Dashcam Fitting Suggestions

[Jonathak56]

Evening all. I’m hoping to get my Cross next month and I want to have a Nextbase fitted. Who else has had this done, who did it and what did it cost you? Halfords don’t seem too keen on fitting to a hybrid.
 

TIA

 

J

[Roy124]

My dealer is fitting mine.  I already hava front and rear in my Corolla so they are providing the same on my Yaris. 

No idea the cost as its part of the deal. 

[Bernard Foy]

19 minutes ago, Roy124 said:

My dealer is fitting mine.  I already hava front and rear in my Corolla so they are providing the same on my Yaris. 

No idea the cost as its part of the deal. 

If the deal is already agreed, it might be too late for that. However get the dealership to quote for supply and fitting, that way if anything goes wrong you will have recourse to go back to your dealership. So that’s my advice to Jonathan.

[Cyker]

Toyota do standard fixed price supply and install of dashcams; IIRC it's £250 for front-only and £350 for front and rear.

 

[Roy124]

10 hours ago, Cyker said:

Toyota do standard fixed price supply and install of dashcams; IIRC it's £250 for front-only and £350 for front and rear.

 

One my first buy they provided the front cam and did not offer a rear cam.  Nextbase sold me a base model, does the job, at £32 and Toyota charged £70 for fitting. As Bernard said, they do it, they carry the risk. 

As it happened they made a pigs and there was no power.  They thought they had done it properly but it waz the internal Battery that fooled them. 

[Roy124]

Incidentally, on my previous car my garage did a simple installation.  They fitted a double 12v socket under the dash. It was then just a question of feeding camera and Satnav wires around the windscreen. 

Selling the car was just a question of unplugging everything. 

I also had a Chinese fish eye camera.  Besides showing side to side it also covered steering wheel and gear stick. Great for proving you were not using a phone etc.  Nextbase though is better with full GPS data.  I expect there are other good cameras too. 

[Stephen_52]

I went to the dealer I'd bought my new 2021 Icon from, RRG Altrincham. Expecting them to fit this, pictured, they took me out to find a standard dash cam plugged into the accessory socket. When I questioned why it wasn't even hardwired they said they'd had problems so didn't do that anymore. Needless to say at £250 they were told to remove it and I didn't pay. Anyone confirm or otherwise their statement on problems when hardwired?

 

[Roy124]

Yes, for some reason where mine is connected to the fuse box the fitting prevents the fuse box lid being put back on.  Something to do with the fused connection. 

Then, as I said, they pigs their first attempt at power for the rear cam. 

That they had problems however is a cop out, especially at £250.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, Roy124 said:

Yes, for some reason where mine is connected to the fuse box the fitting prevents the fuse box lid being put back on.  Something to do with the fused connection. 

That's correct. The "piggyback" fuse they probably use protrudes too much. It does on mine. The cover is in my glovebox for reference, if needed. I hope they didn't say it was dangerous without the cover in place.

£250 to plug into the 12v socket. Probably 10 minutes to fit AND hide the cable.

[Cyker]

Wow these are some disgraceful stories... okay so it's not just my dealers being incompetent then!  

I asked them to wire in my dashcams while they were putting the 15"'s on, and they were fine with that, just add on the labour charge.

Service guy comes back saying they'd need to charge me an extra £50 and come back in a week because there is a one-use panel at the back they'd need to take out and they'd need to order it in.

I'm like, are you serious, and he's I'm afraid so, but didn't elaborate further. I told them to leave it, and then took the car home and did it myself...

Did a much cleaner job too by the sound of things as I ran the hardwire kit into the lighter socket connector - No uncovered fusebox and dangling lid in my Mk4!!  

I still, to this day, have not figured out what this one-use panel the guy was talking about is...

I do wonder where Toyota have specified these as dealer-fit options, whether they forgot to tell the dealers or give them proper instructions on how to install them?

Any competent mech should be able to wire in a Dashcam easily (Heck even I could do it - Took me all day, but I did it!), but as I've said before I think a lot of them have become too reliant on TSB instructions and are lost without them...

[G L J]

I have the Nextbase front and rear fitted in my yaris. They were already installed as it was an ex demo model. It is a very neat installation although I have not checked the fuse box to see if the cover is actually fitted.

This was from Johnsons on the Wirral.

[Cyker]

Thanks; I feel like we need a list of dealers who can install the dashcams properly  

[Hornet3D]

1 hour ago, Roy124 said:

Incidentally, on my previous car my garage did a simple installation.  They fitted a double 12v socket under the dash. It was then just a question of feeding camera and Satnav wires around the windscreen. 

Selling the car was just a question of unplugging everything. 

I also had a Chinese fish eye camera.  Besides showing side to side it also covered steering wheel and gear stick. Great for proving you were not using a phone etc.  Nextbase though is better with full GPS data.  I expect there are other good cameras too. 

That is how I wired my front and rear dash camera, the front is powered from the 12v socket under the dash with the rear connected to the front unit for power and data.   It took me a few hours one morning and most of that was fixing and connecting the rear camera to the rear screen.  The Aygo was already equipped with a Nextbase from the dealership but the access to it is via Wi-Fi which is a PITA as it often fails to connect and when it does the the connection is flaky (a compliant that appears to be experienced by a large number of users if the Internet is to be believed).  The only possible way to download video is by removing the card but this is located on the right side of the unit and the camera is fitted too close to the interior mirror to remove the card so the whole unit needs to me removed and then the cover taken off to get to the card.  Also, with out the Wi-Fi you cannot program the unit.

