car damaged in car park, dash cam with parking mode?

[Andehh]

Our new to us, but otherwise immaculate, car suffered some total prat shoving their trolley down the side of it in tescos earlier, to get to their car parked behind ours. Had the car 2 days, black & immaculate, now 4 panels scratched, each scratch 1-2ft long. An hour of polishing got out half of it, other half will need a professional come summer. 

Witnesses watched them do it (!?) but got all their details except the type of car and registration (!?!?)  I know it was an old freelander, having clocked the cars around me. 

Now, our new dash cam is due for arrival on Sunday, and likely a second one now (rear window) a few weeks later. I've been using them for several years & last few cars, but now find myself keen for a "parking mode" type setup that records for up to an hour (ish) after parking, possibly linked to both dash cams.

Does any one have a similar setup? Is there a cheap box of the tricks that reliably monitors battery voltage/timer? 

Many thanks, 

[Turbojuice]

I'd recommend having a read of this guide on parking mode dashcams. Naturally, if you want a camera with a sophisticated and perfectly reliable parking mode, it's not gonna be cheap.

As for the box of tricks, Blackvue do this box which stops your battery getting discharged. Must be other brands out there that do the same product also, but I'm unaware of them.

[vikingaero]

Turbojuice said:

I'd recommend having a read of this guide on parking mode dashcams. Naturally, if you want a camera with a sophisticated and perfectly reliable parking mode, it's not gonna be cheap.

As for the box of tricks, Blackvue do this box which stops your battery getting discharged. Must be other brands out there that do the same product also, but I'm unaware of them.

Blackvue also do a Power Magic Battery - 1 hour driving gives around 12 hours of power. It looks unsightly but can be hidden.

[JulianHJ]

I've got the Blackvue 750 - works very well. I paid about £500 fitted including the power magic box.

[pmanson]

I've got a thinkware setup (F750 from memory). It does parking recording and has front and rear cameras

[Andehh]

vikingaero said:

Blackvue also do a Power Magic Battery - 1 hour driving gives around 12 hours of power. It looks unsightly but can be hidden.

Thanks guys, looking at this, surely a small powerbank plugged into the car to charge it on the move, with the dash cam hooked up to it via USB - MINI USB would effectively do the same thing? Only issue would be e er night the dash cam would effectively record several+ hours of the footage erasing over the days driving.

Continuing browsing through the other suggestions, many thanks guys!

[RSTom]

I ran a Thinkware F750 in my last car. My car was hit twice in less than 5 days in the work car park (a barrier limited access, you could only get in if you had a staff card/knew a code).

Both times the drivers drove off. The repair costs for the damage was £2500 in total. The incidents were both caught on my dashcam and I was able to claim 100% of the cost back from the two insurance companies involved.

Here's one of the videos that caught the damage to the NSF wing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjcKU0yS8Q&fe...

I don't have the car or dashcam anymore but I am also looking for one for my current car. Currently looking at the new Thinkware dashcam. The thing I like with the Thinkware is that it can do parking mode and you don't need any additional kit to make sure it doesn't drain your battery, it's all built into the unit.

[Section 8]

I really feel for you mate I hate parking anywhere and avoid it at all costs in my car but today as its Christmas had to go to several places that were rammed . Multistory car park....parked in end bay on the roof. Local shopping village...parked 700 meters away up the far end of nowhere. Thankfully no arsewipe came and parked an inch from my door.

I suggest some wet and dry. 1500 to 3000 grit and get the scratches out then some decent compound to finish it off. It could have been worse and they could have dented the panels so I'm glad that they didn't.

[Andehh]

Turbojuice said:

As for the box of tricks, Blackvue do this box which stops your battery getting discharged. Must be other brands out there that do the same product also, but I'm unaware of them.

This looks ideal for our needs (already ordered the dash cam last week, due to arrive soon) just the minimum recording time of 6 hours makes me hesitant. I'll either need a massive SD CARD or force the wife to remember to turn it on & off at night etc.... liable to be forgotten.

Would I be able to to run 2 dash cams off it's as well?

......................................................................................

