Hiya eveyone.
Can anyone provide some advice regarding dash cams? I’d like to get one for my Mk3.5 and another for my wife’s Mazda 2. Happy to go to around £50 each. I’m quite drawn to the mirror and mirror mounted ones.
Thanks everyone, keep those roofs coming down
Bit more than £50 but worth it.We run nextbase GPS/Wifi front and rear (2 cameras) on all 3 cars.Cost more than £50 though but simplicity of downloading over wifi to app & the benefit of sending straight to police and insurance.
I think you can get a standard Nextbase for about £48.What ever you bug get one that the screen turns off within 30 seconds.The rear on the 5 is fixed to the wind breaker so records roof up/down.All cars have Nextbases hard wired so no cables can be seen.Front cameras are hidden out of drivers field of view behind the mirror.32g micro sd cards in each.Every few weeks i just reformat to keep them running sweet.If we only used one car at a time,then i would have only 2 cams but purchase an additional 4 GPS docking stations.Have them all hardwired & then its easy to just slide the Nexthbase on to any magnetic GPS dock depending on which car you take out.
I’ve got a NExtbase312GW think it was about £80 - remeber your 10% owners club discount if buying from Hlafords.
Mines works fine, although I damaged the screen so I no longer see anything on that, but it still records and I can download files from it no problem it / when I need to.
Regarding hardwiring of the dash cams I assume that they power on and off with the ignition as not to drain batteries .
What sort of cost is hardwiring?
Cheers
I bought something like this below and wired it in to the fuse box at the base of the A pillar passenger side, choose a connection that’s live with the ignition on of course or the audio feed. Just make sure the piggy back fuse holder supplied comes in the same size as the Mazda fuses fitted and the micro usb connection is compatible with your dash cam conn.
I am looking to get dash cams installed on our cars in the near future. No rush as live in South Devon and very low mileage but they do make a lot of sense.
My better half bought a really cheap piece of CXXX off ebay which I was going to play with but the instuctions are so small, dark and badly written that I think I may just do us both a favour and throw the thing straight into the bin.
Nextbase have been well thought of for some years now with dashcams and there were some bargains around on ebay with the sales. Basic model with full wiring kit for under £50. I have a feeling that going cheap on these or rather inferior product will be a mistake so Nextbase it is then. These are not just install and forget as quality products will give you a better result with less input and be more reliable.
i have a garmin 55. Costs about £100 from amazon, and comes with a sticky metal disk that sticks to window for mounting.
Costs £5 for new disk so you can setup multiple cars for 1 driver and 1 dashcam easily enough
Does not drain battery, power on/off with ignition & cost to hard wire is about £1.50 for a piggy back fuse.
A year past July, a 17 year old on a motor scooter chopped straight across my path on a roundabout. He was lucky I was at a low speed, the side of his scooter took the impact, and he had a relatively mild tumble. . Gravel rash and cuts to his ankle and elbow. And some shock.
I similarly went down the cheap ebay route and fitted one at under £10. Picture playback quality was terrible, you could hardly read number plates even stopped behind a car at traffic lights.
So that just went in the bin.
Then bought an Apeman Model CS70, it was only around £40 from Amazon. I hard wired it in through a piggy back fuse and 5V step down transformer module, fed the cable up inside the passenger A pillar, because I located the step down module behind the glove box.
I used the cigar lighter, ignition powered, for the piggy back.
I would definitely recommend this model, records in full 1080 HD and has wide angle lens, motion sensing and G sensor.
Also fitted one in my M3, and viewing playback on my pc is superb, even at night in reduced lighting.
It’s also easily removable if you are parked up with the top down, it just unclips from the suction mount.
I have a 55 too, bought it from Halfords, they hardwired into my 107 and 10% off device and fitting. Going to get my Mazda hard wired in April & use the one device in the two cars.
Nextbase 410 in my works van which can do 300 miles a day, it gives you a secure (if that’s the right word) feeling that if anything goes wrong you have it covered.
It also calms your own driving down because you don’t want to be shown as the idiot who caused the crash…or worse.
Thats what i plan to do later in year.
How much do halfords take to hard wire if not buying dash cam at same time?
Can‘t really remember, it’s not too much though.
Have used the Nextbase 512G dash cam in my MX5 Mk4 ND for the last 3 years. Great dash cam up to now.
The dash cam is wired to the ancillary supply socket (cig lighter socket) in the footwell.
The dash cam recording cuts in and out whilst driving. Have narrowed it down to a connection fault within the dash cam itself.
Now I cannot rely that it will be recording if involved in any unfortunate incident.
Have used the dash cam in my wife Mazda3 Sport Nav and no problem with continuous recording.
I believe the lighter structure, stiffer suspension of the MX5 (especially on rough road surfaces) have taken their toll on the dash cam.
Not confident that any replacement dash cam for my MX5 wouldn’t eventually meet the same fate.
Has anyone else experienced this with any dash cam used in their MX5?
I have a MK1 and decided early on that I did not want the hassle of hiding a 12v lead around the wind shield so instead I have my dash cam cabled to a small 5v rechargeable battery hidden under the passenger’s visor, held in place by velcro to the metal above the windscreen. Works great. Charge lasts about a week when used for a couple of hours a day and it has the benefit that if I want to leave the dash cam on when I leave and alarm the car I can.
That is clever. Particularly that you can use the dash cam as a security device for a considerable time when parked up. I believe that my problem is that the connection within the dash cam itself has likley been damaged by vibration through time so regardless of the power source cannot be relied on.
My NextBase Duo (£99.99 “refurb” from Maplin - paid for itself soon after when I was reversed into) had same problem.
Solved by:
Replacing power lead (using the short adapter)
Turn of the screen saver - so screen always on.
Turn off after 10 secs
Turn off the record when bumped when parked.
Probably didn’t need to do all of this - but now working - and I can’t see the screen behind the mirror - so fine by me.
Thanks ThorntonMark
1) Don’t understand what the shorter adapter is.
2) Have set my “SCREEN STANDBY” to off. I think this will keeps my screen always on.
3) Have set my “POWER OFF” to 10 secs
4) Have set my “MOTION DETECTION to Off.
So here’s hoping!