I have the Road Angle Pro Front & Rear Dash Cam for almost 3 years connects to you phone as back up or to use as a visual monitor also on loop to 32gb card
search around for a deal as I got mine for around £110.00 as the can go as much as £200. with delivery easy to fit hardwiring in line fuse recommended GPS/32gb card/ ~Rear Camera loads of features …
I like the system as even parked up it still monitors if anything gets to close …!
It looks like there is only the one model. The photo of it was already posted here. It’s not hugely sophisticated. It records on a loop and so if you want to see the footage, on easy way is to slip the memory card our and put it in a card reader on your PC.
You can turn off the screen - it can go out automatically after a few seconds or left on. I leave mine on since it’s behind the mirror I can’t see it while I’m driving but can lean over and have a look if needed.
You can buy the camera with the rear camera or without. In my wife’s it has both from and back. You just need to note that the rear camera works off the front camera so you have to wire it all the way back from the front camera. In my MX I’ve not bothered with the rear.
I did buy a good quality hard-wire kit though. The Nextbase one that comes with the piggyback fuse holder. It worked a treat.
I’ve not worked out how to post a video here otherwise I’d post an example.
I’d watch out for that ring of (presumably infrared) LEDs, if those are activated they will just shine back off the glass into the camera. Seems to be a theme with cheap dashcams. I think for anything decent you really need to look at spending about £100 all in.
I’m getting the £40 orskey I linked to tomorrow so I’ll update this thread at a later date to give my thoughts. I see it as a fairly small amount to put down as trial, if it works fine I’ll keep it but I’ll probably end up spending more down the line and getting a ‘proper’ one!
Following this thread with interest as I’m also considering getting a dash cam.
It’s something I’ve considered for a while but never got round to. My MX 5 is still on order but I’m fairly sure I will get a cam for it when it arrives.
What’s people’s opinions on dual systems? Would it be obvious anyway who is at fault if you get rear ended even without rear facing video evidence? Bearing in mind that a convertible car has extra challenges for mounting a rear cam than a fixed roof car. Or is it a good idea to get a rear cam as well as a front one?
Does anyone have a cam that monitors the car when parked? This sounds like a good idea to me but there seems to be concerns about battery drainage?
Rear dashcams I regard as useless for most people, I’ve run a forward facing dashcam since 2014 and I can only think of one occasion where having a rear facing camera too would have been nice. Like you say, if you’re rear ended it’s generally obvious you’re not at fault.
You can get some where the rear camera attaches to the front camera so it’s all mounted around the rear view mirror, the rear camera has a lens designed so it mainly see the back window (but some are designed to capture the interior, a so-called taxi cam, so ensure it’s got the right lens type). That’s what you have to do for convertibles unless you can mount the second camera around the wind deflector and route cables under the door sills.
The nicer cameras often have a parking/sentry mode whereby recording is activated by either noise or the g-sensor, the issue with these is they tend to capture what happens just after the event rather than the actual incident itself. When run in such a way there is generally a small managed battery between the camera and your car which provides the juice and protects your starting battery. This does significantly increase cost and complexity though.
With any automatic clip saving, you will have to go through and periodically clear them out the device’s memory. G-sensors in particular are prone to crying wolf on our potholed roads so can fill the memory quite quickly.
Having owned my 5 for a week now, I’m thinking a rear facing camera might be a good idea if only as a visible deterrent to tailgaters… it does seem to attract them.
As for standard front facing cameras, has anyone wired in this way?
My mirror doesn’t have all the buttons that one has, but does have one which I think turns the auto dimming on and off and so does have a cable running into the back of it.
It just looks like a quick and easy alternative to removing a lot of trim to hard wire in.
Just ordered this adaptor from USA Amazon, I will let you know how it goes along with a Nextbase 222 (from UK Amazon) this also has a rear camera attachment.
Took about 3 minutes to fit, tight fit behind the mirror. The rear camera lens is adjustable so I get picture out of the rear window, probably better with the roof down. The adapter from the US Amazon took a bit of time to get here but worth the wait to save me having to hardwire it in through the body etc.