RSTom said:

I ran a Thinkware F750 in my last car. My car was hit twice in less than 5 days in the work car park (a barrier limited access, you could only get in if you had a staff card/knew a code).

Both times the drivers drove off. The repair costs for the damage was £2500 in total. The incidents were both caught on my dashcam and I was able to claim 100% of the cost back from the two insurance companies involved.

Here's one of the videos that caught the damage to the NSF wing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjcKU0yS8Q&fe...

I don't have the car or dashcam anymore but I am also looking for one for my current car. Currently looking at the new Thinkware dashcam. The thing I like with the Thinkware is that it can do parking mode and you don't need any additional kit to make sure it doesn't drain your battery, it's all built into the unit.

That makes me feel much better mate, knowing the buggers that do this sort of damage do get caught once in a while!

Section 8 said:

I really feel for you mate I hate parking anywhere and avoid it at all costs in my car but today as its Christmas had to go to several places that were rammed . Multistory car park....parked in end bay on the roof. Local shopping village...parked 700 meters away up the far end of nowhere. Thankfully no arsewipe came and parked an inch from my door.

I suggest some wet and dry. 1500 to 3000 grit and get the scratches out then some decent compound to finish it off. It could have been worse and they could have dented the panels so I'm glad that they didn't.

Thanks, it's possible but having never done it before I am hesitant in case I make it worse. When funds allow, ill probably get a professional tool sort it out for a couple £100.

Edited by Andehh on Saturday 23 December 07:01

Edited by Andehh on Saturday 23 December 07:02

[Evolved]

RSTom said:

I ran a Thinkware F750 in my last car. My car was hit twice in less than 5 days in the work car park (a barrier limited access, you could only get in if you had a staff card/knew a code).

Both times the drivers drove off. The repair costs for the damage was £2500 in total. The incidents were both caught on my dashcam and I was able to claim 100% of the cost back from the two insurance companies involved.

Here's one of the videos that caught the damage to the NSF wing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjcKU0yS8Q&fe...

I don't have the car or dashcam anymore but I am also looking for one for my current car. Currently looking at the new Thinkware dashcam. The thing I like with the Thinkware is that it can do parking mode and you don't need any additional kit to make sure it doesn't drain your battery, it's all built into the unit.

Some people just shouldn’t be driving. The car park is huge and mostly empty, how the fk do they manage to hit your car still?

[Buggyjam]

Sorry for mega long post. I’m trying to give you as much info as I’ve gleaned

I started a thread about dashcams a week ago - and pretty obviously my my thread - was on the fence about dashcams. I changed my mind and ordered one. I got a blackvue DR750 two channel. Was on offer with the manufacturers uk distributer at £460 including the power magic pro box plus installation. I’m really happy with it so far. Installation looks proper nice imo. The power magic pro is completely hidden and you can access the on/off switch (it’s up underside drivers dash)


It runs without touching it, sets itself to parking mode automatically and you can manage it all pretty much through your phone. With the power magic pro you can set it to run in parking mode for 6, 12, or 36 hours OR if the voltage through the supply feed drops to below a set level, say 12volts to protect your battery. That more than covers it for me when the car is away from my property. When I’m away from home, I just turn the magic pro off to stop parking mode running unnecessarily.

With parking mode it is set off by motion or impact. To answer your questions about massive Sd cards, running two cams or remembering to turn on and off. This is on the blackvue 750 I’ve just purchased:-

1/ The way the camera records is different in driving mode and parking mode. In parking mode it doesn’t write to the sd card unless an event is triggered. It’s always recording but holding the footage on its own small memory, only if an event is triggered does that clip get recorded onto the card. And even if an event is triggered it just gets added to the seperate event folder which isn’t overwritten by normal driving footage (max 50 events in the folder). Once this folder is full you can set it to start overwriting the oldest event. So you can see in the course of a night you’re unlikely to have 50 genuine events . After a night of parking, the only footage you’ll have of the night is any events, not a constant stream of footage. Only thing is if you’ve not yet saved older events you want to keep they could get overwritten by new events. Essentially triggered events are kept seperate from overwrite by “normal” footage

In driving mode it does write to straight to the SD card and loops. Unlike say a go pro, it constantly records seperate 1 min long files and saves them, overwriting the oldest files when the card is full. I run the smallest card which is a 16 and tend to get about 1.5 hours driving before oldest footage is overwritten. Thing is of course, I don’t want old footage, only anything of concern. If an event is triggered, it’ll be written to the event folder which, as mentioned, is protected from being over written by normal footage.

