car dash cams

and unless you have a multi camera continual system, there is little chance you will be in shot. A body worn cam could be handy for such a situation. In the case mentioned though, if the ticket had expired, what defence do you have?

Reply to
MrCheerful
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Hello,

Last year I met a traffic warden for the first time! The short version of events is that I took my children to the park and when we returned to the car, the traffic warden was issuing a penalty saying that our pay and display had expired.

For months the council did not dispute that I met the traffic warden, now they are doing a U-turn and are saying that he has no recollection of meeting me and made no notes in his notebook about meeting me, therefore, they conclude that I am lying about ever meeting the traffic warden.

I have referred the case to the parking adjudicator and I have given the adjudicator a description of the traffic warden but I wish I had taken a picture of him. I never thought he would lie about meeting me!

I am hoping not to meet another parking warden but I wondered about these dash cams. I know they are sold for filming your driving in case there is an accident, but are any sold that will film whilst you are parked?

Not only would it have helped me in this instance by proving I met and spoke to the traffic warden, but it could help if someone hit your car with a trolley in a supermarket car park, or reversed into you in a car park, or crashed into you whilst you parked in the street, etc.

I would think a camera would be more useful filming when you were not in the car than when you were. If anything having a gps-enabled camera recording your speed could incriminate rather than help you!

My only concern is, are these cameras stealable? If you left one in your car, would someone break a window to take it?

What makes and models do you recommend that work when the car is stationary?

Thanks, Stephen.

Reply to
Stephen

All those that I've seen only start taking pictures when parked if they detect an impact. Even that can raise concerns about battery usage. Recording all the time would be even more of a drain, and to make matters worse the section you're interested in might well be overwritten before you had a chance to keep it, unless you have an infeasibly large amount of storage.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

Some do, essentially to capture the footage of someone running into your parked car, but those normally only keep the last x minutes and save that when the car gets a significant impact so they don't have to keep hours of footage in case you come back to your car and find someone has run into it.

Indeed.

Not as far as evidence of who is at fault is concerned. You are more likely to have an accident when in the car.

Yeah, I hardly ever drive within the speed limit.

Of course they are. But it is certainly possible to conceal them so they can still capture what you need but aren't obvious to criminals who want to steal them.

Yep, the worst of the crims certainly do that.

Reply to
Rod Speed

I'm struggling to understand how proving that you 'met' a traffic warden would affect whether or not a penalty notice was valid.

But, to answer your question . . .

A dashcam *can* record when the car is parked, provided it is supplied with continuous power. [Mine is wired through the ignition, so only works when that is turned on].

Most dashcams have g-sensors which are used to determine what and when they record. If you wanted to record when parked, the usual way to set one up would be to tell it *only* to record when it detected an impact of some sort, rather than continuously. [They actually run all the time, but only store the footage when told to do so - so if a recording is triggered by an impact, they'll actually capture a bit of footage prior to the impact - otherwise it would be of little use].

They can only record what's in their field of view, of course - which is usually the view looking out through the windscreen - so if anything happens at the rear or side of the car, they won't see it.

In summary, it's very unlikely that a dashcam would have helped you in your parking dispute.

Reply to
Roger Mills

Once they've started that's it, it's issued no argument. You have to contest the legality of the issue, incorrect/missing signage, have valid P&D ticket that was displayed, etc

Had it? If so by how long. There used to be a "grace" period of 5 mins(?) were the warden had to stand near the car before they could start to issue the ticket. Does that still exist?

And of course you have the P&D ticket with the expiry date/time and the penalty notice will have at least the date/time of it's issue and probably date/time of the P&D and serial number of the P&D ticket it has been issued against. They should all agree/be in the right chonological order.

Some can be configured to do that or for a period after the igntion is switched off.

Really needs to be complete all round coverage not just front view and to be admissable as evidence I'd expect it to have to comply with rules/regulations that cover CCTV. Security of media, security of media storage, resolution of images, etc

Only if you habitually break the speed limit...

It has been known.

Unless wired to some where that is permenantly live it'll have to have it's own battery. In a modern car many places that were permenant live aren't any more. Even the interior light in mine is switched off about 10 mins after the ignition and I don't mean with the interior light in "auto" I mean in "on".

32 GB card in my cheapy (
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Surely it all hinges round whether you had overstayed the time you'd paid for?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

In message , Stephen writes

I have a couple of ones that look like these

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but I paid even less.

In the Octavia, power is always on in the cigar socket, but the socket is in a stupid place so SWMBO often glitches the power. The camera doesn't like this. But I have hours of recordings of our drive at night.

In the Disco, power came and went with ignition. In the Jeep I think one socket is via ignition, one not.

