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I figure I need something a little better than an old Moto X running a dashboard cam app. Also my daughter is getting her license and will be driving my car whenever she has some place to go. So I need something that requires absolutely zero effort to work and doesn't get in her way. What's the most recent consensus on a good dashboard cam in the $100 to $150 range? I was looking at this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UURTAS6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_2&smid=A1IK4DSVX9W62A) but I was iffy on the video quality. I didn't know if something with a wider aperture would make that much of a difference.
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Mar 8, 2016 05:44
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`Nemesis posted:I think the consensus is still that the mobius is the best bang for your buck. Should be easily in that price range. Wow, I didn't see that in any of my searches on Amazon. It looks pretty ideal except for the lack of a LCD screen (which is probably a plus except for the initial setup). Is heat a problem with these? On Amazon people seemed to be going to great extremes to cool the camera off (adding heat sinks and reflective materials).
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Mar 8, 2016 16:35
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Cool then. I'll get the Mobius. Thanks for the suggestions. EDIT: and yes, the capacitor too. Krispy Wafer fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 8, 2016 20:21
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I bought the Mobius and a supercap and it's been working great. I need to try and boost the resolution because license plates aren't readable at night with 720. Hopefully 1080p makes a difference. The Mobius with a C2 lens, plus the supercap, and the mounting bracket cost $100 total and is stupid easy to use.
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Mar 18, 2016 16:04
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davebo posted:Allstate's recent survey, among the top 200 U.S. cities the D.C. area came in 197th for collisions. Well that explains why AllState is hiking everyone's rates in Atlanta (ranked 184). The drivers suck so bad here. It was after passing my 4th accident in the same day that I decided to spend the $500 it's going to cost to get a backup camera/sensors installed in my 15 year old's eventual car. I'm debating a dashboard camera since any accident it recorded would probably be her fault. The 3rd accident I passed that day was a 4 car collision involving a driver's ed car. 
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Sep 23, 2016 18:26
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I keep meaning to check the SD card on my Mobius and finally doing so just realized it hasn't recorded anything since 2017. Dammit. Check your cards people.
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May 2, 2018 13:09
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My Mobius dashcam is great except it can’t read license plates worth a drat. Are there any dash cams with good enough picture quality to pull plate numbers? I had a situation where I needed to get the plate number off a dump truck and even right behind him I couldn’t read it clearly in full daylight.
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Nov 27, 2018 03:19
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spog posted:Despite mine being older than this thread, it seems to pull UK plates off pretty darn good. I'll try and pull the footage. It's possible I'm recording in 720p so I guess I need to boost that. Geoj posted:I thought the audio concern was from some states having laws that make video recording in public legal but not necessarily audio recording...? There are all kinds of reasons not to do audio. That's one of them. I can't recall what happened with that guy who recorded the valets trying to do poo poo in his sports car that had an aptly named valet mode turned on. I know he got some grief for posting the video.
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Nov 28, 2018 18:49
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Has anyone tried the Mobius Max yet? I installed mine yesterday, but haven't had a chance to see how the 2k footage looks yet. It beeps when the car is off which is weird. Maybe that's the capacitor slowly giving up its juice. The USB port it's plugged into isn't supposed to be powered by the car battery, so who knows.
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Mar 15, 2019 23:27
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The Mobius Maxi is now out, although everything seems to ship from China so expect a couple of weeks for shipping. I’m liking mine. Looks pretty slick positioned under my rear view mirror. I think it cost about $80 with the capacitor and my mount, microSD card, and USB cable added another $50.
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Mar 23, 2019 22:43
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Driving home today I passed a Kia Soul with dealer plates pulled over by a cop and then about 800 feet later another Kia Soul also pulled over by a cop (note the video is kind of loud. Setting audio to low on Mobius apparently doesn't actually do anything). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN-gPUsCcsY I really have no idea. Could they have been drag racing? Is it the start of a gang? The Soul Train? Other than a double rainbow, this is the most exciting thing my dashcam has ever captured. Krispy Wafer fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Apr 15, 2019 |
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Apr 15, 2019 04:39
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I feel naked without a dashcam. Like ohshitohshit something is definitely going to happen the one day it's not working. Never does, but still. Tex Avery posted:You fuckers are gonna make me finally buy a dashcam for my car just to reenforce the negative stereotypes about driving in Dallas, aren't you? I finally got one because of dumbasses in my parking deck who took every turn like it was an one-way street and there couldn't possibly be an oncoming car in it's own dedicated lane around the corner. After slamming on my brakes for upteeth time I got the dashcam. From what I understand, without some kind of proof that the other person was driving recklessly, any accident in a parking lot is going to judged 50/50 fault. Now I need a rear facing dash cam. Last week I had a lowered Camaro tailgating me so close I couldn't even see him in my rear view mirror. I just happened to see a small hint of the red roof by accident.