2/ I run a two channel system on the power pro box.

3/ it’s hard wired so the power magic pro manages it all so you don’t have to turn it on or off. Camera goes into parking mode automatically. I do turn the system off for going away though.



Only thing I’ve noticed is every time I get back in after being parked I trigger an “event” from when I get in. Think it needs sensitivity adjusting. Can you do that through the app? Anyone know?

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 23 December 12:33

[johnwilliams77]

Evolved said:

Some people just shouldn’t be driving. The car park is huge and mostly empty, how the fk do they manage to hit your car still?

Plus the idiot in the passenger seat seems to find it funny

[Buggyjam]

Andehh said:

Thanks guys, looking at this, surely a small powerbank plugged into the car to charge it on the move, with the dash cam hooked up to it via USB - MINI USB would effectively do the same thing? Only issue would be e er night the dash cam would effectively record several+ hours of the footage erasing over the days driving.

Continuing browsing through the other suggestions, many thanks guys!

I looked into these. Bloke I spoke to at blackvue said a battery pack wouldn’t suit my needs. I personally don’t do long drives. Tend to do a lot of short drives and park the car up up to 3 hours. Power pro box in the end covered it as it runs up to about a day before shutting down (provided battery volts aren’t triggered). Be very careful with generic usb power banks. I found these potential issues with using a generic one in a car:

1/ A lot use lipo batteries which aren’t the most stable things.
2/ A lot don’t put out 12v but only use usb power
3/ Plus the temperature ratings aren’t designed to be left in hot cars.
4/Also a lot of power banks don’t do “pass through charging” where they still run the camera whilst being charged.
5/If they do pass through, it’s quite common they need a button pushed to get them to run once they detect a charge input, so you’d have to reach to the battery to start the camera.

The two car cam packs that I know of are designed around these issues but they’re really expensive. They use more stable LiFe batteries. The Cell link B and blackvue B112.

Btw, with your scratch, if you’re leaving it until new year, maybe worth waxing that area at least to try and keep moisture away from the bare metal surface? Just an idea.

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 23 December 09:05

[Andehh]

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll tulle out a generics powerbank in that case.

I have already ordered my dash cam, a nextbase 512gw, for £120. With the best will in the world, I couldn't stretch to a £400+ dashcam, especially having bought our new car last week!

I think ill go down the route of the magic power pro controller, and the biggest sd card I can find. The try and remind the wife to turn it on & off as appropriate.

[Buggyjam]

Ah cool I looked at the nextbase. Think they’re really decent cameras from what I read. Don’t know about the next base but once you’re parked up, say at home, the power magic pro box will cut off power automatically after wherever time you set, say 24 hours/ or if the car battery voltage drops to what you set, say 12v. The system will power up automatically when you next turn the car on. You don’t have to manually turn it on and off. There is a button on the magic box to turn off parking mode but I only do that if I’m heading away from home for a few days to save it running for no reason.

With regard to worrying about filling up your SD card overnight, I’ve just checked the manual for the nextbase 512 and it looks similar in parking mode. It mentions it runs in standby mode and saves any events to the card. I think it’s the same as the blackvue, it’s always loop recording onto a small internal working memory but only an event gets actually saved onto the SD card. Most of them are like this. You shouldn’t fill up your card parking overnight, even for long stretches. Unless you have a cat that keeps walking across the bonnet

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 23 December 22:49

[vikingaero]

Andehh said:

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll tulle out a generics powerbank in that case.

I have already ordered my dash cam, a nextbase 512gw, for £120. With the best will in the world, I couldn't stretch to a £400+ dashcam, especially having bought our new car last week!

I think ill go down the route of the magic power pro controller, and the biggest sd card I can find. The try and remind the wife to turn it on & off as appropriate.

Picstop currently have 2 types of 128gb Micro SD for 30 notes:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sandisk-ultra-mic...

