This was the most unreliable dashcam ever

[Crash_it]

I've owned this dashcam from May of 2016 to June of 2017. During this time, the camera would periodically stop recording and start again causing me to miss footage. This would happen until 3 firmware updates later when it was finally resolved. However, after which the camera would regularly freeze up and even brick once per week requiring a reflash using the .elf file. Eventually in June of 2017 the camera quit working alltogether despite reflash. CS was MIA around this time and did nothing to replace it. Alongside all of this, the false advertising in the ads for the camera leading one to believe that it recorded in hifi stereo sound which was far from the truth. The good of the camera though was that it had really good video quality, especially at night and is still better than even my ROVE Stealth 4K pro at night.

 

[SawMaster]

Welcome to DCT @Crash_it Well at least you got to use yours- mine bricked trying to do the initial firmware update as the manual said to do Had this cam gotten the factory support it should have, it would have become a market killer; it had features still unmatched, well-tuned video that excelled day and night, and the form-factor was excellent too. What it didn't have was an honorable person standing behind it, and Dan abandoned us buyers to suffer our losses alone

Even in failure you should try to learn something from the situation. For me that education was to re-learn to not do firmware updates and upgrades unless necessary, and even then wait until several people you trust have done it first, either without issues or with those issues found being resolved. Dashcams aren't online computers where security can be an issue so no need to rush updates as long as the cam is doing what you want it to do Also do not expect a cam to do anything past the state it's development was in when you bought it- updates and fixes may never be forthcoming (I've seen this in other cams too) Lastly, never buy a cam till you've seen the results other people are having with it- let someone else take the hit and save yourself (and your money) from the problems they find.

Like many others here I believed in Dan and his cam. I had to really save hard to pay for it, not missing meals but close to that. It's been a bad experience for everyone, although some folks did get some use from theirs, and a few used theirs until very recently. So much potential, so big a chance to become king, and all lost because Dan walked away from the project and his buyers when another month or two of effort is probably all it would have taken to get everything well sorted out. Some others here have looked into it and have found where this company and others Dan had going went down the tubes into brokeness. Dishonorable Dan deserves that fate

Phil

 

[jokiin]

Like many others here I believed in Dan and his cam. I had to really save hard to pay for it, not missing meals but close to that. It's been a bad experience for everyone, although some folks did get some use from theirs, and a few used theirs until very recently. So much potential, so big a chance to become king, and all lost because Dan walked away from the project and his buyers when another month or two of effort is probably all it would have taken to get everything well sorted out.

to be fair I think he wanted to deliver, unfortunately the manufacturer he partnered with didn't live up to their end of the deal and he was stuck with zero support and no way to get it done, interestingly the factory that did these still do a number of other products in the market, some popular, some not so popular and the support they get varies wildly, as do the results, some are reliable and have decent support, some are lemons, how or why the end result differs so much I have no idea, it's not to do with volume or price as some of their biggest customers have the unsupported lemons

 

[SawMaster]

I like to think well of everyone, but I would still fault Dan for his choice of manufacturer if they were known to be this way already- which they probably were. He had some great ideas but apparently not the level of knowledge to see them carried out on his own. It would be something like me trying to have a jet airplane built; I'm smart enough to not try doing things that far past my knowledge and skill-set. And regardless, he could have taken his cam to someone else to finish it. But he didn't do that nor did he tell us what problems he was having and why things were not going as planned. Instead of facing up to things, he instead tried to hide the facts and have all the commentary done on his site forum where the general public wouldn't see it. And even there he didn't address the issues or let us know what was going on; instead he just walked away.

As best I can recall, you yourself told him here on DCT to beware his choice of manufacturer, advice not taken from someone with much knowledge and experience in those kinds of things. Unwise to be sure. I constantly have to deal with customers who think they have a better or cheaper way of doing things when I know that it isn't going to work like they think it will. Most will listen to me when I explain it, but some will not, and it's when their way of thinkiing fails and they have to pay me to go in and re-do their mistakes correctly that they learn. One guy made a bad decision against my repeated warnings which is going to cost him around $35K to fix, maybe more At least he admits to his error and is going to do what it takes to get things right even though now instead of making a profit on the job he's going to be lucky to not lose money. He's not walking away, and I'll give him credit for that much. Dan could have done the same, but he didn't. Once he saw there was no easy way out of the mess he walked away instead of doing everything in his power to make things right.

And it's happened to me too. I made a bad decision on one job which cost me $5K, but I made things right afterward. It happened just as my business was set to take off and grow big-time, and that single mistake lost me my last chance to really succeed which is why I'm so poor now. I could have walked away too but it's not in me to do things that way. I regret my bad decision but I do not regret what I did afterward- not even now. Honor is about always doing the right thing with no other considerations allowed to interfere with that choice. Not loss of money, not loss of social standing, nothing matters when honor is on the line except honor itself. Yeah, it's an old-fashioned concept but I'm an old-fashioned person and I take pride in being this way.

Phil

 

[jokiin]

I like to think well of everyone, but I would still fault Dan for his choice of manufacturer if they were known to be this way already- which they probably were.

to be honest the manufacturer he choose is one of the biggest in the market, I've been at this longer than he had and I had no idea how bad they were, they present very professionally and based on what you see at face value it may be easy to be influenced into making a bad decision, they do some big name product so I can see how he may have gone into it with a false sense of security, I'm not defending anything he did or how things played out, I can see how it ended up the way it did though

And regardless, he could have taken his cam to someone else to finish it.

very unlikely that was ever an option, I don't believe he owned the source and reasonably sure he didn't own the tooling (I saw the factory were offering the tooling to others which wouldn't happen if he had that), perhaps naivety/inexperience left him in that position, not sure, he took a much bigger gamble than I ever took at his age, live and learn maybe