Dashcam in Prius Hybrid

[chana100red]

11 hours ago, Chris Dance said:

Telephoned my local Toyota dealer today with regard to supply and fit a dash cam.  They do not fit or supply dash cams.

They suggested two local auto electric  places; one being Halfords. I looked up reviews on the Halfords web site and I was utterly unimpressed.

I am reluctant to take our Prius to non Toyota dealers but I rang the other auto electric agent and he assured me they had fitted dash cams to Prius cars before. He will supply and fit dash cam for £150. I have booked the car in for next week to have the job done. Just hope it all goes OK. Pete B you are very fortunate to have a Toyota  dealer who does fit dash cams.

Honestly, you don't need to spend £150 for a dash cam in my opinion as I bought for a mere £20.00 and fitted it myself.  when I did a test run and played it back on my PC it is absolutely fine.  It is clear and concise and good enough for the police and insurance company to look at.  you don't fancy equipment for something that does not happen frequently.  Money can be better spent elsewhere. 

[Catlover]

1 hour ago, chana100red said:

Honestly, you don't need to spend £150 for a dash cam in my opinion as I bought for a mere £20.00 and fitted it myself.  when I did a test run and played it back on my PC it is absolutely fine.  It is clear and concise and good enough for the police and insurance company to look at.  you don't fancy equipment for something that does not happen frequently.  Money can be better spent elsewhere. 

Not saying your £20 bargain is not up to the job, but I bought a low priced unit. It was ok during the day, but the recording at night was below what is classed as good. No way of picking out a number plate, and if you cant get that is difficult to identify other parties involved in an incident.  I bought a £110 Nextbase and even night recordings are clear.  For "that something that does not happen frequently", it is very important to get something that will do the job in all conditions.

[chana100red]

Glad you said Nexbase because they are also a very good brand and worth the money.  I looked at much higher value ones and Nexbase did come out quite well in reviews and performance.

I will test mine at night and see what it is like as I have yet to to test it at night.

 

[Heidfirst]

3 hours ago, chana100red said:

Honestly, you don't need to spend £150 for a dash cam in my opinion as I bought for a mere £20.00 and fitted it myself.  when I did a test run and played it back on my PC it is absolutely fine.  It is clear and concise and good enough for the police and insurance company to look at.  

is it at least FullHD & as mentioned how is it at night? Does it have a good parking mode ( in my case parking mode was at least as important as recording during driving)? I take it that it is front only & not front & rear? How large a capacity microSD card does it support? How is the technical backup/warranty if you should need it? etc. etc.

Different people have different needs hence the tremendous spread of capability, support & price.

[kithmo]

Yep, you definitely need full HD to see number plates at any distance.

[PeteB]

2 hours ago, Heidfirst said:

is it at least FullHD & as mentioned how is it at night? Does it have a good parking mode ( in my case parking mode was at least as important as recording during driving)? I take it that it is front only & not front & rear? How large a capacity microSD card does it support? How is the technical backup/warranty if you should need it? etc. etc.

Fully agree.  I also wanted one that didn't rely on a suction mount, but used 3M adhesive pads or similar - they certainly won't come off easily (as the fitter who recently installed my new windscreen will attest!).

I also have a friend who bought a couple of cheapies, for his car and van.  Both packed up between 1 and 2 years old.  More of a pain if it's been hard wired with a hard wire kit that only works with a  particular model.

[Chris Dance]

Not being as young and  as nimble as I used to be.I prefer to get the job done by what I hope is an expert. (I do not have any idea about dash cams).The chap stated that they do not supply dash cams but they had one in stock which was left over after fitting dash cams to new council vehicles. I inquired if it is a good reliable one and he stated "we do not fit rubbish." I can only take his word for it but they are a local company and have been in operation a good many years. 

[Chippy01]

My partner went and got me an Aukey DR02 D, along with the gps modue and a 128gb memory card about a fortnight ago, so last weekend I set about installing it.

The most time consuming part for me, was getting the correct left/right alignment for the front camera. I used a non too sticky double sided tape I had lying around on a spare mount bracket they give in the box to temporarily hold the unit in place. Temporarily wired it to the plug socket under the centre bridge of my Gen 3, turned it on, grabbed some footage, powered off, removed the memory card and checked the results on my laptop. This took quite a few goes until I was happy with positioning then I substituted the non too sticky mount for the real deal.

