What Are the Most Important Dash Cam Features?

[arcticfire]

The truth of the matter is that initially I didn't reply to you directly because I recalled how this ridiculous current interaction is exactly the kind of thing that has happened in my previous interactions with you here on this forum.

First you refer to post #46 from yesterday but now you refer to today's post #59 which was much later on in the conversation. What's your point here? You want "credit" for bringing up the subject of an external camera drive? OK, fine! But ENOUGH ALREADY! This is petty and juvenile!

Wow, calm down. I was just confused with your response. I do remember you now and I am far from the only one who you get arsey with, seriously chill out.

I've barely arrived and here you are in my face already. Perhaps you shouldn't converse with me if you had and still have such an issue. I'm happy to continue being polite and civil if you are though, I don't hold grudges.

 

[Dashmellow]

Wow, calm down. I was just confused with your response. I do remember you now and I am far from the only one who you get arsey with, seriously chill out.

I've barely arrived and here you are in my face already. Perhaps you shouldn't converse with me if you had and still have such an issue. I'm happy to continue being polite and civil if you are though, I don't hold grudges.

In your face? You know, this absurd spat began when you felt the need to point out that a remotely located hard drive was something you had already mentioned and when I replied "not exactly" because we were now discussing an internal swappable drive you wouldn't let it go at that. And I questioned why you excluded that particular point in my original post which you quoted from a direct reply to Jokiin. Thus began your relentnless nitpicking over who was quoting whom and when. Even when I tried to be conciliatory and suggested that whether a hard drive was on a cable or internal to the camera it was essentially the same concept yet both would require some sort of swappability for portable data transfer. But NO, you felt the need to continue on with your obsessive and petty harangue about who quoted who, etc., etc. etc.

In the meantime, I tried to have friendly interactions with you such as trying to answer your question about a previous dual memory card camera but STILL you returned to claiming that I was quoting you when you were at that point referring to my interactions with Jokiin. Even after I posted screen shots of the actual posts between me an Jokiin and suggested we move on to other discussion you continued, now claiming you were referring to some different quote from me that occurred 24 hours later.

And now you are acting as if you are some sort of innocent victim claiming to "continue being polite and civil" while at the very same time in the very same post calling me "arsey". I really have little patience for you passive aggressive types who mix conciliatory remarks with insults and name calling along with relentless provocation. From the get-go, this "argument" you provoked makes little sense and at this point seems merely gratuitous on your part. So, to repeat what I said before, ENOUGH! Go away.

 

[arcticfire]

Lol settle down and chill. I think it's best that you simply ignore me and I'll extend you the same courtesy.

 

[Dashmellow]

Lol settle down and chill. I think it's best that you simply ignore me and I'll extend you the same courtesy.

Sure, that would be great, go away, like I've asked. The question is whether you can stick with the plan or whether down the line, you'll pick another petty argument with me over one thing or another as you've had a history of doing in the past. Time will tell, eh mate?

 

[arcticfire]

Sure, that would be great, go away, like I've asked. The question is whether you can stick with the plan or whether down the line, you'll pick another petty argument with me over one thing or another as you've had a history of doing in the past. Time will tell, eh mate?

If we ignore each other then there can't be any arguments. Simple logic.

 

[Dashmellow]

If we ignore each other then there can't be any arguments. Simple logic.

With you, I'm not so sure but we'll see how it goes.

 

[Nigel]

Now the argument has finished, let's get back to the question, what is wrong with using UFS cards?

Unveiled by standards body JEDEC, UFS 3.0 lowers power consumption and will make flash storage more reliable at a greater range of temperatures.

UFS originated as a way for smartphones to match the data transfer speeds of desktop PC SSDs and Samsung is among the firms who have embraced the tech.

In a press release, the standards group explains: “UFS is a high-performance interface designed for use in applications where power consumption needs to be minimized, including mobile systems such as smart phones and tablets as well as automotive applications. Its high-speed serial interface and optimized protocol enable significant improvements in throughput and system performance.”

UFS 3.0 includes two features introduced specifically for the automotive market: the ability to function at an extended temperature range and refresh operation.

 

[SawMaster]

Who will break the new ground? And who will follow them? The better solutions are here, but if nobody uses them it becomes irrelevant

It may be just me, but there seems to be a near-universal reluctance for dashcam manufacturers to embrace new approaches to improving the products. We're relegated to the limits of SOC and micro SD technology and the reason seems to be because it's relatively cheap and easy to just keep going along with them. That kind of complacent approach has led to the downfall of many a once-great company, and it would be sad to see it happening here.

Phil

 

[Dashmellow]

Now the argument has finished, let's get back to the question, what is wrong with using UFS cards?

Amen!

UFS cards sound very promising. I was not previously aware of them. Personally, I sometimes get frustrated with tiny MicroSD cards because I've lost a few. One got away from me when I was removing it from a camera and it went shooting off somewhere into another dimension never to be seen again despite my best repeated efforts to locate it. It wasn't the first time a MicroSD card has vanished. One dash cam I once owned used standard SD cards which I actually preferred at the time.

Also, thanks for refreshing my memory about the dual cards slots on the 0806.

They couldn't get the auto mode to loop around both cards, or at least start in the right place after a power up. The manual selection worked OK but people wanted it to loop around both automatically.

It would have been better to use one card for event recordings and the other for loop recordings, but the processor was quite slow by today's standard and didn't have the capacity to copy files between cards at the same time as recording.

The pre-production unit I received had various issues. It could never record any sound. It had a microphone soldered to the pcb but it didn't function. If you put two cards in both slots the camera had recording issues but worked fine with only one card. As I recall that only worked if the memory card was in the B slot.

