Street Guardian, Viofo, APEMAN, Rexing, Which Company Came First?

DashCamOnBoard

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They all have products that look similar to each other. So which company was first in business and did the other companies then come along and "borrow" their ideas?
 
They all have products that look similar to each other. So which company was first in business and did the other companies then come along and "borrow" their ideas?

Street Guardian is well supported here and @jokiin is a very active and supportive member. Viofo is a street Guardian with more features, but far less support and involvement from manufacturer. Both are reliable cameras, with a few differences.

Street Guardian doesn't enable features (according to @jokiin) that aren't properly working.

Viofo offers additional features, but with these features, comes existing bugs in both A129 Pro and Duo that remain unaddressed.
 
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The reason (some of) their products look similar is because they are based on the same publicly available housing(s) which they use because tooling for a custom housing can be prohibitively expensive. The internal components ranging from lenses, boards, processors, etc. can be totally different.
 
There have been dozens and dozens of generic Chinese dash cam producers around long before Viofo, Street Guardian and all the other mentioned brands came into being. When @jokiin first became a member here on DCT Street Guardian didn't even exist publicly as a brand name. Neither did Viofo. Viofo was a vendor of Chinese dash cams (Foxoffer) that transitioned into manufacturing their own brand. Foxoffer was one of the early trustworthy Chinese vendors where people from Western countries could reliably purchase dash cams before they became available outside of China.

One way or another practically all dash cams are made with many off the shelf components which sometimes end up in various products. Often the housings of different cameras are shared between companies to spread the high cost of precision injection mold making. In some cases, dash cam housings are "public" and any manufacturer can buy them. You'll see cheap Chinese "clones" of some cameras that look identical to well known brands but they are cheaply made and poorly supported (no firmware upgrades, for example) Just because two cameras look very similar or even identical it doesn't mean the guts are the same, or the quality of manufacture for that matter. A Street Guardian is not a "Viofo with more features" even if they do look the same because they often use the same housings and fit the same CPL and certain other components because it's cheaper for each of them to share the cost of fabrication.

Edit: I see @DT MI already explained some of this while I was composing my post but not logged on.
 
The reason the cameras look so much alike is they use what is called a public housing, so instead of using money on tooling and design to make your own housing they go with a housing that just fit their need.
And to me its okay as a dashcam are not supposed to "look" the part.
But to some degree i feel car makers do the same today, cars look so much alike that from a few 100 M away you can not tell what it is, and many do also share large parts of the chassis and engine ASO.

For some strange reason now with computer aided design and robotic production lines, it is far too expensive to launch a new car model every year like in the old days, back then only the very popular models was made several years in a row, and meanwhile the car makers cranked out new cars to get the next big seller.
Okay modern cars do have more stuff in them than in the old days, so i assume it is greed that even more drive the car makers today.
 
Yeah, I was looking at dash cams on Amazon and saw Street Guardian's offerings on there. Then I see this other brand Viofo and about did a double-take. So I was only curious if this was a classic case of cheap Chinese counterfeit knock-offs.
 
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Yeah, I was looking at dash cams on Amazon and saw Street Guardian's Offerings on there. Then I see this other brand Viofo and about did a double-take. So I was only curious if this was a classic case of cheap Chinese counterfeit knock-offs.
we've just done some tooling changes that will be used in upcoming productions which will help to clearly identify our products
 
The reason the cameras look so much alike is they use what is called a public housing, so instead of using money on tooling and design to make your own housing they go with a housing that just fit their need.
And to me its okay as a dashcam are not supposed to "look" the part.
But to some degree i feel car makers do the same today, cars look so much alike that from a few 100 M away you can not tell what it is, and many do also share large parts of the chassis and engine ASO.

For some strange reason now with computer aided design and robotic production lines, it is far too expensive to launch a new car model every year like in the old days, back then only the very popular models was made several years in a row, and meanwhile the car makers cranked out new cars to get the next big seller.
Okay modern cars do have more stuff in them than in the old days, so i assume it is greed that even more drive the car makers today.