Next came the rear cam. Same thing, temporarily linked it in to the front cam, and did the same re grabbing footage and checking.
I first put the rear cam at the top of the tailgate, but that bar splitting the rear screen just blocked out too much, so I moved it to the top of the lower section. Perfect.

I ran the linking cable between the two cameras thus:-
From the front camera, up and into the driver side headlining, down the drivers door pillar, under the covers that run along the door sills, up under the cover at the side of the rear seat, and out between the hard side panel and the headlining at the top of the tailgate opening.
I then had to strip out the panelling of the tailgate, starting at the bottom and working up as they are all linked at the joins (easy really, they are just held on with poppers - but caution was needed because as with all plastics, they can break very easily), then ran the cable from the exit corner at the headlining to the centre-ish of the tailgate, across the top of the tailgate down the passenger side of it and across to where I had the rear camera positioned at the top of the lower glass pane. Yes, the cable is that long!!
The reason for running from driver to passenger side at the tailgate, is to create enough 'running slack' when opening the boot. If I had the expertise of foresight, I could have bought and installed one of those cranked rubber cable covers (open your tailgate, you'll see what I mean) for the rear cam cable.
Popped the covers back on, and all was hidden.

The main power cable runs from the front cam, across the passenger headlining, down the passenger door pillar, under the glovebox, and into the 12 volt socket under the centre bridge.

The gps module, I initially positioned up high beside the rear view mirror, but those damn black dots block the satellite signals, so I had to move it to the passenger side just where the black dots finish. 

All in all, it took about 4 hours - but I was taking my time in positioning, stripping out the necessary panels, and hiding the cables.

I pulled to memory card a couple of days ago to check what the cams record. I must say, the footage is impressive.

One thing to note though, when you turn on the car to READY, it takes around 15 seconds before the cams start recording. A tad annoying, but I can live with it.
And it takes about a minute before the gps module picks up satellites, but that might be normal with gps units anyway.

 

[Catlover]

Hi Phil, I agree with you that positioning of the cameras is critical. I only have a front camera and initially the position I set it was outside of the swept area of the windscreen wiper. I realised that in poor conditions, rain and snow, I unlikely not to get a clear recording, so I had to reposition.

With you positioning the rear camera in the lower of the split rear windows might you be in the same predicament ie no wiper and that section gets a lot of road dirt when wet so may obliterate a good rear view shot.

[PeteB]

My rear camera is at the top of the rear screen, just inside the top of the arc swept by the wiper.  Because of the slope of the roof, it's not visible in the rear view mirror but has a good view of the road behind.

[Chippy01]

46 minutes ago, Catlover said:

With you positioning the rear camera in the lower of the split rear windows might you be in the same predicament ie no wiper and that section gets a lot of road dirt when wet so may obliterate a good rear view shot.

If it starts to get mucky, a quick wipe with a rag in the area just where the camera is will sort it.
It will have to get really dirty before it will effect the camera shot, as the cam focuses beyond the glass. That lower pane is darkly tinted, but the footage looks like it's shot through plain glass.

[Chris Dance]

I had a front dash cam fitted to our Prius Gen 4 yesterday by non Toyota car electric company. I was apprehensive about them doing the work. I need not have been concerned. They did a good job; the cable is hidden and the camera is non obtrusive, the whole job took just over an hour. The company supplied the dash cam it is a Navman 50.which is activated on engine start.  The dash cam manual is very small print, I enlarged the English part of the manual on our printer. I am well pleased.

[PeteB]

Glad it worked out.

You can often download an electronic manual from the manufacturer's web site as a PDF (Portable Document Format).

I have a few hundred on my phone's SD card, including the main and infotainment manuals for my Prius.

[Reef180]

One thing i'm no comfortable with is leaving the car in a shop and not being able to see what they are doing and how they are wiring the Dashcam in the car. Scratches and dings are so common when you have multiple guys fast tracking the wiring in your car. Luckily, i came across a distributor in San Fran for Blackvue dashcams, and before you say i'm plugging this company (i'm not, just sharing my experience) so everyone in the Northern California side can make their own decision to have this company do the install at your residence. Yes, The owner is very good and installed the DR750 on my prius prime.