

[kamkar]

I remember the 80 ties, AT&T said those cellular phones leave them to the smaller carriers no more than 1 mill would use them nationally, and every one laughed at the brick phone, even back then.
But that sure did change fast, you could even get faux phones for your car so you could pretend to be a trendy mobil phone owner.

Have to agree C / CE-mount lenses are extremely expensive.

 

[Dashmellow]

The entire development of the action camera and dash cam markets only came about because of an already mature, preexisting and sizeable market for board cameras that used fixed aperture M12 x P0.5 board lenses.
M12 board lenses were/are primarily used in CCTV cameras, video conferencing, web cams, medical systems and machine vision. When the newer technology of relatively low priced and quite small SoC video DSPs were introduced, first seen in small "tapeless" camcorders (remember the FLIP?), action camera and dash camera manufacturers were simply able to repurpose and repackage existing board lenses into a new class of products because a broad range of suitable, low cost, off-the-shelf components were already available. These developments along with the concomitant introduction of ever smaller, faster, higher capacity but increasingly lower cost non-volatile solid state memory chips (SD and microSD) gave rise to today's action cams and dash cams.



There do exist widely available lower profile fixed aperture C and CS mount lenses generally used in the CCTV market that might be incorporated into a new generation of larger sensor dash cams but again, most C lenses require an optical design and mounting flange that makes them rather large for a dash cam and would require a much larger camera housing. There are some board mounting options for C lenses but they are not generally considered "board lenses" the way M12 or M14 lenses are. Perhaps we will eventually see this come about but I think it will be quite some time before we see such a camera, if ever, and at least at first they would be quite expensive. (and rather bulky even if deployed as just a remote lens module).


low profile CS & C mount lenses


Two years ago Panasonic introduced the DMC-CM1 smartphone/camera which featured a 1 inch CMOS sensor paired with a f/2.8 Leica lens. Such a device might foreshadow a path forward for an eventual large sensor compact dash camera but the Panasonic requires a very expensive proprietary lens assembly and sensor incorporated into a camera/phone that cost nearly 1000 dollars USD when first introduced . If such lens technology were to become more widely available and the price were to drop significantly then I believe we'd start to see large sensor dash cams follow along fairly rapidly.

 

[kamkar]

I cant believe i wrote "C / CE-mount" above i mean CS.

 

[Dashmellow]

I cant believe i wrote "C / CE-mount" above i mean CS.

Go to your room. No internet for you tonight!

 

[kandrey89]

The entire development of the action camera and dash cam markets only came about because of an already mature, preexisting and sizeable market for board cameras that used fixed aperture M12 x P0.5 board lenses.
M12 board lenses were/are primarily used in CCTV cameras, video conferencing, web cams, medical systems and machine vision. When the newer technology of relatively low priced and quite small SoC video DSPs were introduced, first seen in small "tapeless" camcorders (remember the FLIP?), action camera and dash camera manufacturers were simply able to repurpose and repackage existing board lenses into a new class of products because a broad range of suitable, low cost, off-the-shelf components were already available. These developments along with the concomitant introduction of ever smaller and increasingly lower cost non-volatile solid state memory chips gave rise to today's action cams and dash cams.

View attachment 28409 View attachment 28414

There do exist widely available lower profile fixed aperture C and CS mount lenses generally used in the CCTV market that might be incorporated into a new generation of larger sensor dash cams but again, most C lenses require an optical design and mounting flange that makes them rather large for a dash cam and would require a much larger camera housing. There are some board mounting options for C lenses but they are not generally considered "board lenses" the way M12 or M14 lenses are. Perhaps we will eventually see this come about but I think it will be quite some time before we see such a camera, if ever, and at least at first they would be quite expensive. (and rather bulky even if deployed as just a remote lens module).

View attachment 28407 View attachment 28408
low profile CS & C mount lenses


Two years ago Panasonic introduced the DMC-CM1 smartphone/camera which featured a 1 inch CMOS sensor paired with a f/2.8 Leica lens. Such a device might foreshadow a path forward for an eventual large sensor compact dash camera but the Panasonic requires a very expensive proprietary lens assembly and sensor incorporated into a camera/phone that cost nearly 1000 dollars USD when first introduced . If such lens technology were to become more widely available and the price were to drop significantly then I believe we'd start to see large sensor dash cams follow along fairly rapidly.