I think the whole idea of dual memory cards became moot as the price of larger, faster cards have come down dramatically.

 

[jokiin]

Sounds like they didn't implement it very well or something? My first dashcam was the 0801 and it was a good unit and reliable, but I seem to recall later models being not so good. I think it was actually Jokiin who mentioned that production was no longer tightly controlled or something and all sorts of places in China started producing them so quality went down. I wonder if it's related?

the 0801 and the 0806 are from two different factories which is why the different user experience, more copy versions of the 0801 came along after that in the race to the bottom to see who could make it the cheapest, it started to get ugly then

 

[jokiin]

Who will break the new ground? And who will follow them? The better solutions are here, but if nobody uses them it becomes irrelevant

It may be just me, but there seems to be a near-universal reluctance for dashcam manufacturers to embrace new approaches to improving the products. We're relegated to the limits of SOC and micro SD technology and the reason seems to be because it's relatively cheap and easy to just keep going along with them. That kind of complacent approach has led to the downfall of many a once-great company, and it would be sad to see it happening here.

Phil

a good 90% of what's out there comes from manufacturers with no in house engineering capabilities so they're limited to what they can buy in the market from design houses to base their products on, new tech has long lead times, there are bigger and better things being worked on all the time but it takes a long time before they see the light of day unfortunately

 

[arcticfire]

the 0801 and the 0806 are from two different factories which is why the different user experience, more copy versions of the 0801 came along after that in the race to the bottom to see who could make it the cheapest, it started to get ugly then

That rings some bells, such a shame as the 0801 cameras I had were great. But every cloud and all that, it got me into Street Guardian!

Is your stuff still single point factory?

 

[jokiin]

Is your stuff still single point factory?

some earlier models were done in a different factory, everything we do now is all under one roof

 

[arcticfire]

They couldn't get the auto mode to loop around both cards, or at least start in the right place after a power up. The manual selection worked OK but people wanted it to loop around both automatically.

It would have been better to use one card for event recordings and the other for loop recordings, but the processor was quite slow by today's standard and didn't have the capacity to copy files between cards at the same time as recording.

Sorry, I missed your reply to me. That would be a good idea using the second card just for events, minimum stress on the card. Drawing on what Jokiin says about the lack of in-house engineering skills with the majority of manufactures, would the better manufactures be capable of making this work?

 

[jokiin]

dual cards was more of a thing when the chipsets could only support smaller cards and larger cards were expensive anyway, times have changed so there's less of a business case for multiple cards than there once was

 

[Nigel]

dual cards was more of a thing when the chipsets could only support smaller cards and larger cards were expensive anyway, times have changed so there's less of a business case for multiple cards than there once was

Agree, by next summer the 0.5 TB cards will be reasonably cheap and 1TB cards will be available at prices OK for professional drivers. With a 0.5TB card you can have 24 hours loop recording plus a bit of event storage even with a 4K dual camera. There is no need to complicate things with multiple cards or SSD devices that most people don't understand and wouldn't dare remove from the camera. A good microSD card in a good camera is very reliable, if that can be improved with UFS cards providing lower power consumption and better heat tolerance then that is all that is needed. More useful would be a better file system so that video doesn't need to be split up into little sections when really it is a continuous loop, and some better protected storage of event videos would be good, plus it should be designed so that the video files don't get corrupted if you pull the card out while recording!

 

[arcticfire]

dual cards was more of a thing when the chipsets could only support smaller cards and larger cards were expensive anyway, times have changed so there's less of a business case for multiple cards than there once was

I suppose coming from when I was into photography it was usually preferential to have multiple smaller storage than one big storage to mitigate losses should a card fail.

I'm thinking along the lines of how it seems to be pretty much accepted that the card is the weak point with reliability, is there no case for having a dual card setup for redundancy purposes? Or are modem cards now becoming reliable enough to counter this? The UFS card technology seems like an interesting direction though.

 

[arcticfire]

plus it should be designed so that the video files don't get corrupted if you pull the card out while recording!

That's a interesting point, the Durite system automatically powers down as soon as you unlock the hard drive caddy door. I wonder if when pushing in the SD card to remove, it can also activate a switch to stop recording?

 

[Nigel]

I suppose coming from when I was into photography it was usually preferential to have multiple smaller storage than one big storage to mitigate losses should a card fail.

I'm thinking along the lines of how it seems to be pretty much accepted that the card is the weak point with reliability, is there no case for having a dual card setup for redundancy purposes? Or are modem cards now becoming reliable enough to counter this? The UFS card technology seems like an interesting direction though.

Some cards seem prone to failing, and some cameras seem to destroy cards, plus Blackvue cameras seem to be incompatible with the microSD standard!
But a good card in a good camera is reliable.

They do wear out eventually so it would be good if the camera could check the card wear counter and warn the driver when it is time to replace it to maintain reliability, something that seems to be impossible with microSD, but maybe UFS will sort that.

Current cameras seem much better at informing the driver when there is a card error, back in the days of the 0806 it could stop recording and you wouldn't know for weeks if you didn't check, many people didn't find out until they tried to extract their accident video which didn't exist, but a camera like the Blueskysea B2W will tell me via a voice message as soon as it stops recording due to a card issue and tell me what the problem is.

 

[jokiin]

previous dual card solutions were always about expanding total storage which didn't really help redundancy, writing to two cards simultaneously would be needed to offer some sort of protection, due to the media being removable there are some more challenges to deal with if you really want to protect the data