Dash Cam Install

[Mule]

Late June I was assholed by a teen driver who i'm guessing fell asleep at the wheel. Hitch ran through her grille/hood somehow missing all the important bits behind there.
Month or two later i'm in a construction zone, and the dude in front of me smokes the concrete jersey barrier.
Decided it was time to get serious about a dash-cam again. Bought one a while ago but it was DOA, returned it and didn't really consider it again. Didn't like how huge it was on the windshield either; wanted something more inconspicuous. Wasn't sure how well it'd see out the back window given its position on the windshield.

Enter the motorcycle DVR. I didn't even know that was a thing till recently. https://www.amazon.com/product/dp/B07C971CLY
2-channel (Front+Rear), tiny little DVR box with no display (all wifi-configured). Small lipstick-style cameras that can go just about anywhere.

Front camera hides nicely behind the rearview.


Rear camera on the back glass. Right behind the rear drivers-side seat, at the end of the cable. Hopefully it'll still have a decent view with a sled/moto in the bed.


Cables tucked in behind the headliner, down the A-pillar, and hidden behind the dash cubby by the door.


Remote pendant for status (off, on/standby, on/recording, on/video-tagged). One button to "tag" a video - camera won't overwrite that file if the disk fills. Other button to snap a JPG photo. The two cameras record to their own folders, and tagging or taking a photo grabs both front and rear.
Yup... more lights on the dash.


But .... no cable mess, no giant "LOOK AT ME I'M A DASH CAM!!!" stuck to the windshield.


Front camera does well.


Rear, shooting through the tinted glass, suffers at night. Decent during the day.


Instructions are useless. Managed to dig up english instructions, but they're just as helpful as the chinese ones.
Software/app quality is typical chinese. Not great, but useable.
Hardware, so far, seems decent. I don't know that I'd trust it on a motorcycle, but for a truck it's more than good enough.
128GB µSD card (under $50 now, ) should go 8-10 hours with 1080/30 front and 720/30 rear.

[Retired BLM Rig]

Thanks for posting this. I've been thinking I should do something like this, especially with all the crazy drivers in So. Cal.
I even had a employee from the shop next door accuse me of playing bumper cars with his Beemer. Luckily none of the marks lined up with my truck and there was evidence of a different color paint that had transferred to his car. (Let's just blame the guy with the 4X4!)

[EasyDoesIt]

Nice work. I've got the 2channel BlackVue DR650 in mine and thankfully haven't had any accidents.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H7WJJUU/re ... UBbVV22J09

They cameras are small and unnoticeable.

[Mule]

Yeah, the "smart" power adapter has a low-volt cutoff, intended to be connected to a motorcycle's battery. I wired it to an ignition-switched circuit. Might rework that and bypass the cutoff, since the engine has to be running to trip the cutoff and provide power to the DVR/cameras. Can't fire up the DVR and config or grab data off it without firing up the truck.

Phone app is kinda clunky. Works, but not that great. Video playback on a phone is tricky to get right.
Phone wants to connect to the camera's wifi, even though it has no WAN. Choices now look like either shutting off wifi when i'm driving (and remembering to turn it on when I get home), or forgetting the camera's wifi. I'm leaning towards the latter.
Easier to pull the card out of the DVR and deal with things on a computer for accessing recordings/images. I'm glad I didn't put it somewhere more difficult to get to.
Still figuring out the buttons and how they work. No documentation on the operation of that accessory.

Happy with the position on the back cam though. Decent view behind me even with the sled loaded up.


Front also works great.

[SkipMid]

I just picked up this for the wife's Caddy (she got t-boned by a red light runner and the witness never showed up to get the 80 year old woman off the road - but the insurance paid $50k to fix the damn car over 4 months... grrr) https://amzn.to/2MVKndR and I picked up this for the PW https://amzn.to/2HNuP7W - Both come with OBD power which lets parking mode catch some hours of parking. - got the rear camera for the PW as well.

[AceMan]

Nice camera! I think they are starting to become an essential item.

I ordered and loosely installed a Blackvue 900S 2 channel (front and rear). It came with an 8GB card, which only handles about 2 straight hours of operation. That disappointed me because i wheeled last weekend and lost all the wheeling, even with their Cloud service, which only handles about 10 GB of data. I ordered and just received a 256GB card (USD $180!!) and installed it. So far, it looks good.

I'll start a separate thread about it and provide pics.

https://www.amazon.com/Blackvue-DR900S- ... 07BWSG2NP/