Fitting my own unit ensured I could place it in a better place, for me it was on the other side of the mirror (considering the placement of the card on the Nextbase I do not know why this was not used by the dealership) so that it is well hidden.  It also gave me the opportunity to research the units so that I could get the quality and features I required.  From my research, for me at least, Nextbase was not even on my list of possibles but then I was biased by the poor experience of what was already fitted to my car.

[Cyker]

Yeah back when I got my first Dashcam Nextbase were very new to the market and had developed a poor reputation for support because the batteries in the cameras completely dying after a year.

I hear the support has gotten better, as a few members here sing their praises, and Nextbase are one of the Dashcam manufacturers that have deals with insurance companies and you can get often get a discount if you have specific models installed in the car.

I'm very happy with my Viofo tho' and am I'm greatly anticipating the new model. The current one has a Sony Starvis sensor which gives very good low-light recording, but the new one is supposed to have the new Sony starvis/exmor sensor which can do single-frame WDR; Should improve low-light single-frame image quality greatly so I can catch number plates at night without having to use negative exposures!

[Roy124]

Regarding flaky WiFi with Nextbase, I found it worked best when there were no competing WiFi sources.  Other than that, dismount the whole unit and plug in to the laptop.  The displays and manipulation are much easier there. 

[Hornet3D]

6 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Yeah back when I got my first dashcam Nextbase were very new to the market and had developed a poor reputation for support because the batteries in the cameras completely dying after a year.

I hear the support has gotten better, as a few members here sing their praises, and Nextbase are one of the dashcam manufacturers that have deals with insurance companies and you can get often get a discount if you have specific models installed in the car.

I'm very happy with my Viofo tho' and am I'm greatly anticipating the new model. The current one has a Sony Starvis sensor which gives very good low-light recording, but the new one is supposed to have the new Sony starvis/exmor sensor which can do single-frame WDR; Should improve low-light single-frame image quality greatly so I can catch number plates at night without having to use negative exposures!

Mine is a Vantrue S1 which can record at 4K, but not with both front on rear, but it is also equipped with the Sony Sarvis sensor which was one of the reasons for choosing it.   As you say it gives excellent low light recording.

[Roy124]

My dealer fits the Dashcam on the passenger side and it is not visible if the visor is down. 

I have been a fan of Nextbase since the late 80s.  I went to a computer show and the guy on the stand sold me a bunch of the European maps at a big discount. 

The EU mapping also included a very useful translation guide.  Two I remember for Norway had Full Tank Tak, no translation necessary. 

The other would land then in court today.  Suffice to say it was the Arabic and mentioned blue eyes. 😄

[Hornet3D]

6 minutes ago, Roy124 said:

Regarding flaky WiFi with Nextbase, I found it worked best when there were no competing WiFi sources.  Other than that, dismount the whole unit and plug in to the laptop.  The displays and manipulation are much easier there. 

I tried plugging it into my desktop computer but it only identified it an external storage device, I must have been doing something wrong.

[Hornet3D]

1 minute ago, Roy124 said:

My dealer fits the dashcam on the passenger side and it is not visible if the visor is down. 

I have been a fan of Nextbase since the late 80s.  I went to a computer show and the guy on the stand sold me a bunch of the European maps at a big discount. 

The EU mapping also included a very useful translation guide.  Two I remember for Norway had Full Tank Tak, no translation necessary. 

The other would land then in court today.  Suffice to say it was the Arabic and mentioned blue eyes. 😄

The Vanture application shows the progress of your journey on goggle maps as you play the video which I found was a nice to have feature.

[Cyker]

I think that's right - It should act like it's a USB stick, and you can copy/view the MP4 video files of the dash footage directly.

[Roy124]

I play it back through the Nextbase software. Yes, you can also access it like  USB drive. 

[Big_D]

I have a Nextbase in my C-HR.

I supplied a Nextbase hardwire kit that and camera. It was fitted by the Dealer at a cost of £95.00 They did a good job, and if anything goes wrong with the hybrid wiring, they need to get it sorted out.

When we bought our Yaris, the Dashcam was included as part of the deal. I'll only be able to comment on that installation when we get the car.

[Big_D]

I meant to add, I had a problem with my Nextbase camera, and cannot fault the after sales service from them.

[Hornet3D]

6 hours ago, Roy124 said:

I play it back through the Nextbase software. Yes, you can also access it like  USB drive. 

Thanks, that is OK but no real improvement taking the card out and I still cannot program the Nextbase.  I still have to take the card out of the Vantrue but it is on the front of the unit so far easier than the hassle on the Nextbase and Vantrue has a screen so I can can program and test the camera in car.  The Vantrue picture and the application used for viewing is far superior to the Nextbase of equivalent price.

[Starensis]

I'll be fitting my 6 year-old Rexing camera to my wifes new Yaris. It's not wi-fi, but it does the job and they still provide firmware updates.

Correction - it’s 8 years old.