Simple dash cam for race/street car ?

It is a good idea to check on your memory card when full to get a feel for how much you can expect to find there in case of something, with the little i drive i have weeks of footage on a 256GB card, probably closer to a month.

I think if you spread it out i only drive 20 minutes or so daily.
 
I appreciate that, however I am pretty on-top of the memory card stuff. I like to keep things uncluttered and clean and clear. if I go for a drive and nothing happens, I will click through the menu and "format" or clear out the files. However, if I am out racing at an event, i will bring the memory card inside, upload the files to my computer, and then clear out the memory card completely. I like to work off of a blank slate. Same goes for my Gopro and for my datalogging efi software.

I have been recording racing events in 4k front and FHD rear, with the highest bitrate. But for normal street driving I click it down to the normal bitrate and lower resolution on front/rear cameras.
 
Thats also a way to do it, but most are not able to handle such things, they just want set and forget.
I always urge people to do what is best for them, as long as it do not endanger me or any i care for and as long as i do not have to pay for it, all i can say is go for it.
 
It happens that memory cards for some reason cannot work normally with a particular dashcam. I had a case when on a good card Transcend dashcam DOD LS460W did not want to record, the recording was interrupted and stopped.
 
You have to feed a cam with the card(s) it likes if you want trouble-free operation. And I'm of the mindset that if it ain't broke you leave it alone so being that my cam is designed to "loop record" I just let it do that. I only intervene when I want to save something or when card maintenance is called for.

I can see wanting a clean card to record a race, but nothing is gained by formatting a card daily for normal driving events unless your intention is to 'lose the evidence' of something it may show where you've done wrong. Even then, formatting does not remove that data; it only clears the directory which is normally used to find the data, and with the correct solution applied those recordings can be retrieved until they are over-written anyway. Plus now you've lost easy access to prove your innocence if someone makes false claims about your earlier driving which would have been easily shown had you left the cam and card alone. Which is one of the main reasons most of us have our dashcams ;)

Phil
 
Anyone have any idea why I am intermittently hearing the "chime" noise from the camera unit while driving the car?
normally indicative of a memory card problem, what card are you using, have you tested the card at all to make sure it doesn't have issues, and is fast enough?

Side-note: I gotta setup the power-cut off limits on the camera. I have a battery kill-switch on the back of the car and I almost always remember to turn off the car when I will not be using it for several days. However, a few weekends ago, I forgot to kill the power and 4 days later I had found that the cameras were running the whole time and drained the battery down where it was too low to spin the starter! I know there is a voltage cut-off function, I just have to figure out how to play around with enabling it.
as @Nigel mentioned in the other thread if the ACC feed still had power the low voltage settings don't apply, it will keep running until the battery is dead
 
Just popping in regarding your post in the other thread about the camera staying on.
I might have missed it, but as someone mentioned (also just saw it mentioned by jokiin above) you need to be sure the ACC line of the HK3 wiring kit is un powered when the vehicle is turned off for the low voltage disconnect to work.
Can you confirm weather or not this is how it is wired?
Also I'd recommend using 12.2v or higher as the cutoff unless it's being powered from a specifically deep cycle battery (a propper one, not a starting battery that mentions deep cycle).
 
Thanks everyone!
To answer some questions:
- I have a 256 GB SanDisk Imagemate A1 card. After i use the car for a race or event, I usually upload the files and clear the card. It has never been full or close to it yet.

- I am very thankful to you guys for pointing out that I need to have the ACC wire on an ACC power supply. That is certainly my mistake for not realizing this, but next time I am underneath the dashboard I will certainly investigate how I wired it. I have been doing a lot of other big mechanical work on the car and my memory is unclear how I wired this setup several months ago. I am leaning towards the likelihood that I did wire it to a ignition based power feed.

- I will also click the HWK to a higher 12.2 or above setting.

- Lastly, regarding the camera "chiming" randomly as I drive, I will have to keep looking into this. I never really review any of my regular street driving, I only review and save the race stuff. So, I have no idea if the camera is physically powering off and clipping recordings short at this time, or if it is refreshing itself and the supercapicitor allowed it to keep recording but still needs toe camera display to turn on. All my wired connections are good and I took extra precautions to make them "rattle proof" as the car does get thrashed on hard while racing with vibrations. One thing I was thinking though... Is I know that the power supply wire does go into the top of the "front" square" to the unit which mounts to the windshield. The camera body then clips to this unit. There are 4 little prong connectors that establish a connection between the plastic square, and the front camera body. Any chance that there is too much "play" in between that connection and its vibrating, causing the camera to restart? just a thought.
 
...After i use the car for a race or event, I usually upload the files and clear the card. It has never been full or close to it yet....
Just a suggestion, don't ever clear the card, let it fill and then cycle back to the beginning, this spreads wear over the whole card rather than concentrating it at the beginning.
By only using the starting portion of the card and then deleting the data and starting from the beginning again you are increasing and concentrating wear on the nand cells that make up the storage space.
There is something called wear leveling but it's almost unheard of in consumer SD cards.
NAND cells have a limited read / write life cycle. That's why for PC's SolidStateDrives (SSD's) have a warranty based both on years and on 'TBW' or TerraBytes Written.

