So here's my new dashcam. No exactly new though, I have it for a couple of months already but just found time to post it here just in case somebody interested. First of all after reading number of reviews I decided on this one:
A118 Full HD 1080P H.264 | Ships from USA | Car DVR Camera Recorder Dashboard Dashcam | Black Box Video Recorder | Authentic NT96650 + AR0330: Amazon.ca: Electronics mostly because of form factor. It doesn't have built-in GPS but I decided that I don't really need to record my speed and route with a dashcam. I have Garmin GPS for that.
This is how it looks when I open driver door (beside the mirror) :
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and passenger door:
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From outside it's not much noticeable:
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When I behind the steering wheel I can see only top of the dashcam enough to see that lights are on and camera is recording. I set camera display to turn off after 1 minute, so it doesn't distract me. Lights which indicate recording, power and microphone are not intrusive, I was thinking about putting electric tape over them, but lights didn't really stand out even at night. :
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Passenger doesn't see much more of the camera:
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I put it on passenger side mostly because driver side location might potentially interfere with mirror if I ever need to adjust it. Not that I'm ever going to adjust it that much, but who knows : ) As a drawback MicroSD slot is not accessible so I need to remove dashcam from the glued base to download videos to a computer. It removes very easy though. But reset button is fully accessible if I need to use it:
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Besides before I glued the holder to the windshield I found out that 3M pad it uses can be removed with a string and some patience. It took me some time to find good position for the camera, making sure that it doesn't see mirror base and dots on the windshield. And I still have space to unplug it and take camera off the holder.
Installation was easy but my installation skills are far from good, I'm sure Antman would have done it way better, but since he hasn't done it yet I installed it without removing any panels so I can easy re-do it when somebody comes up with some nice installation walk-through.
Basically I hid power cable under headliner, then under passenger pillar or whatever it calls:
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although cable didn't fit between it and console.
Then I routed it inside the door weather strip:
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and under the console:
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After that I routed dashcam cable with my GPS cable - not really neat but out of way : )
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And finally plugged it in the 12v outlet (I already had splitter there):
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So far I'm quite happy with this dashcam, it produces decent videos in 1920x1080, 1 minute takes 100Mb, which gives me about 8 hrs with 64Gb microSD card. I mostly intend to use it for filming trails, but it sure can come handy in case I get into accident. Hopefully next year I can have some interesting videos, the only negative thing I found is that canoe on the roof closes a lot of camera view : )
