Anybody wire up a dash cam for their car? I've been doing some research but it's really overwhelming. So many options and features that I'm not sure where to begin or what to look for. Of course, marketing dollars say to use a GoPro but it seems overkill.
I came across a bunch of info about it when shopping for action cameras and I don't think GOPro or any action cam is the best choice unless you want a dual purpose camera. ie dash cam and ski cam. For starters someone is going to break into your car to steal a $400 GoPro but probably wont bother for a $50 black box. They also aren't meant to run for hours and can overheat. Dedicated cams are better. They power up and down with the car, record in loops and overwrite old files, look discreet, and some even have rear cameras so you can watch yourself almost getting killed after the crash. https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/
I have two in my car, front and back. I'm using mini 0806 in the front and my old mini 0803 in the back. Image quality is great as is low light performance from the 0806 but it can be a bit of a lottery hardware quality wise. I lucked out with mine. These were the smallest cams with a screen and small windscreen mount I could find. There is an even smaller nano q coming out but I've not seen any video footage from it yet. For really stealthy installations, the mobius action cam is highly recommended. No screen but it's about the size of a box of tic tacs and has great image quality. It also starts and stops recording when power is applied and will loop recording when the card is full. Might be with waiting a bit since the mobius 2 is due out next year. For an all in one, front and back camera set up, the koonlung k1s is supposed to be pretty good. Two tiny cams that connect to a DVR type box with screen. A guy called Techmoan on YouTube has reviewed a lot of these dashcams and provides sample clips to download. Worth checking him out. I'll take a couple of photos of my cams in my car later.
Thanks for the forum and YT'er. That guy is incredibly thorough with his reviews... I think I will either go with the Mobius 135 degree version, or wait for Mobius2. Why did you go with an LCD, is it purely for easy config changes? I don't see myself ever touching it once it's mounted and can't think of another use. It would be cool to stream a reverse camera live to the dash though. Not sure if it's possible on the cheap. @cmdrmonkey Just for fun, I've had some cool stuff happen that would've been cool to capture.
It was mostly for ease of aiming the camera when mounting it. It's pretty much set and forget but it is handy for quickly checking back through footage when I don't have time or can't be bothered to remove the memory card or camera to download the video. Also for adjusting my cpl when I need to. Had this jerk nearly run me off the road the other day.
It's a Ford, an American car. I don't believe you can buy it in the US though. If you don't need a big car what's the point in burning more fuel just for the sake of it?
Ford is an American company that doesn't build anything in America. I hesitate to call anything they make as American. Toyota is more of an American car company now than Ford. I think as of last year surpassed all other "American" auto makers in number of American employees.