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Originally Posted by akshay380 Cancelled my A119S booking and ordered this today. Has to be mounted on the dashboard. If it works as intended, I can get my Torque Pro app configured on it instead of mounting a Google Nexus in car.
Phisung E02 8"Touch 4G Android wifi GPS Full HD 1080P Video Recorder Dual Lens Registrar Dash cam ROM 16GB ADAS car dvr camera http://s.aliexpress.com/vmiIZRNz? |
Hey Akshay380, I have to thank you for this post and link. I was quite impressed by this product and bought it from Aliexpress using the link you provided.
The package arrived in about 25 days from China. I paid USD 147 including shipping and INR 1674 as customs duty to the postman

. It was held by Chennai customs for about 4 days before they released it. Tracking was available throughout except for about 12 days in between while it was in transit from China to India.
The package arrived in perfect condition with the DVR (its much more than just a DVR, but I will call it that) and all accessories neatly packed.
I was using a Transcend DP220 earlier which was working flawlessly. But the reason I bought this was to overcome another issue I have with the Endy 3.2 Trend that I bought in June 2016 - lack of a navigation system in the Sync 2. It feels awkward to stick a mobile holder on the windscreen when it should have been part of the ICE system when you have paid so much for the car.
The E02 appeared to be a good option as it integrated both the DVR and navigation system into one. Besides the DVR and navigation system, the E02 can also take a 4G SIM card and can be used for internet browsing and telephone calls. It can also be used as a reversing camera. A 720p rear camera with an ultra long cable (which is plug and play) is also provided. It can be used directly, although a wire is provided to draw power from the reversing light to work as a regular reversing camera. Since the Endy has a wonderful in built reverse camera, I intend to put this additional camera to better use (more on this later). You can connect the unit to your phone's hotspot or choose to use this as a hotspot if you have a SIM inserted. Blutooth function is available and works just like a smart phone. FM is available although it is only for transmitting and not for receiving. Audio from the unit can be transmitted through FM and played on your cars ICE. You just have to choose the frequency. The Endy has her FM antenna fitted just near the rear hatch hinge, but the signal strength is good with good sound quality.
Fixing the unit on the dashboard was quite tough. This thing is quite big and mounting it on the dashboard was a good DIY project which took me almost a week of R&D and several minutes of testing for sturdiness (both for vibrations/g-forces and the pressure you apply on the screen) and ease of removal.
The Trend version of the Endy (as some of you may know) has no leather covered dashboard. Its all bare plastic. But what it does have is a very useful tray in the middle for fixing idols and stuff. I don't recommend using this tray for anything left lose as they may hit the windscreen during panic braking.
Before I saw the unit, my intention was to fix the base neatly into the slot in the tray. But it proved to be too big and bulky. Besides, it was difficult to fix it firmly on the tray because of lack of a smooth surface to stick the 3M like double sided tape provided at the base of the unit. Further, I was not very happy fixing it permanently because of 2 reasons - 1) it has an inbuilt battery which could prove hazardous when parked in the sun and 2) the unit is an attention magnet and someone could break into the car just for this.
So I opened up the unit and drove small bolts through the base and bolted it on to a plywood sheet. Another set of bolts were driven into the tray (yes, I made 2 holes in the tray) and then I fixed the plywood on to these bolts with easily removable washers and nuts. But the arrangement looked very unprofessional, unwieldy and shoddy. But an even bigger problem was visibility on the port side. I could barely see anything on the left side even with the seat set at its highest - I am 6 feet tall, if I cant see much, then my wife is not going to see anything at all. So this arrangement was discarded. (all photographs are at test mule stage, so pardon the shoddy work. I was intending to make it all look neat once the final design was approved - by yours truly).
Initial arrangement: Visibility was poor and it the arrangement looked ugly.
So had to go back to the drawing board. Finally decided to remove the tray altogether and fix the unit in the slot through some other design. I had to chop off a plastic plate below the tray in order to achieve this. The tray can still be fitted without this plate, but it takes slightly lesser effort to remove it now. So in case this unit conks off sometime, I can still fix the tray back in place. I removed the speaker panel and the panel just behind the windscreen with the slats to pass the GPS antenna wire and power cable. So now the wires are concealed. The the rest of the wire passes through the internal claddings ( I am a self proclaimed expert at that since I have installed different DVRs in 3 different cars already).
Final arrangement pictures may be found below. Don't ask me for photographs showing what it looks like beneath that mat because I am not very proud of it. And no, passengers are not allowed to lift that mat, I would consider it akin to outraging someone's modesty.