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sandisk-ultra-128...

[Andehh]

Thanks very much guys, very grateful!

Nextbase limit is 64gb, which only gives 4 hours at max resolution. The power magic box therefore risks over writing all the footage with their minimum 6houe runtime. Damn....

My concern with the parking mode, is the fact that the damage that prompted this thread is (some prat pushing his trolley all down the side of the car) wouldn't have triggered the camera, nor would someone swinging their door into the car. At best I would only capture severe damage, car on car.

Any thoughts? Is it just a matter of making an effort to switch the "parking mode" on the power magic pro "on" everytime we go to tescos, inspect for damage, then if all clear, continue on our way turning parking mode off?

Edited by Andehh on Sunday 24th December 10:02

[Buggyjam]

Ah I’m with you. I think it’s worth going over some bits as I think there’s some confusion. Massive massive post alert! I do apologise, just want to help out as I found the subject a bit of a pain myself so want to pass on what I found....

Basically most Cameras with parking mode, including I think the nextbase, operate very differently in driving mode and parking mode. The difference is actually to stop footage being overwritten when parked.

Right here’s the basics of the recording modes and power magic box:

1/ in driving mode, the cameras essentially record back to back short clips, unlike a go pro that records one continuous stream. In the nextbase I think it’s 3min clips. Once it’s recorded 3 mins, it saves that to the card and simultaneously starts recording the next one. It’s doing this constantly until it fills the card, say after 4 hours. In which case the oldest file is then overwritten, then the next oldest and so forth. Like a loop

2/ In camera parking mode, the camera is never really recording. It basically is taking in data and constantly buffering the previous 30 seconds. It’s essentially only ever remembering a very short time frame at any one point. Like someone with a really bad memory! If something triggers an “event”. That is something that triggers one of the cameras set parameters, it quickly saves the buffered data onto card and starts recording the subsequent footage onto the card for about a minute I think. So you end up with a short “event clip”. After this it goes back to monitoring only.

3/ The magic pro box.Think of the power magic pro box as a car battery protector for parking mode. It’s only to protect the car battery from excessive camera drain whilst the engine isn’t charging it. So it’ll cut off power to the camera using one of 2 parameters that apply once the ignition is switched off, say, 6 or 13 hours after ignition is switched off or the car battery voltage drops below say 12v. That’s all it’s there for really.

You normally leave the power magic pro ON/OFF switch ON, all the time, constantly. When you turn the car off, the camera will go into parking mode and the power magic pro box starts monitoring the supply voltage and also keeps an eye on the time the camera is running. You can set the time to infinity it you want. When you return to the car and switch the ignition back on the power magic pro knows the ignition is back on so the timer and voltage monitoring is forgotten. It’s only for when you’ve parked. The OFF switch only turns off the camera in parking mode, not driving mode. It’s for when you don’t want the camera to run at all in parking mode for any reason. For example, I turn mine off when I’ve parked in my car port and I’m away with work for a few days. No use it running then really.

4/ Events being over written during the 6/12/24 etc hours on parking mode. Any dashcam card, even a 128gb will be full after a few days continuous driving. They’re designed to be run full. That’s why the system uses looped recording. The difference is, a large card gives you a longer period before the oldest clip or event is lost.

Now, say you have a 16gb card and you’re driving down the road. Bare in mind the camera is constantly recoding in driving mode. Whilst on your drive, you have an event after 2 minutes of driving, say someone bumps you at lights. If you didn’t save the file or download it at that point and you continued on your long journey, after 4 hours the event could be overwritten. Some cameras do save events to seperate folders to stop this, but a lot don’t. But it’s unlikely you’d have an incident, not save the footage then carry on driving for 4 hours.

Now, different scenario, the one you’re worried about. You park your car for six hours. The camera is in parking mode. After only 5 mins someone backs into you. So on the face of it, you’d be worried that if the camera is recording for another 5 hours 55 mins that event would be overwritten right? Well no. As in parking mode, the only thing that goes onto the card would be an event due to the different way the camera operates in parking mode. So even if you had 10 more events, none would be overwritten by the time you came back to the car unless the total length of them all exceeded 4 hours duration. That would be hundreds of events!

