Dash Camera

leadpot

leadpot

Senior Member
Have been thinking about getting a dash cam for my every day vehicle. Would also like to use it in my 29 tudor. Trying to find one that has its own battery power. Ones I have looked at operate strictly off the vehicles 12v and of course the A is 6v. Any suggestions?
 
leadpot said:
Have been thinking about getting a dash cam for my every day vehicle. Would also like to use it in my 29 tudor. Trying to find one that has its own battery power. Ones I have looked at operate strictly off the vehicles 12v and of course the A is 6v. Any suggestions?
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Make a dash stand for your hand-held camera.. Would be interested in knowing why you want one..
 
I have GoPro mounts in my roadster, pickup and motor home. Battery life sucks, so I use a plug in adaptor with a UBS port. You can use an iPad or iPhone as a moniter to set up shots.
 
Here is what I recently bought, and it was only 2 bucks delivered to my mailbox. It comes in a nice plastic insulated case, so you don't have to worry about mixing up polarity if you mount it to something in the car. Just run the + to the center terminal and - to the ground side of the plug.

Those 2 spring ground clips are the negative side, but only one of them is wired to supply power, so if you solder or clip onto one be sure it's the correct one.

My GPS works great with 6 volts supplying the power, and the USB port on this should work fine to supply your camera power.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281840953203?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
 
I've been using the GoPro for about a year now it works well but I do carry a couple of extra batteries.
 
We have a very expensive RV and have had a dash cam for years for liability protection. It is no longer a question of if we need a dash cam, it is now a question of which one.

Society has created a need where none previously existed. After a couple of incidents, one being a driver who tried to get rear ended, presumably for insurance purposes, and several near accidents in which cars pulled in too close and removed our needed stopping distance we realized our best protection is a video of what happened.

We also never locked our house, but now we lock, alarm and video all that happens around it because society has changed.
 
Tom Wesenberg said:
Here is what I recently bought, and it was only 2 bucks delivered to my mailbox. It comes in a nice plastic insulated case, so you don't have to worry about mixing up polarity if you mount it to something in the car. Just run the + to the center terminal and - to the ground side of the plug.

Those 2 spring ground clips are the negative side, but only one of them is wired to supply power, so if you solder or clip onto one be sure it's the correct one.

My GPS works great with 6 volts supplying the power, and the USB port on this should work fine to supply your camera power.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281840953203?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
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Tom, just to be clear, are you saying that these converter/power supply units will work on either 6V or 12V input and still provide 12V or 5V output?

If so, that is great! We have a summer car show in New Ulm that sets up a drive-in movie the night before and transmits the sound by FM radio. Your unit would let me power a good 12V FM receiver in the Model A while watching a good old car movie. Thanks!
 
Cool Hand Lurker said:
Tom, just to be clear, are you saying that these converter/power supply units will work on either 6V or 12V input and still provide 12V or 5V output?

If so, that is great! We have a summer car show in New Ulm that sets up a drive-in movie the night before and transmits the sound by FM radio. Your unit would let me power a good 12V FM receiver in the Model A while watching a good old car movie. Thanks!
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The lighter sockets will be the same voltage that goes into the unit, either 6 volts in and 6 volts out, or 12 volts in and 12 volts out, but the voltage reducers used with GPS and cellphones cuts the input voltage to 5 volts, so they still work fine with either 6 or 12 volts feeding the unit.

The USB port is 5 volts out whether you feed 6 volts or 12 volts into the unit, because it has it's own reduction circuit built into the $2 unit.
 
As to why you would want one if you drive in a major city it certainly nice to be able to have a record of what you see and what's going on . I have one one the front of my new ford transit and also one facing the rear. And when I crank up so do they. And it's amazing sometime what you see that you can come home and pull the cards and show the wife. I just had a fool cut me off and I had to power brake to keep from wiping him out.and after all of that he flipped me off and that was after he cut in to my lane from three lanes over. I have them on all of my cars and I hope we never need the chip to use in a court room setting but good video tells a thousand words.
 
old car guy said:
As to why you would want one if you drive in a major city it certainly nice to be able to have a record of what you see and what's going on . I have one one the front of my new ford transit and also one facing the rear. And when I crank up so do they. And it's amazing sometime what you see that you can come home and pull the cards and show the wife. I just had a fool cut me off and I had to power brake to keep from wiping him out.and after all of that he flipped me off and that was after he cut in to my lane from three lanes over. I have them on all of my cars and I hope we never need the chip to use in a court room setting but good video tells a thousand words.
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I wish I had one when I was leading a tour back in the fall when a mountain lion ran across the road in front of me.
 