As said above, get a faster card, I personally don't like Sandisk, they're not the company they were 10 years ago.
My suggestion would be to go for a Samsung high endurance card.
Oddly a Samsung card was cheapest for me purchased direct from Samsung (even cheaper than Ebay!) also no counterfeits that way, well.... you'd hope not!

A high quality and durable card with good speed capability will be a good starting point to narrow down your beeping issues or it might straight up be the solution itself.
 
WOW, I had no idea about that card technical info. I actually thought I read somewhere that the SanDisk card was one of the better ones, so that's why I had gotten it. Whoops. Bummer, looks like I will be shopping for that Samsung 256 gb card (or a 128bg card). would this be the high endurance card you speak of? https://www.amazon.com/gp/B08JFKJMFC
As for clearing the card, I also had no idea about that. Since I usually only save the videos to my computer after a race event, I typically cleared out the card for a "fresh start" next time and to make sorting through the video files much quicker and easier. I did not realize that it would keep writing over the same cells.


I went out a got under the dashboard to find that I did setup the ACC wire on the HWK to an ignition source, which as I now have learned, will keep the camera on forever, despite the voltage cutoff option. So i moved that wire to a nice available ACC/battery spot on my old fuse panel and now everything appears to be proper.

I hope to have the car out again this weekend, and If I can get that proper Samsung card in the meantime, maybe I can see how the new card does and if the beeps and errors are eliminated.

Thanks guys!
 
nothing wrong with SanDisk cards, just you have the wrong one for the job, the High Endurance or Max Endurance cards are what you should have bought for your camera
 
WOW, I had no idea about that card technical info. I actually thought I read somewhere that the SanDisk card was one of the better ones
They were once upon a time, but not any more.
I have vast experience (though not in dash cams) of their high failure rate, but their warranty is good (which is beside the point).
I care more about the data then the warranty though.
I just refuse to use them now.

...would this be the high endurance card you speak of? https://www.amazon.com/gp/B08JFKJMFC
No, not that. You want Pro - Endurance, not Pro - Plus
This is what you need - https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...ce-memory-card-w-adapter-128gb-mb-mj128ga-am/

As for clearing the card, I also had no idea about that. Since I usually only save the videos to my computer after a race event, I typically cleared out the card for a "fresh start" next time and to make sorting through the video files much quicker and easier. I did not realize that it would keep writing over the same cells.
No worries, the technical detail of how flash memory works is not something everyone is expected to know.
Think of it like a water tank that is only ever 1/4 filled and made out of a material likely to rust.
If you repentantly 1/4 fill it and drain it, the lower 1/4 of the take will rust... That's actually a pretty terrible analogy.
By what you've written it sounds like you've understood it anyway.

I have just become aware that Western Digital (current owner of Sandisk) have an SD card with wear leveling, their 'Purple' models.
Imagine those cells that get repeted use near the beginning of the card, and then think of them like car tyres, and a good owner / mechanic rotating the tyres to get even wear.
Wear levelling might cost more, not sure haven't looked, but it could be a solution to giving you the abilith to wipe the card whilst the card manages where the data is stored in the background to spread the wear.

If however in the contect of a dash cam you can just let the card loop without wipeing it then that is kind of like wear levering for free.
 
awesome ! much thanks!
_ I understand it much better now. Over the past week or so I have not been "clearing out the card" as I had a tendency to do. It sure makes for a "lot" of files on the card when I go to upload a specific one, but I would rather have to sort through files as opposed to burning up the beginning cells of a memory card which is actually not even the correct card for the application!. Thanks guys!

I am ordering the Samsung Micro SDXC Pro Endurance card that you put a link for above. I see that it is only half the storage capacity (128 gb compared to my 256 gb card now), but if it solves the problem I have been having regarding corrupt files and error messages, and the camera "restarting" while in use.. well, than that is worth it. I will just let it loop record and simply pull off the files I need to save after a race or event.

If all goes well with the new Samsung Pro Endurance 128 gb card and my issues are full resolved, I will probably buy a second one to keep as a backup, because often times I do events that are two days long and lots of recording might be taking place before I have a chance to upload the video files from the card over to my laptop. So Having two Pro Endurance cards (and maybe even keeping my current inadequate card as an extra backup) might be the best plan.

Thoughts

Thanks again !!
 
Yeah the little memory cards can be volatile, thats why i recommend to buy cards local, and get ones that have warranty for dashcam use.
Cards with on warranty can also be just fine of course, it is what we have used mostly the past 10 years as the endurance cards was exorbitant overpriced.

Though in the early days when all i had was Kingston memory cards, i did get those RMAed a few times though there was no warranty for dashcam use on them, just made a RMA online, drove to the store, stood in line for a few minutes, and then walked out of there with a new memory card. :giggle:
 
I have just become aware that Western Digital (current owner of Sandisk) have an SD card with wear leveling, their 'Purple' models.
I think most of the more recent cards have wear levelling, even if they don’t normally publicise it. For most people it is not a feature they are looking for, understand, or even need on a microSD card.
 
