The worst dash-cam ever.

[veromi]

I spent more than $450 on the dashcams + memory and today I realized my car was scratched.

I took the memory card at home and I see videos were made 3 days before.

Nothing for yesterday and before yesterday

Piece of crap. Beter to buy 4 cheap chinese cams and put them on perimetr.

 

[DashOto]

Why was there no recording for the 2 days before?
What's your setup and how is it installed?
What's your sensitivity settings at? I could believe if someone (intently) scratched light enough, maybe it didn't trigger the sensors.

Could it be possible the scratch was there before and you just never noticed?

Surely, you must have your device hardwired and set up for parking mode if you expect it to record while your car is off?
There will be a reason it wasn't recording, but you haven't provided much info to work with.

 

[kamkar]

its a blackvue and so maybe not fitted with one of the rare memory cards that brand like.
Not the first time i have read of BV owners suddenly finding that their camera have stopped recording, sadly in this case at the wrong time.

 

[bpsmicro]

Assuming hard-wired using PMP or similar, there's a limit as to how long the car battery will drive the camera before shutting it off. For me that's about 3'ish days (and that's with a year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee with a pretty big-ass battery).

These cameras, since they're constantly "recording" (even when not actually saving files) and with constant-on WiFi, suck a fair amount of current.

If you look at the memory card, there's a folder (I think "system", but I'm going from memory) that will have log files in it. You may see in the log if it initiated a power-down.

 

[Dashmellow]

The name BlackVue has always struck me as an odd marketing choice for a dash cam brand name.

 

[DashOto]

To be fair, most of the brand names aren't any better.

 

[Dashmellow]

To be fair, most of the brand names aren't any better.

Perhaps, but this one projects a particularly dire "image". Many others are just nonsensical or meaningless.

 

[DashOto]

I dunno... I view a black screen more often than not when looking at my rear cam, so BlackVue does seem sort of fitting.

 

[pdmike]

Are you using a Power Magic Pro to power your camera in parking mode when the engine is turned off? Have you set the five switches on the front of the PMP properly? I think Switches 3,4, and 5 should all be in the down (infinity) position. Anything else, and your camera will not record continuously in parking mode.

 

[Dashmellow]

I dunno... I view a black screen more often than not when looking at my rear cam, so BlackVue does seem sort of fitting.

Sounds like Black Mirror. To me it speaks to the camera's "Vue".

 

[DashOto]

Well, maybe the names are synonymous since both seem to be hit or miss!

 

[Dashmellow]

Well, maybe the names are synonymous since both seem to be hit or miss!

BlackVue was one of the early "brand name" cameras of quality to emerge when mostly generic cams were available and they were quite expensive. Somehow though they always seemed to have some sort of flaw. I recall the earlier ones all were very prone to heat related issues that never quite seemed to find a resolution. Reports of problems of one sort or another still seem quite common.

 

[jokiin]

BlackVue was one of the early "brand name" cameras of quality to emerge when mostly generic cams were available and they were quite expensive. Somehow though they always seemed to have some sort of flaw. I recall the earlier ones all were very prone to heat related issues that never quite seemed to find a resolution. Reports of problems of one sort or another still seem quite common.

I think their designs are nice, no comment beyond that

 

[DashOto]

There's definitely a bunch of dash cams that are pretty ugly.
So I agree the design is pretty good.
My only complaint there is having to unplug cables to get at the SD card.

 

[Dashmellow]

I think their designs are nice, no comment beyond that

No need.

 

[bpsmicro]

My only complaint there is having to unplug cables to get at the SD card.

Only the power cable, and that's because you do not want to be yanking the SD card out of it's slot with the power on. That'll get you corrupted files (or worse) pretty quickly. A power switch might have been nice, but that's one more thing to potentially go wrong. :-/

 

[M8TJT]

My only complaint there is having to unplug cables to get at the SD card.

Then take the rubber cover off. You can then get the card out without removing the power and rear cam.
I would like to know how bpsmicro gets the card our without removing the rear cam connector to move the rubber cover out of the way.
But like he says, make sure the cam is off before removing/fitting it.

 

[DashcamDPR]

I spent more than $450 on the dashcams + memory and today I realized my car was scratched.

I took the memory card at home and I see videos were made 3 days before.

Nothing for yesterday and before yesterday

Piece of crap. Beter to buy 4 cheap chinese cams and put them on perimetr.

were the videos from 3 days ago standard driving videos or parking mode videos? do you even have parking mode enabled? how is your cam powered? There could be many reasons for cams not picking up an incident, not necessarily down to camera failure. Mine "failed" to record being parked at work the other day, but it was down to my powerbank running out of juice 2 hours after I left it

 

[DashOto]

@bpsmicro I get where you're coming from and sure, maybe it's designed that way as a fail-safe... but take the Thinkware F800 Pro, for example, the sd card slot is right there - just reach up and push it in to get it out.

@M8TJT To be fair, he is correct. You don't need to unplug the rear cam cable to get the cover off, just the power cable.
But removing the cover altogether would be a simple fix, I may look into it and see if I can remove it while still being able to put it back on. - Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Wargoose]

I wouldn't remove the cover; the design is not just for aesthetics - it's clearly made to force you to unplug the power cable before you can access the SD card slot. As mentioned earlier, you should not be removing and installing an SD card into a powered camera. The side cover is notched in such a way that the rear camera cable can be left plugged in - which is good, as that coaxial cable does not do well when being constantly plugged and unplugged, unlike the power cable.