The cameras are just about OK. No-one has ever seemed to want to steal either.

Mobile phones in holders seem to shake as one drives, but I have got a cheapo one, "Timmy", which has a rotating camera rather than one front and one back. It has occurred to me that this might be mountable firmly and less obviously, but I haven't tried.

Incidentally, the Timmy is Android 4.4, and, although it ought to be able to, and has the commands to, log Bluetooth data this feature doesn't work. If anyone knows of a very cheap phone where this does work, I'd be interested. The feature is in Developer Options -> Enable Bluetooth HCI Snoop Log.

Reply to
Bill

I have one of those cameras recording continuously in my Octavia too. The only difference is I did get one stolen when I had a break in, but I was more concerned about the expense of replacing the SD card than the camera.

Reply to
Graham.

Perhaps he took her/him for a romantic dinner, and ended up having casual sex. Damnit, you'd be annoyed too if the ticket wasn't cancelled.

Reply to
Graham.

yes the kits available , you will need at least 4 cameras preferably

6 , sound recording and storage your looking around £1500 fully fitted minimum and yes the it can be stolen.
Reply to
steve robinson

Be cheaper and less hassle to just pay the parking fine. ;-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

My dash cam is set to record continuously if 12V is present. With a 4G memory chip and 720p picture, I would guess the recording time as a few hours before being overwritten. I've not measured the current consumption.

Reply to
Capitol

On 24/04/2016 09:35, Stephen wrote: ...

That depends upon whether or not you keep to the speed limits.

Nobody has in the several years since I fitted one.

RoadHawk supply dash cams that have an option to video when parked. I've not used that option on mine, but it overwrites old data after about a day or so (depending upon the memory card you fit), so you would need to keep making backups, if you wanted to have a complete history available.

Roadhawk are primarily aimed at the commercial vehicle market, so are not the cheapest dash cams you can buy.

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Reply to
Nightjar

It does seem odd that it is taking months to sort out.

Every ticket I have contested is sorted within a few weeks.

Reply to
ARW

That looks identical to the cheapy I have. Weasel wording in the description:

Well yes, provided there isn't a bit of glass in front of the camera otherwise it blinds itself. B-)

Odd ratio but note "video resolution".

No sensor x/y pixel count...

It works, and now doesn't randomly forget the date and time since I reflowed one of the battery springy contact wires to the PCB.

Set to "1080p" (1280x736 according to VLC) during the day it takes about 300 KB for each 3 min file, at night that drops to 150 KB / 3 min. Set to VGA (640x480) day is around 150 KB / 3 min, night 100 KB.

32 GB card with 5 GB of saved stuff has 4h47m of "1080p" in the remaining 26 GB.

There is no noticeable difference in image quality between "1080p" and "VGA". Number plates of cars in front only become legible when they are closer than about 15 to 20'. I'll be switching back to VGA...

If you edit consecutive files together there are no missing frames, there may actually be a 1 frame overlap.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

This, and all the other points, including the earlier suggestion of something with a wireless connection being needed to get the data off without poking at the memory card, all fit exactly with my experience. Sometime last year I decided that VGA recorded for longer with no significant loss of quality, and set mine to that.

I do wonder if the ones for around a fiver are seconds.

Reply to
Bill

I take the camera out of the car and plug it in via USB as a mass storeage device. Far to fiddly to hoik the card in and out with the camera half hidden by the interior mirror. The standard camera thread screw mounting was a PITA but I got a cheap magnetic phone screen mount which, makes removal easy. Came with a couple of thin self-adhesive steel plates that could stick on the battery cover, Wasn't convinced about how secure the battery cover is so I used a

1/16" thick bit of steel and large headed counter sunk screw to attach it via the normal mounting thread.

Mine ought to have been with the battery spring dry joint but wasn't I think I paid about £12 for it. Problem didn't show up until a couple of months had passed.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Ignoring the weasel words, are these things really worth having, even if only for daytime recording? Looking at eBay, similar car cameras seem to start at around £6.50 including postage from the Far East. A reasonable buy for the price, or complete waste of money? From what has been said, it seems they do actually work. I realise a card will be extra.

Reply to
News

I've no idea what you get for £6.50! My BlackVue camera cost in the region of £200 about 4 years ago. That does provide footage which could potentially be used in evidence if required, but I'm a bit disappointed that number plates can only be read when they're really close.

It would have been useful for my wife to have had one a few days ago. She damaged her door mirror when it hit the open door of a parked car. She thinks the door was opened just as she approached, giving her no chance of avoiding it. The car owner says it had been open for a while, and she should have seen it. A camera would have proved that one way or the other.

Reply to
Roger Mills

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