Re: Inexpensive ($30?) dash cam USB battery powered microSD up to 64GB

BTW, it's about 50MB/minute, so, plan accordingly.

Per Ahmed E. Souaiaia:

Check out some of TechMoan's reviews on YouTube. He has a couple of favorites among cheap cams and some of them are way small.

I have one of these

Probably could have gotten one for $30-40 from AliExpress, but I've read that the problem with cameras like that which have such a good name is that the market is full of knockoffs and ripoffs crafted to look/sound like the real deal but nowhere near as good - so I went with a known supplier.

Just out of curiosity...why?

What you're capturing is the road in front of you, right? What happens there that you want to record and view later?

People ask my why I'm taking a photograph of this or that, and I don't have to have a good answer beyond "because I want to", but I am curious if that's your answer or there's something I'm missing.

there are many reasons for dashcams, including documenting what really happened in a collision. that can backfire if you did something wrong, but on the other hand, it can also mean winning. some dashcams have motion sensors and can trigger if someone tries to steal or vandalize your car. another use is for road trips, which are generally played back at super-speed.

why does it even matter?

I'm not interested in why you think one is worth having. I'm not interested in whether or not you think it matters. I don't need to justify to you why it matters.

I'm curious about what Ahmed and Pete think and what has motivated them.

You are quite welcome to jump into any thread in the newsgroup, but your "why does it even matter?" comment indicates that your primary interest is just to stir things up.

Hard to think of a better reason, unless you're doing it to eat, etc.

Nah! nospam would never do that.

those are not my reasons. i don't even have a dashcam.

again, this is not about me. it has nothing to do with me. i'm telling you why people get dashcams.

those are the main reasons. there are others too, but the only reason that actually matters is that someone wants a dashcam.

whether you think it's a good idea or not makes no difference whatsoever.

wrong. all i did was answer your question.

you are as usual arguing just to argue.

Per Tony Cooper:

Several reasons, drinking too much coffee probably being one of them.

But it's even worse: the cam I mentioned is facing backwards. There's another, more expensive cam, behind the rear view mirror facing forwards... and I'm still trying to figure out how to have 360-degree coverage without a rat's nest of wires and devices.

My rationalizations were:

- The technology is there, it's reasonably priced, and being a computer application developer I get off on stuff like this.

I got semi-addicted setting up a surf cam for a windsurfing shop so people could see what's going on on the bay and not call the owner every five minutes on windy days.

- I had been seeing more and more bizarre driving behavior and it seemed like it would be entertaining to capture it.

Dunno exactly what I'd do with the captures... maybe start yet another YouTube channels devoted to such stuff.

The precipitating incident was when some guy in a red sports car passed me on the right - running the shoulder - at what seemed like a very high rate of speed - as in the vicinity of 100 mph - and disappeared from sight slaloming through traffic. About 10 minutes later, I came upon an accident scene: red sports car upside-down on the median barrier, guy strapped to a spinal board being loaded into an ambulance. Same car? Dashcam might have enabled comparison of license plate numbers....

Of course, I haven't seen much of anything since installing the cams.

- In some countries, people actually engineer traffic "accidents" so they can extort money from the target of the crash. My understanding is that's what is behind the wide use of dash cams in Russia.

- After a crash, it *might* be good to have some footage.

Probably depends on who was at fault.

Of course I fully expect that, after an accident, I will find that the critical camera's SD card had become corrupted weeks ago and is useless..... -)

- OTOH, I can see the dash cams in the same light as my little 2KW generator: largely useless, but nice to have on those rare occasions when the power goes out.

Dashcams record to an SD card and automagically rotate the clips so the SD card is pretty much full and the clips on it are the latest going back as far as the capacity of the SD card will allow. The exception is certain cameras (as in my front-facing cam) where a clip can be designated as a "Keeper" and kept in a special folder from which it will never be deleted.

On this cam, I just bump the cam with my finger when I see something entertaining. This creates a g-force event that tells the cam to keep that clip in the special folder.

Usually there is a button on the cam for that purpose, but bumping it is easier and more intuitive.

Per (PeteCresswell):

Some cams allow reviewing of clips via the cam, but my take is that, for practical purposes, you need to pull the SD card and plug it into a laptop or tablet to get any meaningful functionality.

If something has just happened and you want to show somebody - like a cop - the clip of the event, lots of luck. I've never put a timer on it, but popping out the SD card, inserting into another device, firing up the other device, and then bringing up the clip has got to take at least five minutes..... maybe more depending on how shaken up one is. And that's assuming that you even *have* said other device.

To me it's more like "Get home, swap out the card, sit down at one's PC and then spend a half-hour or so isolating the critical footage, transcoding it to a smaller file, and then burning said file to media of choice or uploading it to YouTube or Vimeo.

Fair enough. I don't think you need to have a reason other than the fact that you want one of these things, but I was curious about your thinking. You've expressed it well.

Raging cops and insurance disputes. My reason for running a camera is the former.

Per (PeteCresswell):

"Mobius" is one that he really likes - and he says that many people are using it as a dashcam.

Flared-cone (truncated hyperboloid?)-shaped mirror and some processing software ought to do it.