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Apr 18, 2019 15:06
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You’ve mentioned those parents before, but do these kids have to cross that street to get to school or is it at least on the same side of the road? I wondered why the school nearby has a “DO NOT DROP YOUR KIDS OFF HERE” sign a good quarter of a mile from the school’s front door and now I know.
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Apr 21, 2019 16:50
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The solution is a sign making it illegal and a cop who hangs out on the corner each morning one random one day a week. After a month parents will stop dropping their kids off there and the local police department will clear a tidy profit. In dashcam news, one of the more annoying aspects of my vehicle is it delivers power through USB for one hour after I shut the car off. It's pulling 5v's which is probably negligible for a modern car battery, but I'm paranoid. An USB on/off switch extension cable later and it's not a problem. I do have to remember to flip the little toggle though.
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Apr 22, 2019 21:34
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Platystemon posted:I’d be more worried about accidentally leaving the dashcam off the time I needed it than I would be about wear on the battery. I got into the habit of manually turning off the dashcam by holding down the power button for 3 seconds, so flipping a switch now is super quick and easy to remember I know modern car batteries have obscene capacities compared to older ones, but after you have a minivan battery die in a Wal-mart parking in bumfuck Pennsylvania you get super paranoid. Plus it’s a Chrysler-Fiat product so all bets are off.
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Apr 24, 2019 02:08
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Takes No Damage posted:You're not wrong, but in my heart of hearts I know I'd be pacing beside that white truck just to gently caress with that tailgater.  And I'd justify it by preventing them from doing the same thing to another hapless driver. Those kinds of drivers are never going to be content with anyone's speed. You can be doing 75 in a 55 and they'll still be right on your rear end. If not your rear end, then someone else's. There's no 'safe' option for them. But I try to do the right thing and let them by.
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Jun 11, 2019 04:06
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Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. As in drive away and leave behind someone’s surprisingly attractive corpse.
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Jun 15, 2019 00:21
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At least Teslas have awesome cameras to capture all this fun.
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Jun 26, 2019 23:12
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My state just entered the 21st century and made it illegal to hold your phone while driving. Things seem to be a little better now. I haven't seen anyone FaceTiming with their phone in their hand in at least a year.
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Aug 7, 2019 18:29
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I wired mine through the top of the windshield, down the A pillar, up under the glove box, into the center console trim and out just in time to plug into the dash USB. It's not ideal, but I'm paranoid about tapping into the car's main power directly because I am not good with electricity. In 2 years when my kid starts driving I'll probably get a backup camera/Carplay installed and hire the same person who does that to hardwire a dashcam for her.
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Aug 16, 2019 01:40
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23 new posts in the Dashcam Thread and they did not disappoint. YMMV but AllState provided diminished value to me for my stupid 1 car accident with a parking lot pole without any problems.That covered my deductible and then some. I've had good experiences with AllState car insurance, but their homeowners is renowned for how stingy it is.
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Sep 14, 2019 19:47
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In other news police officers are assholes too.
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Sep 15, 2019 14:53
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EIDE Van Hagar posted:This armchair “everyone has to avoid a collision it is somewhat your fault” stuff is all bullshit. Speed always looks faster on a dashcam and you had far less time to react. Even if you saw him in time the rational expectation would be he saw you too and was going to wait until you passed...but oh no, he went for it. I don't think that's really the same thing although I don't doubt people gave you poo poo for it. The same thing happened to me years ago and the lady insisted because the other lane yielded she had the right of way.
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Sep 15, 2019 17:49
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Well I guess Georgia is a trendsetter because I can’t remember a time without flashing yellow left hand turn lights. Then again, we just discovered roundabouts and not texting while driving so maybe not so ahead of our time. Kid got rear ended last night and because of conflicting stories the cop didn’t ticket the other driver (they said she made a right hand turn from a left turn lane which makes no sense). A dash cam sure would have been useful. 
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Sep 22, 2019 15:21
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It's Winter in the northern hemisphere so you're probably okay for another 6 months, but heat isn't a friend of dashcam batteries. You may want to look at a hardwired connection with a capacitor instead of a lithium-ion battery. And seconding getting 2. You'll probably never need the dashcam, but if you ever do it will almost certainly be in your other car.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:37
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My Mobius Max doesn't have a LCD screen, so I occasionally pull the microSD card to check if it's actually video taping aaaaaaand it's not. Or at least not consistently. I'm going to try a different SD card, but in the event I need a new dashcam, as anyone had experience with BlackVue's? Some forums seem to love them, others never even mention the brand. They're significantly more expensive than most everything else. I want something without a LCD screen, but also with WiFi so it's easier to make sure it's working.
