I was thinking that, with so many dash-cams out there, there must be some of Wirral, for good or bad. So, for starters, here's one I put together recently. The first part is on the M6 Northbound in Staffordshire, but the rest is Tower Road Birkenhead, Greasby and Thurstaston.
It's my first attempt and I'm surprised at the loss in quality from the original footage - something I'll have to work on, as is why I have a still frame from the middle of the video as a header.
You have to pay through the nose for one that picks up registration plates on fast moving vehicles, especially if your windscreen isn't clean. Usually fairly good quality on near static objects, they have to use too much video compression to fit a decent amount of footage within the memory card.
I've stuck to my £20 one on the basis that unless I spend ten times that amount I'll probably still feel very frustrated with their ability.
There's a real danger that the left will drag Britain back to the 1970s, with secure well-paid jobs, ample housing, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition, student grants, final salary pensions, affordable rail fares and fabulous films and music. David Osland 2025
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Is a Dash Cam the same thing as a Tracker unit?.My car insurance renewal says I need a Tracker unit fixed to my car otherwise I won't be covered for damage, break-in or car going missing. I have a Noddy Car worth £2.5k and it is so reliable. The other new exclusions mean I will go elsewhere for insurance
Think I will get one to include Recovery insurance from driveway,roadside etc means I can save £70 on that and about another£60 on the main part of the policy.
The camera I use is a Mio MiVue618, bought for about £70 in a Black Friday sale last year. I think it has just been superseded by others in the range. It has several useful features not always found on other makes and was a recommended buy. For example, it has an updateable (free for life) speed camera location database and can be set to monitor the lane lines in case you drift off course, and if you are in danger of dozing off, it can also alert you to take a break at a preset driving time. It records time, GPS location & speed, which is recorded at the same time and you see that on screen, while G-force is logged as well, but you need their software for that.
Obviously it's ignition switched, but it can be set to stay on permanently (assuming a permanent power source) or be left in 'parking mode' so that when you switch off its internal battery keeps going for about another 8 minutes while you nip into the shop or whatever. My other choice would have been a NextBase, but it didn't have the same bells and whistles and cost more. Halfords provide handy video clips from their range of cameras, which will give you some idea of the quality that's out there.
While most claim to be sharp and crisp (a feature of most things taken with a wide angle lens) and HD, both of these claims need to be seen. For example, can it reproduce a number plate registration at a minimum of the driving test standard? Probably not, but as DD says, they do have some work to do to get all that video onto a memory card, so there has to be some trade offs.
I did try a cheap one, but the instructions were incomprehensible and the buttons were illogical. There was buzzing on the sound and its infrared light didn't work, so if you tried it in even partial darkness (under the desk in my case) you just got a black screen. That went back the next day.
Pax - a Tracker unit is something completely different. They are hidden in a vehicle. Some transmit a signal that can be picked up by Tracker and the police (the cars with four identical antenna on a square base about 18" apart, usually mounted under the light bar on the roof) and this uses advanced direction finding techniques. The more sophisticated ones use GPS and mobile phone technology to relay their location, speed and direction. In other words, your insurance will know when you have been and when you were speeding, but on the good side, they will know where the car is if it is stolen or crashed into a ditch and you can't call anybody. The company, Tracker, have a lot of info on their website.
Infrared on a dashcam is pretty pointless, if you are lucky it will light up to the front of the bonnet, so much is reflected back of the windscreen as well which tends to blind it as much as it enhances anything past the windscreen. Try it by taping over the infrared LED's and see the difference, its absolutely minimal, as long as the camera goes into night mode it does just as good a job without LED's.
Totally agree about useless instructions on some cheap dashcams (including mine). In my case night mode is manually selected which doesn't alter the camera at all (if they switched to black and white it would have been a bonus) but just switches on the LED's which are totally ineffective unless you want to count your fingers in the dark.
Where mine really fails on moving registration plates is where the windscreen is not perfectly clean (quite usual). While the video compression software can track a moving item and enhance it as it gets repeated image, if the image passes any water/dirt on the windscreen, it is no longer a moving object to the software because it is changing so the enhancement doesn't happen. No doubt more upmarket cameras use better/faster compression and will do a bit better.
@paxvobiscum
Trackers are available pretty cheaply but for insurance purposes its got be supplied and fitted by an approved person which knocks the price up considerably. It usually has to be an approved model as well.
Oh, yes, a poor example of my dashcam in the rain, the old dilapidated runway at RAF Tilstock. On the surface it seems to do a fair job but if you look at patches that seem to go out of focus (especially towards the bottom of the screen), that's where the compression software isn't managing to track moving objects.
There's a real danger that the left will drag Britain back to the 1970s, with secure well-paid jobs, ample housing, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition, student grants, final salary pensions, affordable rail fares and fabulous films and music. David Osland 2025
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
