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-   -   The Dashcam / Car Video Recorder (DVR) Thread (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/car-entertainment/134448-dashcam-car-video-recorder-dvr-thread-50.html)

Check the listing for the guarantee that money back if product not as described. If there, take a screen shot of that and the pic of the box and attach it to a dispute. You will get atleast half your money back from the seller.

Thanks diyguy, I may just do that, but seeing the terrible descriptions, obviously bad translations from Chinese, I'll wait till I run it for a couple of days before putting up a dispute. Cheers

I personally didn't have any experience with Rexing's plastic melting but I did read it on some forum where a customer said that the plastic got distorted when he left it in high heat and he couldn't really put back the camera in the mount as the shape got changed. A few of amazon reviews also talk about the same thing.

I can only assume that I-Max's plastic would be different because they claim it can withstand temperature upto 70 degree celsius. I don't have the cam yet as my sister would be getting it from the states in march first week.

The capacitor does give about half a minute (IIRC) of backup time for saving etc. but I wouldn't really rely on it. My plan would be to use a battery bank when I leave my car parked so that whatever few seconds the camera comes up the battery bank can provide juice to it. For use while driving I'll simply keep it connected to the 12v socket that I have.

My logic for capacitor is that the camera housing stays at a low temperature. We all know how vulnerable li-ion batteries are and leaving them on a cam in high heat could prove dangerous. I didn't really find any li-polymer batteries else I would've preferred them (at least over li-ion) but capacitor only makes the deal better for me.

Night video quality is strictly average and don't expect reading license plates in low-lit conditions from any camera around $100. Again, my purpose is only to know what really happens, if something happens at all, when my car is left unattended. I don't expect the cam to really give me recognizable faces or license plates in zero to low light conditions.

I received this mail now regarding the GT300 order on Aliexpress.

Yes. I got the email too. Turned out to be "too good to be true" :Frustrati. Wonder what is the point of doing all this by the seller if he was not going to ship at the quoted price.

Haha, it was too good to be true. lol:

I am planning to order the same dashcam from a real seller now.

Does anybody here have a hands on review of the cam?

Actually it is a marketing strategy. You see a product which is extremely low priced.You go for it, not so much since you need the product, but since the price is so attractive. The seller fails to deliver and since you are looking forward to get the product, you buy the same at a higher price, rationalising that the earlier price was ridiculous. Both the sellers are in cahoots with each other.
Classic Chinese strategy.

I am planning to fix my old Sony Xperia M (5 MP, f/2.8, autofocus, 720p@30fps) with a 'Monster Grip' windscreen holder this week. Installed "AutoBoy Blackbox" in the phone and hope to create some decent quality files within the city. Most of the good quality dash cams are excessively priced and need continuous power.

Any inputs to this plan appreciated. Will update more on the set up within a week.

I'll be eager to see the resulting videos from your setup.

The problem with mobile cameras as dashcamera is that their view angle is less.
If you have any wide angle mobile camera lens, use it so that you improve the view angle
Even a new one should not cost more than 500bucks on ebay I guess

Sir,

Is your dash inclined more towards the dash board.

Dash Image occupies almost 40% of the image

You might want to take a look at the setup. Just my thoughts.

Setup images will definitely help us in incorporating the same here

I didn't like the form factor of the 6$ Cam, otherwise I'd have ordered it as well. I liked this guy, and it arrived today. Really tiny, really light. I will post some pictures and video tomorrow.
A much needed, lesson learnt buy. :)

You are right. I noticed that and corrected the alignment. I am trying to cover complete front portion of the car in the footage, so that even if some one hit my fender that will be recorded.

Do update if you feel its worth the salt to buy such a dashcam/rearview setup. And esp the video quality night vs day. Thanks in advance.

Here's a short clip and an image. Had to resize the image, as it was more than an MB. The camera pparently shoots at 5mp, but doesnt look like it, this.
Similarly, the video is set at HD, but doesnt look like that either.
Either way, its adequate for my purpose. And maybe i need to fiddle with some settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaqUB0fySFU

So I've been using my dashcam for the past 4 days and here's my experience with it.
First of all, the specs of the unit don't seem to match the specs given in Ali Express, so I've opened a dispute, asking for a 50% refund. Let's see what happens. The first two pics below show the advertised specs on video resolution and what I actually got.

I've set the file interval to 1 minute and higest resolution, 1080, and each file is approximately 25MB in size. My daily ride to the office is approximately 1 hour each way, about 1.5 GB worth of files. So that's about 21 hours of data before the 32GB memory stick starts to get overwritten. I haven't yet connected the rear cam, but that's a VGA 720 unit so the 21 hours may reduce by maybe 25%.

The suction mount has remained in place all this time, just away from the black dots behind the IRVM and I really like its compact design, i.e., the cam sits in front of it, rather than hang below and obstruct my view. (the mount wouldn't stay in place when I tried to place it among the black dots, but I suppose that's to be expected). I remove the cam when I park at the office, in partial sunshine, and at night but leave the mount in place.

This unit has a microphone as well, which picks up sounds within and without the cabin quite well- the music I listen to, the clicks of the indicator, my mutterings when I curse idiots (I must learn to stop this. Could get embarassing).
The mike has been picking up an annoying rattling sound, especially when the car goes over rough patches or joints on flyovers. I tracked the source to some components in the cam itself, so out came the watchmaker's screwdriver set and apart came the two halves of the cam. The three buttons on the top are part of a single plastic strip, which is a sort of floating, loosely fitted part and this rattled when I shook the unit. So I wedged some soft foam in place and tried it the next day. Slightly different sound, but still irritating. So opened it again, thought the microphone was the culprit, as it was also loosely placed. Put foam over it to make sure it fits tight against the body and tried it the next day. Same sound, got a bit annoyed, more because the screw heads are in danger of getting rounded off. Anyway, opened it again, poked around and found that the power button is also loosely fitted. So another small piece of foam packed behind it, just now in my office. Fingers crossed for the return trip home.

I've also played with the aperture settings, which go from -3 to +3. 0 seems ok, +1 washes out the image to almost white and I'm on -2 at the moment, which I'll probably stick to, unless I get the urge to fool around with the settings some more.The video quality is not bad, though number plates are clearly seen only within about 10m or so. Nighttime video is also acceptable, when you keep in mind that this is a relatively cheap dashcam, not a high end video camera.

Finally, I haven't yet routed the cables properly, will do that on Sunday. I've seen the black rubber beading around the car doors being removed and wiring installed by a technician, so I'm sure I'll be able to do this myself.
The last two pics are of the components in the box and a sample clicked at 6:38 pm.
Cheers.