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Nov 18, 2019 21:19
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I really liked my Mobius form factor, but it just wasn't recording consistently and without a LCD screen it was difficult to tell whether it was capturing anything at all. The worst part was when I went to the mountains and it captured none of the forest service roads, but inexplicably recorded 8 hours parked in front of a cabin at night.  Picked up an Apeman C450 with the OBD2 power supply and that seems to be working okay. The OBD2 option is a lot better than snaking an USB cable across half your car and it's supposed to stop recording if the battery voltage drops below 12. LCD screen quality is rear end, but I haven't pulled the card yet to see what the recorded video quality looks like. I imagine it'll look like a $50 dash cam because that's what it is.
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Feb 20, 2020 15:27
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It’s on the drivers’ side near the left foot where the hood release would otherwise be. The advantage is just smarter power management. I think the camera can draw power from the OBD2 port without some other trigger that would be required with USB. So it can use a parking mode that turns on because of movement or vibration. The USB port runs for a hour after the car turns off and then won’t start again without some driver interaction. Seems to work well. I don’t have any fuses I can connect to in the passenger area, so it’s this or wire though the engine firewall.
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Feb 23, 2020 15:19
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But you see the battery lasts twice as long so in reality you're only paying 3x as much as everyone else instead of 6x as much. I turned on motion detection on my dash cam and then proceeded to rock my vehicle back and forth and the camera never came on.  It wasn't a primary selling point so I'm not mad.
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Feb 25, 2020 14:20
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I wonder why 6 year old used luxury cars are so cheap! Oh, that's why.
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Feb 25, 2020 18:21
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Our Buick Enclave has the battery under the passenger side second row floor. That's not much of a problem (you can still jump it from the engine bay) except now you have to lift a 40lb battery straight up without any leverage. And before you say there are tools for that, I watched my mechanic use one of those tools and curse the whole time. And then there were the headlights that cost about $800 to replace at the dealership ($300 for the HID and $500 in labor to remove the front bumper). Those are BMW prices for a Buick.
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Feb 25, 2020 20:48
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I got a lot of use out of my OBD2 code scanner with my daughter’s first car. Since she got one with a capless cap, not so much. They do look flimsy as hell. I’m sure they’re better, but I’m positive they will not last as long as a traditional screw on gas cap, which is effectively forever.
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Feb 27, 2020 03:40
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I can't find it now, but there was a car column where the author was agonizing over buying a cheap used Audi A4 wagon manual transmission. I could be getting the exact issue wrong, but I think this model Audi had a plastic timing belt tensioner that was guaranteed to fail and was buried so deep into the engine that the whole thing had to be removed to get to it. Car engineers can be real assholes.
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Mar 1, 2020 16:30
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Yes, that's the article. For some reason I remembered the repair being less than $8k. Like maybe a reasonable $2k. But no, it's $8k. What a miserable vehicle.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:12
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Honestly, had I known how much of a headache USB ports were going to be I would have sprung for the professional installation. When my youngest gets a car I'll pay someone to wire cameras all over that vehicle. My oldest was rear ended last year and it was the newbie cop's first accident report. He didn't find fault with either party which created an insurance headache that a dash cam would have avoided. Still, it's not tough to wire it semi-professionally by yourself. Get a plastic spudger and push a 10 foot long power cable inside the headliner edges and down the door frame. I'd look at an OBD2 power connector before I use USB. That's made my life a whole lot easier. Also if it's Vegas make sure your dash cam doesn't have a lithium-ion battery.
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Mar 3, 2020 18:12
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Nitrox posted:What headache did you encounter with USB ports? My dash cam would occasionally stop charging via USB. Like it turns on and lights flash and then it cuts off. Then a week later it’s working fine until it happens again 6 months later. I got a voltage meter and checked all the USB ports and every one was putting out the right amount of juice. If I brought the dash cam inside and plugged it in everything worked fine. But mainly it’s just a mess of wires. I even had a right angle USB connector so the cable stayed flush along the dash and it still got in the way. Now I don’t see any cables.
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Mar 3, 2020 18:53
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I’ve heard good things about Blackvue. They can range from $100 to $300 though.
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Mar 11, 2020 03:19
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I got this a few months ago and it's working well: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DLG9GFG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You can hardwire it to your ODBII port with this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V3BLNZ2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You're going to have difficulty finding something that can read license plates. The sensors just aren't large enough for that kind of detail unless conditions are near perfect, even at 2k or more. As others have suggested in this thread, if you need to record a license plate, read it off audibly for the dash cam. And if it's a situation where you can't read it then there's no way your camera will.
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May 15, 2020 20:39
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I miss steel bumpers for precisely that reason. A little love tap or brush just gives the steel some character, but the other guy now has $2k in cosmetic bodywork.
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May 21, 2020 15:00
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Post from the homedepot subreddit of someone losing about $800k in plywood. https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeDepot/comments/p01hnq/im_only_going_a_few_miles/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 (not sure if there's a way to embed Reddit posts like Twitter or TikTok)
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Aug 10, 2021 17:59
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