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YMMV,

But I’ve had the most success with Samsung EVO Select (U3, green, Amazon)... usually run a 256GB minimum, if not a 512 (even when some dashcams mention supporting up to 256 haha...)

I have tested plenty of “endurance” cards, but the ones that never seem to need replacement or reformatting, have been the Evo selects. I regularly backup footage from every dashcam in all my cars (yes, the backup drives add up...)

I should go take a picture of all of the empty memory card packaging that I have kept...


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I think most of the more recent cards have wear levelling, even if they don’t normally publicise it. For most people it is not a feature they are looking for, understand, or even need on a microSD card.
Given it's not cheap and easy to implement, and that advertising the feature weather the average Joe understands it or not would only benefit them I'm still sceptical as to weather it exists in any more than just a few models.
I'd absolutely be welcome to be proven wrong as I have applications outside dashcams where such a feature would be greatly beneficial, and yet am unable to find such cards readily available despite looking for it and emailing manufacturers.
As for the emailing of these clowns, it's incredibly frustrating how little the PR people monitoring the email know about the product, exasperated by how little they are willing to help.
Sandisk for example couldn't answer the question and simply said maybe I should use the Sandisk Industrial uSD cards, to which i asked, do they have wear levelling, to which they answered they don't know, to which i asked if they could check.
3 emails and 5 years later they are still checking.
Anyway, i have a need for small capacity, cards with wear leveling with high IOPS primarilly and high seq speed secondarily. If anyone has any clues I'm all ears.

As for dashcams, if the cam is allowed to operate cyclically then such a feature is not required, the cyclic nature of the writes achieves the same end result.
 
Given it's not cheap and easy to implement,
The silicon of a microSD card is a cut and paste copy of the silicon in a Solid State Hard Drive, only the interface is different, so it is no cost to implement what they can simply copy with a cut and paste!

As for dashcams, if the cam is allowed to operate cyclically then such a feature is not required, the cyclic nature of the writes achieves the same end result.
If it has wear leveling then that will not be true, and I'm not sure it is anyway since there has never been a direct map from logical to physical location on a flash memory device.

But there is too much unknown about how the various companies implement their various designs to be sure how each one works, I suspect nearly all the >64GB microSD cards have wear leveling, but it is probably implemented in different ways from different manufacturers, some better than others, and we will never know which are best because it takes far too long for anyone to bother testing them, the card they tested has been superseded before the testing is finished!
 
The silicon of a microSD card is a cut and paste copy of the silicon in a Solid State Hard Drive
Whilst basic idea of flash memory is the same, I can assure you these are very very different beasts.
At a very very high level you could call it a cut and paste, but the engineering and layout ins incredibly different at the low level.
Also in the case of SSDs the controller is in every case I've seen separate to the flash memory itself.

If it has wear leveling then that will not be true, and I'm not sure it is anyway since there has never been a direct map from logical to physical location on a flash memory device.
If it has wear levelling you are right, but I disagree that such a feature is as common as you suggest.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not flat out denying it's existence, just how common it is.
I'd welcome solid evidence to contradict this, as i've said it is somehting i have been looking into for some time.

Ultimately you about the camera having no knowledge of the physical memory layout, but the way dashcams operate they do not need knowledge of the physical memory if they are using all of it cyclically.
I'll not claim that the Dashcam is aware of the physical layout of the memory, but if it is left to use all of it, and then begin again replacing every file then logic dictates that regardless of the physical order in which it is happening all of the memory is being cyclically used in an even manor. The physical order might is not particularly relevant.
Dashcams cycle by age of file. (there are other occasional factors, but this is true for 99+% of all situations.)
File A1 would come first, and might be written to part 1 of the flash.
File B1to part 4
File C1 to part 2 - something happened here... file is flagged for an incident.
File D1 to part 1 - memory threshold is reached (not full, but nearly so, at least a few MB must be reserved for varying file sizes on new write.)
Oldest file is deleted (A1) an is replaced with A2
Next oldest file B1 is replaced with B2... and the new B2 is slightly larger than the old B2, see above regarding reserved space.
C1 is marked as an incident, and is left alone
New C2 is written over next oldest file D1.

This is significantly over simplified, but (ignoring long term flagged files, if these exist) all of the space is used, and used again in what results in a supprisingly even manner, but only due to the nature of the dash cam and how they operate.

Ultimately, all dashcams i know will in some way replace older files with new ones.
And ultimately this brings with it a kind of psuedo wear levelling.
Not with awareness of number of write cycles of specific memory address etc, but the end result is very much good enough in practise.


Regarding wear levelling, if anyone knows of cards that are available retail in Australia, or readily shippable to Australia, with decent IOPS with wear leveling i'd love to hear about it.
I know they exist, but only in a few fringe cases that are not readily available, or available with sufficient speed.
 
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