The unit can be removed in 30 seconds (because I know how to, a thief would think its fixed permanently, or would he?? He can yank it off in no time though, if we wants to). Don't ridicule me for the hideous looking (and coloured) mat which I am using right now, its still an ongoing project. That was an old piece of mat which was lying around. But the mat is the template now. I intend to replace it with a darker coloured mat or a thin sheet of plastic, or speaker grill, or dark acrylic sheet, or mica or laminate sheet - not decided, suggestions are welcome.
Final arrangement:
BD+GPS antenna and wires concealed below the dashboard panels.
Had to chop off this plate to accommodate the base of the unit. Tray is still usable:
What it looks like from outside:
The touch screen works well although it needs a firm push. The entire unit is like an Android phone (uses Android 5.1 OS), albeit a slower one. The screen is 8" touch screen (1280*400). The display is very bright (even in sunlight) and crisp. It has an MT6735, 1.3Ghz, Quadcore A53 CPU, 1 GB of RAM and 16GB of inernal storage. Expandable micro SD card slot which can take upto 64GB is also provided to play media and also for the DVR camera. Pictures of the unit showing all the slots and connections are available in the quoted post by Akshay380.
Menu screens:
The front camera is 1080p and wide angle (claimed 140 degs). Video quality is excellent during daylight, although night recording is nowhere near the DP220, but it serves the purpose. The DVR records both front and rear camera feeds at the same time. Loop recording is available and so is footage from both front and rear cameras. Rear camera view is always available (I am not sure what happens when you connect it to the reverse light though) and you can toggle between front and rear camera view as the main display while having the other camera as a floating view. While using other functions, you can also choose to have a floating view for one camera all the time or have a toggle button on the screen which you can click to go directly to the camera view. The Front camera also has ADAS (lane departure, distance from the car in front etc) functions which are mostly useless on our roads.
The unit does not have an inbuilt GPS antenna. It has an external (magnetic mount - useless on the dashboard) BD+GPS antenna with a long enough cable. Off topic - I was wondering what a BD+GPS antenna is, and from what I could gather from the internet, it is a Chinese Satnav system. The unit picks up signals from both Beidou and GPS satellites. You can also check how many satellites are being tracked at any given time.
There is not much you can do with the UI and what you see is what you get. You cannot change the wall paper or customize the display in anyway except for the brightness and few other minor settings. You can choose to switch off the display at night and the screen then displays only the toggle switch for the camera and the time with the rest of the screen blacked out. A faint scatter still remains and its not entirely a dark screen. The screen is quite reflective during day time (as I found out while taking snaps) although the display is still bright and legible from your driving position. That is probably because most other Phisung models are integrated internal rear view mirrors. Which brings me to an annoying issue with this unit. The splash screen says "SMARTREAR VIEW MIRROR" and "COMPLET (sic) AUTO SERVICE". Makes the unit look a bit wannabe. The splash screen only comes when you switch the system ON after a shut down. Most of the time it is on sleep mode with the internal battery (mA not specified) when the main power is not available. The cigarette lighter adapter says 5V and 3A, so you probably shouldn't power this thing with the USB slot (I tried though, and it works without any apparent problem, but I decided not to). I was using the USB slot for the DP220 as the slot is more discreet in the Endy.
Splash screen:
Display off mode when not needed at night:
Coming to the second camera, my intention is to fix it below the left ORVM housing, looking forward, so I can use it during tight parking manoeuvres. But the problem is that the image is flipped (no settings) since it is a rear view camera. Couldn't sort this issue, and further, the ORVM and the door panel has to be removed to pass the wire. This is too much work and I am just recovering from a major accident (at work, on a ship, not on the road), so am not very dexterous, with limited mobility, at the moment. Frankly this project is helping me kill time and hence this lengthy post too. Suggestions on how to fix this camera are always welcome.
The unit also can be linked to your phone via wifi or internet using an app called CARASSIST and the dashcam files can be accessed from your phone. This app can also apparently be used to track the car from a remote location using internet. I haven't tried out this feature yet, but it looks quite likely that it will work provided it has an internet connection and the thing is powered on. By the way, it powers on automatically like any other self respecting DVR as long as it is plugged in.
Suggestions for improving the present arrangement are also welcome. This is a good option for cars (whicneeds this sort of a thing) with a low dashboard and a very good option for Endy Trend owners.