View attachment 28410 View attachment 28412 View attachment 28411
View attachment 28413

I know you know that the larger the aperture the more light gathering power the lens has and the larger the lens has to be. Yet you keep implying that the lenses should be smaller like what they are today in dashcams.
You can't have it both ways, that Panasonic lens has a tiny aperture, I wouldn't use it for a dashcam... because it's basically the same lens as M12. You're not going to get light and image improvement unless you switch to a bigger lens, no way around that, it's physics, so stop saying it would be large for a dash camera and require a large housing, because body doesn't have to be larger, only the lens.
The C-Mount thread can be incorporated into the front metal body housing, and the body of the dashcam is going to be about the same thickness. The lens will stick out a lot, sure, depending on the lens design too. But if you want a better lens, then you know it has to be bigger, accept it or go back to your M12 and don't complain about the poor light performance and crappy image quality.

 

[Dashmellow]

I'm not the one complaining. That would be you.

It is absolutely ridiculous to say that the Leica lens assembly used by Panasonic is merely ƒ2.8 and therefore we'll never see faster lenses in that particular form factor. And your claim that the Leica lens is "basically the same as M12 lenses" that have "tiny apertures" is equally ridiculous if for no other reason that faster M12 lenses are widely available in apertures as fast as ƒ1.0 with some of them using higher transmission glass and enhanced coatings.

Only large corporations like Panasonic or Leica have the resources to develop cutting edge products like this and that is how such components become licensed and mass produced so they eventually become available to smaller firms like those that design and build dash cams. The premise here is that unless suitable components come to market in the right price range manufacturers will not advance to larger sensors. You ignore that concept in favor of the notion that manufacturers should just Frankenstein bigger sensors and lenses together into some monster dash cam which is a stupid design approach that is not likely to happen. You would essentially end up with what would amount to a bulky CCTV camera attached to your windscreen and most of the buying public will not find that acceptable. While C mount lenses are still widely used in various cinema, CCTV and industrial applications they are in many ways an obsolete technology, an artifact of the 16mm film era not designed for the digital. Today's cameras in smartphones, dash cams, action cams and surveillance products are pre-manufactured assemblies intended for use with specific classes of sensors. Larger sensor dash cameras and their lenses will of necessity be larger than current offerings but they will not likely happen until suitable pre-assembled components become available to smaller manufacturers without the resources to develop these components on their own.

 

[Gibson99]

Yeah I've been wondering why everyone seems so hung up on resolution rather than simply putting larger sensors in at the existing resolutions. I realize the focal length would be affected, but... is there something I'm missing?

cost, compactness, and not being willing to spend money on R&D - cheap cams just use existing, already-working solutions so they can just crank something out with as little effort as possible, just to make a few yuan.

 

[Dashmellow]

cost, compactness, and not being willing to spend money on R&D - cheap cams just use existing, already-working solutions so they can just crank something out with as little effort as possible, just to make a few yuan.

I don't disagree with your premise here @Gibson99 but some developers like Street Guardian, Viofo, Gitup, Vico and others put a great deal of effort and care into their products using already-working solutions. There is a distinction I think between developers attempting to create a quality brand and all the crappy generic stuff coming out of China even if they essentially use the same or very similar off-the-shelf solutions using a different, low rent margin scheme. As I suggested earlier in this thread I believe that when "already working" larger sensor/lens assembly combinations begin to appear in the marketplace at more attractive prices we will see those components start to become incorporated into a newer class of larger but still compact good quality dashboard cameras. Perhaps some may try to stick a big lens onto a bigger box I guess, but that is hardly an "already working solution".

 

[jokiin]

As I suggested earlier in this thread I believe that when "already working" larger sensor/lens assembly combinations begin to appear in the marketplace at more attractive prices we will see those components start to become incorporated into a newer class of larger but still compact good quality dashboard cameras.

for sure if larger sensors became an option we'd be looking at how we could take advantage of them, for now we work within the hardware limitations we have and just keep trying to do what we can to get the best we can out of them, I'm sure there are others that are doing the same, I'd guess about 95% of suppliers don't seem to care and will just sell whatever they can, the ones like that I see as inhibitors to progress as they're not pushing for improvements so hardware suppliers just don't see the need, like everything it's supply and demand