Damage to vehicle - dashcams

Damage to vehicle - dashcams

Author
Discussion

Artsy

Original Poster:

259 posts

85 months

Monday 8th November 2021
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Hi All,

I've been meaning for a long time to get a dashcam and now that I've sustained damage I think I'll actually get round to doing it.

In short - car was parked in residential car park where I lived and someone backed into it (or forwarded into it - who knows?).

I'm waiting for CCTV from the building so hopefully I'll be able to start a proper claim against whoever did it, but in the meantime I wanted to ask about Dash Cams.

Can you recommend something reasonable that will do front and rear and also be activated if the car is hit while stationary?

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

mmm-five

11,440 posts

291 months

Monday 8th November 2021
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Take your pick.
I've got one from Viofo (A129) on the BMW, one from Nextbase (522GW+rear cam) on the Z4, and one from Transcend on the i10 (DrivePro 620).

All will need a hard-wire kit to enable the parking modes...each have their small positives and negatives.

There's also a useful AutoExpress review of a few here.

Artsy

Original Poster:

259 posts

85 months

Monday 8th November 2021
quotequote all
mmm-five said:
Take your pick.
I've got one from Viofo (A129) on the BMW, one from Nextbase (522GW+rear cam) on the Z4, and one from Transcend on the i10 (DrivePro 620).

All will need a hard-wire kit to enable the parking modes...each have their small positives and negatives.

There's also a useful AutoExpress review of a few here.
Many thanks. I think based on what you said I need it hard wired so it's operational overnight?

944 Man

1,814 posts

139 months

Monday 8th November 2021
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Dashcams are good for when you're driving. Parked protection doesn't really work and it kills batteries and the devices themselves.

joropug

2,700 posts

196 months

Monday 8th November 2021
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My dash cams have always been on switched lives, but those switched lives I think might activate if it’s a heavy enough collision (my Mercedes one wakes up when I unlock the car for instance)

Only issue you might run into is the SD card will need to be big, at night it will be useless without street lamps , and has to be low draw to stop the battery draining (I’m guessing it’s pretty low power but don’t interior lights sometimes drain cars if you’re unlucky)

NiceCupOfTea

25,313 posts

258 months

Monday 8th November 2021
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I've got a Viofo A129 front/rear camera in my BMW. It's very good, parking mode worked well, but even though I had it hard wired with the kit that is supposed to shut it down when the battery drops below a certain voltage, I was always coming back to the car to find a flat battery, even though the dashcam seemed to have shut down. All I can think is that the box that cut the power drained power constantly - since I wired it directly to the ignition I've not had a problem.

donkmeister

9,250 posts

107 months

Friday 12th November 2021
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I've got Viofos (A129 plus duo and A129 pro duo) hard-wired in two of my cars with the three-wire kit. To minimise the chances of a flat battery I have the shut-off voltage set to the highest value in both of them.

In one car, that has a 45Ah battery that has been run flat twice before the dashcams (Mrs D's car, and both times were the interior lights left on for days on end) if she parks it on the drive around 6/7pm, it will record to around 4am the next morning in summer. So 9-10 hours before the hardwire kit shuts it off. Not tested winter yet.

In another car, that has a 110Ah battery, never run flat but 5 years old and probably past its best, I seem to recall it gets over 24 hours before shutting off.

This chap (link below) did a video on YouTube showing off the various parking modes available, as a result I have the parking mode in both set to timelapse. The downside of this is that it doesn't appear to record G-sensor information in this mode so if you come back to find your car damaged you will have to scour through the timelapse footage to work out when it happened.

https://youtu.be/0VgWKLdtAcA?t=701

Magnum 475

3,650 posts

139 months

Saturday 13th November 2021
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Also look at Thinkware and Blackvue. Both have a ‘parked’ mode that will record events if any impacts are detected. Some Thinkware cams also include a GPS based speed camera alerting system smile