5/ triggering an event. This is camera specific. In parking mode, most cameras use visual motion detection or “g” force movement detection or a combination. On some cameras you can set the sensitivity. On mine I’m finding it’s very sensitive, so every time I get back in the car it tells me I had an event whilst parked. This caused quite some alarm until I checked the footage and realised it was me getting in . I don’t know the nextbase but it seems likely someone hitting it with a trolley would set off either the impact or at least motion. On the blackvue, even falling leaves can set the thing off. It’s camera specific


I’d strongly recommend checking out blackboxmycar on YouTube, there’s plenty of videos explaining various bits and bobs and a bit on the magic pro. It’s where I picked most of it up. I did ask a question on a dash cam forum but people don’t seem to reply on it, only post questions

[Andehh]

Thank you very much for your lengthy post mate! Just because I am a pretty blunt instrument at times, and I want to get this 100% right... taking what you're saying in my own words.....

1) By the looks of the nextbase, I can hardwire it to a permenant live (or to the power magic Pro, and use this too protect against flat battery) and then set the dash cam to parking mode. This will then work as a normal dash cam when out driving, AND then record if anyone drives into the car. Correct?

Limitations:
HOWEVER, it would only record the last half of someone driving into us. Ie, in those few seconds a the camera boots up & starts recording, said driver has had time to reserve back out and I then have a dispute with insurance over proving they were near the damage/crash, but unit proof they actually did it?

it would not pick up vandals /trolleys/car doors, unless a severe knock was detected (g force) . It would also be recording an event everytime someone got into the car.


-or-

I use the blackvue magic Pro and leave the dashcams (front & rear) recording nigh on 100% of the time, until battery discharged/hours etc, and record everything... But risk the wife forgetting to turn off parking mode when she parks it safely at home.... And the dashcams records 6 hours of our garage doors over writing everything from the day's events, Inc evidence of anything impacts, damage etc...

..................................

So I need to choose one of the above scenarios, as effectively there isn't much of a middle ground combing them both?

[Buggyjam]

Andehh said:

So I need to choose one of the above scenarios, as effectively there isn't much of a middle ground combing them both?

I really had to do some reading of the Nextbase. It’s quite confusing the parking mode on that

From what I make out you’re right. Options are:-

1/ Use Power magic pro then you have the choice. You can do either of these.

A/ You leave power magic pro switch ON during parking mode. You then have the sub choice.

-You can either turn parking mode off on the camera and have it running all the time.

- Or turn intelligent parking mode on via the camera menu, and it’ll turn itself off after no
movement for 5 mins. It’ll then wake up when “G” sensor triggers it and record a 2 min
clip. I think that’s the way it works? .

B/ You turn power magic pro switch OFF and camera acts like it’s wired to a switched feed and goes to sleep then wakes up to record up to 2 detected impacts (think that’s right)



2/ Forget power magic pro all together and wire to switched ignition feed and it’ll behave just like option B above, it’ll just go to sleep when ignition off and wake up to record max 2 impacts (I’m still not sure about this bit on the nextbase if that’s right or not)



Either way best option is a power magic pro switched on. Depends then if you have parking mode turned on or not on the camera as to whether it runs all the time.

What I can’t find out is if it uses buffered footage when it wakes up. A lot of cams do. But not all. What that means is when they detect an impact they’ve already got the 30 seconds or so leading up to the impact. Can’t seem to find out if the nextbase does this or literally just wakes up and starts recording. In which case, as you’d say it wouldn’t capture the impact. Seems unlikely it wouldn’t as that would be a bit pointless. Maybe drop nextbase an email and ask them.

Seems in parking mode it uses just movement detection via g sensor, not optical. I don’t know how sensitive it is on the nextbase. I’d imagine they built it so when it’s in parking mode the impact from a car door would set it off. Usually the g sensors on dashcams are automaitically set far more sensitive in parking mode than driving mode. Otherwise bumps in the road would trigger events.

i think there’s a Nextbase subforum of “dashcamtalk”. Might have some more details there.

Edited by Buggyjam on Sunday 24th December 14:57