Cheap car cam

#1

Buddy sent me this link. The deal is only good today apparently. I looked up the specs and, unlike me, opened up my wallet and bought one.

As I interpret the specs…

120deg view angle. IMO this is ideal for most car roles. The popular 170deg lenses create way too much cockpit and not enough frontal action.

Battery and car power. This means you don’t have to recharge the batteries yet the video can ride out a car power hiccup.

Camera starts when it sees external power. How nice to be able to start the cam with a switch on the dash.

I don’t know that the mount will work, but it looks to have a universal post on it.

http://1saleaday.com/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1SaleADay&utm_content=1SALE+05%2F22%2F12

#2

That looks like it could be a great deal, Scott. Thanks for sharing it.

#3

Damn… The price makes me want to try it for shits and giggles.

#4

It’s been brought to my attention that these are cheaper on ebay. Do a search for HD720p IR 270°Car Vehicle Dash Color Camera DVR Video Recorder

#5

Looks interesting. I will check eBay tonight. Can anyone confirm that it has a universal mount so it will go on my I/O Port roll bar mount?

#6

And unfortunately for me, too late… Well, it’s $20 more than on eBay, so I’ll just drink less beer for the next 2 weeks :slight_smile:

#7

Whoa whoa whoa, I don’t know that it is time for that drastic a measure.

#8

I didn’t say no beer, just less :wink:

One less big bottle a week and my $20 is made up for.

#9

They also make a dual lense that can record front and back at the same time for around $80. I don’t know anyone that has tried it but it looks interesting.

Jason

#10

Well I bought one as well. Can I just splice a switch inline of the cigarette lighter adapter?

#11

[quote=“King Tut” post=66067]Well I bought one as well. Can I just splice a switch inline of the cigarette lighter adapter?[/quote] Cut off the cigarette lighter and just wire it to 12V via a dash switch.

#12

But any simple switch will work. I don’t need to worry about it pulling too many amps or anything. Just interupt the ground or the 12v wire going to the camera to turn it off and on?

#13

Yes, some simple switch is fine. It won’t pull enough amps to cause any concerns. Of course everything has to have a fuse.

#14

Camera came today. It shows some promise.

It has a standard 1/4" thread for a mount. It looks like the mounting piece is plastic but the camera is so light weight that the plastic threads might be rugged enough. If not, a little epoxy and a 1/4" nut will take care of it.

Camera has an internal lithium battery. It starts recording once it senses external power and shuts off 10secs after the loss of external power. Therefore it can handle a 9sec hiccup in car power. Say you’re restarting your car or something. The primary purpose of the battery seems to be to allow you to watch your video w/o external power.

It comes with a suction mount and is meant to be mounted upside down, but there’s a menu option for reversing the image so the camera can be mounted right-side up.

Instructions are weak.

The view angle strikes me as ideal. Easy to get the entire front windshield but not so much view angle that it looks like a fisheye view.

The image is HD but I wouldn’t expect the quality to be the equal of a significantly more expensive camera.

There’s menu item for motion sensor start. Interesting.

#15

I got mine as well. I won’t be using it most likely. While it says it outputs in 720p, the result is a 1280x960 AVI file for some reason. The wide angle is very nice and it does cover more than my current Aiptek and wide angle lens, but the quality is much worse. I took some test video today and after converting it to WMV and rotating it upside down and saving it back out, I wasn’t impressed. I will probably try and sell it locally.

#16

Use it for a driver cam or rear cam. Once the image is reduced in size for PiP, it’s orginal quality won’t matter.

#17

Made some test videos ferrying kids to soccer games. The image quality isn’t good enough for your forward facing cam, but it’d be a good solution for any PiP role. Being able to turn it on/off by controlling external power is a real charm. It’s motion control “on” is also pretty cool.

#18

Did it record longer than 15 minutes? Cause that is one of the settings in the menu that didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t know if that was a limit or not.