Tiny,
I can sympathize. Going east on I-64 in West Virginia about 3 am in heavy rain, my wife saw a mountain lion heading west. No one believes her except me, although people see them in Virginia and WV occasionally. The wildlife people say "NO." BUT, they said the same about Coyotes until now they are everywhere... imported by the wildlife folks???
 
Ted,
The guy behind me saw something run across the road he just couldn't tell what it was. I could, it was a LION for sure. A young one but I know one when I see one.
 
Here is my suggestion. Get a camera that is called the Mobius. It's inexpensive compared to the Go Pro and is a high quality camera, and has a self contained battery, but battery life isn't real long, so an auxiliary battery would be needed.

Here is a link to the RC (radio control website) where these guys have become experts using this camera for their aircraft. In fact, they have worked with the developer to bring this current camera to its great specs.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1904559

If you do buy this camera, you will want to reference this website for lots of good info, plus free software to really automate setting for the camera. I have one and I'm impressed with it. The former camera that this group used was commonly referred to as the key chain camera, but for the purpose you stated, the Mobius is the way to go.

The camera uses a micro HDMI card, and can be set to loop when its full, or stop when its full. The camera even works well at night when driving. Check out YouTube for Mobius videos.

Buy only from the sellers that are associated with the manufacture, which are listed on the website I mentioned above.. They are trusted vendor and will sell you the real thing, not a fake.

The camera comes with a slip on mount that has a threaded 1/4 tripod adapter, or anything else that uses a 1/4 mount. There is a suction cup mount that can be purchased separately and its really inexpensive.

For use in the car, what I do, is use a USB cable, and plug the cable into a USB 5V car adapter. These can also be bought cheap off the web, but I think those adapters only work on 12 negative ground. But for your modern car, that will work. Then if you A is 6v, the next easiest way to power the camera for longer periods than the internal battery is to get a USB battery pack. they come in different size capacities, but you won't need a real large one for this application. You will need to recharge the battery pack in the house.

The camera interfaces to your computer via a USB cable.

I bought mine on Ebay from one of the two recommended dealers in China. I just searched ebay for the word Mobius and the first one that came up was one of the recommended dealers, something like Electoponline... and it was for $68 with free shipping. These same dealers also sell the suction cup mount.

Again, be aware of those selling for less, it may not be the same product but a knock off.

Disclaimer: I have not read through the latest posts on the website above, so things may have changed or there may be new models out now.
The group is a RC group and encourages people to first look at existing posts before asking questions, especially the common ones that have been asked over and over again. Read the first set of posts that they list, as those are kept up to date and answer a lot of question you might have and need to know about this camera. Also because they are an RC group and not a Mobius camera group, alternate applications outside of RC stuff are not appreciated by this group. Questions directly related to the camera are fine. So don't ask them about Model A 6V applications, you're likely to not get a friendly response. Just saying (as I'm not a RCers, but found this website really helpful).
 
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Another place to look is motorcycle websites like Revzilla, Canada's Motorcycle, JP cycles. They have tons of mounts and cameras, not to mention user reveiws.
 
More Mobius info:
I see from looking further that there is a new model of Mobius with a wider angle lens. Mine camera is a couple of years old now, but I find the lens I have is wide enough.

Also you can set the camera to record when external power is applied and stop when that power is removed. That is the way to go for using it as a dash camera.

You can also set it to record when motion is detected, so it could be used as a security camera in a room etc when there normally isn't movement, or in a hotel room etc. But I found that it still draws the same battery power when in this mode, so again, auxiliary batter power would be needed for longer periods, or a USB wall adater.
 
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