Anyone have experience with the dash cams? In a perfect world, I'm thinking 2 channel to cover front and rear, with a screen where the rear camera can be used as a back up camera. Possibly using a replacement rear view mirror for the viewing instead of something else stuck on the windshield. Hard wired instead of cigarette lighter power. Auto start stop, maybe even the parking mode I've read about.

Any experiences or suggestions?

 

I have Go Pro
One on each end of the trucks
I set them up for a loop, If I travel longer than 5 hrs, I download on a "p" break into the lap top
If there is nothing worth keeping of the recording at the end of the trip, everything goes int the recycle bin

As we all talked before, wireless sucks,and is unreliable. You need to hardwire a 2 channel moniter in your dash.
all my cameras and moniters are hard wired for power

I never tried the rear view camera mirror, but would guess it to be a pretty neat "toy"

 

I'm just beginning this concept myself in my own private veh's after an incident last week over at the Beach.

I picked up a Clear Dash HD for $29.95 at Wally World (one of those "as seen on TV" things) as an experiment to see exactly what it was I wanted to do in a civilian setting unrelated to what we used to have in Law Enforcement. Like I said, it is cheap and not something I would probably want to hang my hat on long term, but it does give me a cheaper way to experiment and figure out how much of what I really want or need. Surprisingly the daytime video is better than we had on the Old early version LEO dash cam. The video is not as smooth as I think it should be when at speed, but for 29.95 I can't complain and I've already learned to look for that when I get ready to move to a higher priced unit. One other thing I've already figured out is that it would be nice to have GPS tagging.
Haven't done much night operation with it yet and that could be interesting. Hadn't really worried about rearward facing recording......

I posted this over in the road rage thread for a description...

This one is a pretty cheap one but it does have several recording modes. 3 hour battery or runs indefinitely plugged into the car or pickup. VGA up through 720 and 1080 HD recording capability. It has loop and motion detect functions or you can set it to continuously record in 1, 3, 5, 15 minute or non stop file sizes. When set to a timed file, when it hits the time you have set, it automatically starts a new file. I goofed up the other day and somehow set it to one minute. Got home and had 208 1 minute files to play with. With everything "maxed" out quality wise and the audio record function on, it gets around 5 1/2 hours video with audio on a 32 GB Ultra Plus SDHC.

 

i use the cobra CDR 840 with 32 gig micro SD card.
with the 16 gig card and whatever i have it set on (i forget the exact setting) the one in the pickup will record 19 hours of video on a 3 minute set. the one in the Kenworth with 32 gig card records 56 hours on 3 minute set.
video quality is good enough that on 4 occasions the police have used the video to issue tickets in accidents, and the video has been used in court one time so far with positive results. sound is not that great, but i really don't care about sound.
i got them in BJ's wholesale club for $89 each.

 

Yes, but this will be for work trucks, not mine.

Good to hear. I've been scared of the Cobra models since they seem to have such poor reviews.

When you say 3 minute set, is that the length of the recording before it loops back?

 

A 3 minute "set" would be the camera recording for 3 minutes then archiving the file and then automatically starting a new one. Several reasons for doing this. One big reason is that if it went to court you can keep the other side from seeing anything other than just the time frame involved. In other words it will show their client running the red and hitting you, but they can't see the 2 red lights you just ran 3 or 4 minutes earlier...
Mine is set for 1 minute. Was going to change it then decided to leave it where it was at.

 

i have it set for 3 minute record time. the record over loop is 19 hours in the pickup and 56 hours in the Kenworth. the big truck has a longer record over loop because where it is located is a pain in the butt to access the unit to format the SD card. i gave up a little bit of clarity in the video image for longer record time.
with the cobra 840 you can set record time at single frame picture, one, three, and five minutes.
main reason i have the cobra dash cams is because the kids bought me one for my birthday last year. i got the other 2 simply because all the same makes them easier to use.

 

Update...........
My recommendation to anyone wanting a Dash Cam would be to avoid the Clear Dash HD, "As seen on TV 'DashCam Pro" as well a couple of names and prices it goes by. #ad

History: Picked up the DashCam Pro at Wal-Mart last month. First one out of the box would distort the picture so much as to make it totally worthless. Just wavy colored lines, static, snow and distortions. Took it back and swapped it out. This one seemed to work quite well for the first week or so. Then I started finding that an increasing number of files saved to the SD card were corrupted and could not be played back. As time progressed, the number of corrupted files increased to where it was running about a 75% loss of files. Yes, I tried other SD Cards, speed 10. These cards all work fine in GPS's, Camera's, Camcorders and Game / Trail Cameras.

The straw that "broke the camels back" happened last Tuesday when I had a Semi with a 48 foot trailer in a 55 MPH speed zone turn in front of me. We didn't collide but when I got stopped I was looking at the belly of the trailer. The car behind avoided rear ending me, but went in the ditch. No damage, just rattled nerves. When we played the video, yep you guessed it, corrupted file.
That camera went back to Wally World right after that for a refund. Batting 2 for 2 and didn't want go for 3. Can't really spend the money on a Go Pro Hero at the moment, so I will continue looking.

 

Here's a dash cam at work

 

Yep, road rage at its finest. School bus V Fed Ex truck. Both drivers need to be fired.

Which model of the Go Pro do you have Charlie?

 

this happened about 20 miles south of me on wednesday. the Fed ex driver was doing 20MPH in a school zone, and the bus driver had tried to pass 2 other times. the car following recorded the bus driver speeding, passing in a no passing zone, cutting off another car getting on the parkway south, and speeding on the parkway.
the fed ex driver was suspended for 3 days for crossing the double yellow line and forcing the bus into the oncoming lane.
he was told if he had not crossed the double yellow nothing would have happened because he was obeying the speed limits and all traffic rules until he crossed the lines.

 

I have a hero Jim