jloftus

Hello my follow Lexonians,

Are there any good cams that you can put in a parked car and let it just record for about 8 hours?

Have any of you ever put one of those car cameras in? I'm starting to get some pretty strange scratches on my car
while it's parked in my school parking lot, and I thought I might put one in so I can see what's happening during the 8 hours
I'm in the school and my poor car is out by its lonesome in the lot, subject to the tender mercies of potentially many students'
and their cars, backpacks, etc., etc.

Plus there's a possibility someone is actually doing it intentionally.

IS350C4ME

There are a few out there with "Parking Mode". One is the Blackcam BCH-1000 Hybrid. You probably will need a two-cam system, as a camera pointing forward out your windshield will not pick up what's going on the sides of your car. There are a few that have a second cam. Main thing you are looking for though is "Parking Mode".

jloftus

Thanks, I'll check that out.

I've found the nice ones that you can monitor easily from a webpage are mostly indoor ones, and

the 'outdoor ones' typically advise you to attach it to the car's battery (which I'm not sure I should do).

There are ones that have an internal battery (more expensive), but you basically record 7 hours of video, which you'd presumably play back and review later.

Percy

You'll get plenty of scratches from people that are jealous of the Lexus brand. Mine is nearly 20 years old and I've spotted Nissan / Honda / ford drivers from an elevated window doing their damage to my car.

Might want to also rig up your camera to have night time recording capabilities via an IR illuminator. Not too sure what campus police can do about any type of damage, even if on a recording. The "higher education" facility that I'm at seems to hire incompetent officers. I've known some cops that will say "unauthorized recording" even if you're the one trying to find out who is damaging the car.

jloftus

Yeh, I'm also in a 'higher education' facility. After some of us complained that large numbers of students were parking in the faculty lot,

I got a ticket.....for parking in the faculty lot.....and, I'm faculty. lolol

Yeh, technically I might get told it's 'unauthorized'. But at least I'd know what's going on while it's out in the lot for like 8 hours a day.

Finding the right camera is not easy...there are so many choices. And if I walk out and discover a 'new event' has happened, I'd have to set aside
like 7 hours to review all the footage, right? I'd almost be better off taking an old beater into school, or the bus.

jayemko

Blackvue dr650gw-2ch with Power Magic Pro.
Front records at 1080p and rear at 720p.
Sensitivity can be fine-tuned over three-axis for both motion and impact. This is priceless if you don't want an "Event"-tagged event whenever you hit a pothole, or Parking Mode to record every time someone walks by while your car is at a park and ride.

You can enable/disable both sound and speed recording. I leave sound recording enabled because it's saved as a separate file from the video, so I can omit it if I need to, but have it if I ever get in a "that's not what I told the officer"-type situation.

Power Magic Pro will cut the power to the camera after a preset duration, or before your battery gets too low to start your car. I have been parked at the airport for 3 days and not had a problem starting, ever.

It's a "set it and forget it"-type setup. You will only pull footage if you realize something happened, it's really not that bad to sift through a few hours of video in a minute or two.
Parking mode events and "Event"-type events are tagged as such and different than Normal mode clips, makes it really easy to find the clip you want.
If you park where there's wifi, you can set up Blackvue's Cloud service and supposedly check your video remotely, but I have not set this up.

When I want to pull footage I either pop the SD card and copy the clip on my laptop, or just use the app on my phone if it's a clip that just happened.

jayemko

I feel ya, but the reverse: Our infant son was in the hospital for 5 days and when we left I had a warning slipped under my wiper by security that hospital staff was not allowed to park in visitor parking and that I could be towed.

jloftus

Geez, that's worse, considering the circumstances.

jloftus

I'll check out the Blackvue, thanks.

Mandrake

I've been running an Android dashcam for about a year. It's just an old smart phone. What I've been intending to do is hook it up to my car alarm. I have a microwave motion detector and it could easily be wired to turn the dashcam on when it sense motion. I have to agree that the blackvue and other dedicated solutions are better in some ways, but none of them have the power and flexibility of Android.

JoeSuff

I can attest to the quality of the Korean brand BlackSys, I have (3) of the BlackSys CH-100B dual channel units since last Christmas. In my cars (2) have front/rear and my convertible only has the front cam. It was the only one that supported (sorta) Mac X laptop at the time i got them. Plenty of settings, Super recording even when driving into the sun and not using a filter on the lens. I got them mainly for my Daughter who was driving a lifted '99 Cherokee. GFB anything happened or a cop harassed her i wanted to be able to know what happened. I actually caught an incident where my daughter said some guy was suspiciously checking out her truck when she was locking up the store after hours. I could hear the guys conversation on the phone, He was just looking while waiting for his friend from next door. (a non issue) I've had too many friends screwed by Insurance for accidents that weren't their fault, add the road rage, and even the cop with a chip on his shoulder and i decided to put them in all the cars. It has parking mode if you hard wire it. I purchased from Blackbox my car. (tons of eval video on their site) I stuck a 64gig from amazon and it records more than i care to view think its 2 weeks plus events tagged by "gshock". Ive turned this auto settings way down seemed like it was always going off. I set mine to turn off after 12 hrs of being parked since I'm usually in my driveway or at work. It has built in Wifi so i can just use my iPhone to view live or recordings from the camera or format the memory without taking it inside. Since there is no LCD that feature really helps aiming the cam while installing. You can turn off all LED's which i like or leave the Blinky Blink light like a security light if thats your thing. If someones gonna screw my my car i don't want them to know they have been recorded. Changing brands i think the new BlackVue has the ability to record to the cloud, but I'm sure theres a service fee for that too. However, if someone rips off your car you should be able to recover the recording and see who was casing your vehicle. I will be putting another BlackSys in my "New to me Lexus" after i square up a few of the other fix me items. However the tight seams on LS interior has me a little less eager to installing one.

Mandrake

About the cloud recording, I setup an FTP server on my home PC and every time I park in the driveway, the dashcam uploads its videos to the FTP server. I don't want to pay for data so this is what I do. If Blackvue can do that, over wifi, I'd be pretty happy.