You definitely don't have the uniqueness of cars from the past. Unless of course you're spending money on a Porsche, Ferrari, etc where design and aerodynamics matter.

Most car manufacturers are more focused on safety and gas mileage.
 
we've just done some tooling changes that will be used in upcoming productions which will help to clearly identify our products

Street Guardian doing their own competitive line of 4K cameras?
 
Street Guardian doing their own competitive line of 4K cameras?
4K is something we'll be doing, it requires a new housing though, the current one is not large enough to work without having overheating issues, will take a bit of time to get everything sorted
 
4K is something we'll be doing, it requires a new housing though, the current one is not large enough to work without having overheating issues, will take a bit of time to get everything sorted

Did the A129 Pro change its housing as it resembles the duo? Or is the Pro susceptible to overheating? Seeing you guys share similar housings.
 
the A129 and A129PRO have the same size housings

Let me clarify. You intend to redesign the housing for a 4K Street Guardian. The A129 and A129 Pro use same housing. So how come the housing will change on the Street Guardian 4K? Does the A129 Pro have heat issues or What changes do you intend to make to an updated Street Guardian Camera and housing?
 
Let me clarify. You intend to redesign the housing for a 4K Street Guardian. The A129 and A129 Pro use same housing. So how come the housing will change on the Street Guardian 4K? Does the A129 Pro have heat issues or What changes do you intend to make to an updated Street Guardian Camera and housing?
The A129 Pro is not ideal for the Australian climate.
If you live in cooler climates then there is no issue, and it does safely shut itself down if left in a parked car with 50 degree C outside heat.
But Street Guardian is Australian...
 
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The A129 Pro is not ideal for the Australian climate.If you live in cooler climates then there is no issue, and it does safely shut itself down if left in a parked car with 50 degree C outside heat.
But Street Guardian is Australian...

Makes sense. Most of the world doesn't suffer the extreme heat of Australia, but redesigning for extreme conditions, means the Camera will work universally.
 
Makes sense. Most of the world doesn't suffer the extreme heat of Australia, but redesigning for extreme conditions, means the Camera will work universally.
I think Viofo decided the A129Pro was on the OK side of acceptable for Australia and thus will work universally, but SG obviously wants theirs to be more than just OK. Although I think they will have great difficulty getting parking mode to work 24/7 in the 56 degree heat of Australian summers that will arrive in the next few years!
 
Yes the manual will probably need some disclaimers in regard to using parking guard in hot weather.
We know this but the average Joe are clueless and probably don't think about things like that.
 
I think Viofo decided the A129Pro was on the OK side of acceptable for Australia and thus will work universally, but SG obviously wants theirs to be more than just OK. Although I think they will have great difficulty getting parking mode to work 24/7 in the 56 degree heat of Australian summers that will arrive in the next few years!

Well it's not 56C summer heat, it's the buildup of heat in an enclosed vehicle. So it might be 45 or 50C outside, but 65 or 70C in an enclosed car. So rolling down windows to keep the car from baking and cracking or putting some heavy duty tinting on each window. None the less, global warming poses lots of challenges.

I'm sure jokkin being in AU is going to test the hell out of the redesigned product. He strikes me as a very concerned and intelligent individual. So I doubt Street Guardian is going to let an inferior quality product fly off the shelf.

Course, most of us will never see 45 or 50C+ in the foreseeable future, but making a universal product is important. You have the entire continent of Africa which is also very hot along with South and Central America. Basically anywhere near the equator.
 
I hope not, the 30 degrees we Danes are some times blessed with are plenty, as i am no longer working or that active i can deal with that just fine, but my friend sure dont like those days cuz when i have a little moisture on the forehead my friend is like a walking waterfall.
But i am also sure just those 30 degrees and a car in the sun will make parking mode a no go.

I am also sure when the SG 4K product are nearing launch time, a few of them will go to people in hot and cold areas around the world, no matter what time of the year it is in Australia.
CUZ while heat and cold "closets" at the factory can give you a okay glimpse of your products performance under those conditions, then real world are always a little different somehow.
 
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