[urfankhaliq]

So some ass has scraped the corner of my bumper, just after I have had it detailed recently!

So gutted about this and hope whoever has done this is left stranded on a motorway at night soon!

I am wanting to get a front and rear dash cam with parking mode and would be interested in hearing what other people have.

So far I have seen the Thinkware F770 and the BlackVue DR650S-2CH.

It seems both have parking mode but the Thinkware only does a time lapse with 1 frame a second, and the BV does a proper video in parking mode?

Anyone have any experience with these?

[smuler]

I don't have experience with either, but on my 335i all I did was get my auto electrician to hardwire a camera to a permanent live fuse.

He included a neat little off switch so when I didn't need to record , say, when car was on my drive or in garage off went the (power to the) camera.

Even relatively cheap cameras (I paid 60, so double if you want front and rear) like the Transcend 100 (excellent quality footage) can record up to 8.5 hours so there may not be a need for parking mode per se unless you're parked for more than 8 hours.

I drove at least 6/7 days of the week so battery was never affected.


I have considered the Blackvue as that seems the benchmark for front and rear cameras (integrated) and for the parking mode; the latest ones don't even need a battery drain guard (the power magic pro)

[urfankhaliq]

So its hard wired to the battery and then it carries on after you park up? How does it stop recording after 8.5 hours?

[smuler]

It's hard wired to one of the permanent lives fuses, so the camera is on permanently i.e. unless you EITHER manually switch if off OR should you leave it on too long the battery either drains or the drain guard, if you fit one, shuts the camera down.

It therefore records everything that happens rather, as with a parking mode, only what the motion sensors deem worthy of recording*.

After the 8.5 hours in my example (that's a Transcend 100 with 64GB card) the camera starts recording over the earliest footage and continues to over-record in a loop.

So in other words, 8.5 hours was the maximum amount of footage I could capture.

For me, as my car was only usually parked in the street (say visiting friends or out on the town) for around that time was sufficient.

* when I was hit by a neighbour, because the camera was on permanently I had a good ten minutes of relevant footage of them arguing which led to them rushing out in the car and reversing into mine. Also I got (on audio) the tearful argument and confession which happened at the side of my car afterwards.

Please check, but my understanding of parking modes is that they only record a short time before the trigger (say the impact or whatever) and a bit longer afterwards. It's possible, therefore, they won't get as full a picture of an incident.