Is it worth getting a dashcam?

At the risk of going slightly off-topic, could I be so bold as to ask how dash-cams work?

Do they upload to the internet or just onto SD cards?
Do you have to reset them each trip or do they have automatic settings whereby it deletes everything after n hours and you only 'keep' what you tell it to keep?
Are the SD cards expensive?
Are there apps to view and save the pieces of footage you want via your smartphone?


I've been thinking about a dashcam for a few weeks now after some clown in a transit van rolled back into me and then started waving his arms in the air as if it was my fault.

Leveraging your experience, as ever.

They only write to sd cards. If there is an impact, the video is locked to protect it, otherwise the videos are overwritten sequentially. Bigger the memory card the better.

Do they upload to the internet or just onto SD cards? Mine writes to an SD card. There may be some that upload automatically.
Do you have to reset them each trip or do they have automatic settings whereby it deletes everything after n hours and you only 'keep' what you tell it to keep? I format my SD card so that there is x room for normal everyday recording, y for events, z for park monitoring. When each designated space is full it overwrites. Events are determined by pressing a button on the camera or by hard decceleration.
Are the SD cards expensive? Not really, eg. 64gb is $30. They do suggest formating the SD card at regular intervals and replacing after a time as well.
Are there apps to view and save the pieces of footage you want via your smartphone? My dashcam comes with an app and can connect using wifi to upload footage.


Strangely since I installed mine I've had no incidents, it's like people know it's there and now leave me alone.

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Originally Posted by The Cone of Silence

At the risk of going slightly off-topic, could I be so bold as to ask how dash-cams work?

Do they upload to the internet or just onto SD cards?
Do you have to reset them each trip or do they have automatic settings whereby it deletes everything after n hours and you only 'keep' what you tell it to keep?
Are the SD cards expensive?
Are there apps to view and save the pieces of footage you want via your smartphone?


I've been thinking about a dashcam for a few weeks now after some clown in a transit van rolled back into me and then started waving his arms in the air as if it was my fault.

Leveraging your experience, as ever.

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Originally Posted by incisor

what did you go with John?

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"Response" from Jaycar. It works, but is a bit fiddly. Manual is not well written (e.g. refers to one button by three different names, only two of which are labelled, fails to always distinguish between momentary and prolonged pushes of buttons), and print is very fine.

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Originally Posted by PhilipA

I must lead a dull life.
I have had one in my car for 3+ years without an incident of note.
I have never even taken out the SD card to look at it on the computer.
I don't know why you would need lots of SD cards as they over"print" the SD progressively every 4?hours, and do it in 5 minute segments.
Mine does anyway.

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Mine is just a cheap Kings dashcam. I have it set on 5min videos. It fills the card in about 4 hours and will start overwriting the early video files. This will reduce if the card gets more part or "crash" locked videos, so it pays to remove and manually wipe it occasionally.

I have a few SD cards as I use it for interest when travelling or for work. I do road design so will drive the road section in both directions to get a reference video to refer from later, then take this SD card out for later download onto my laptop. This saves having to take dozens of photos as I used to. When travelling I change the cards every 4 hours then transfer the data onto an external drive every night, then wipe them ready for the next day.

Ie got a Uniden Black Box thing which has crapped itself after about 2 years. I must get another soon as the mayhem on the roads here is not getting any better and when it rains like today, the driving is even worse. :)
But it won't be a Uniden after reading many stories about their life expectancy..
AlanH.

PS. I've also got a GoPro which has also buggered and won't respond to the different button commands.