Can anyone recommend a good quality dash cam for heavy trucks/heavy equipment?
I can recommend one to STAY AWAY FROM ...... Roadhawk HD2 (try Googling it) (Roadhawk HD1 is fine)
Thanks Nige
I know that when a Russian shouts BILYAT, something is about to happen, or has just happened...
I'm curious to what others recommend here. I have a GiiNii GD250 in my service truck, absolutely love having one. I told the boss if I ever get in a wreck that takes me out, get that card out of that dash cam and find the SOB that ran me off the road and sue the hell outa them because I don't drive that truck like a maniac. The GD250 is fairly cheap, about 70 bucks at Wally World, but the memory card isn't included, I purchased a 30 gig card to go with it. It works quite well, even has decent night vision. The thing I don't particularly like about it is that it has a feature that detects sudden changes in motion, like a thump you would get if you hit another vehicle. When this happens it stores that footage in a protected file on the card that can only be erased by re-formatting the card. Problem is, a big truck bumps constantly so it protects a whole bunch of footage on the card that is actually a nothing event. So, you have to re-format the card quite frequently, and that process requires pushing several buttons. It's just a small annoyance, but an annoyance nevertheless, and maybe other dash cams are similar, I don't know as this is the only one I have experience with. But again, I love having it recording what is going on around my truck while I'm driving.
Street Guardian SG9665GC works well for me. My only complaint; the screen is too small but put the card into a computer and that's fixed!
I like the buttons on the screen side, that's one gripe I have about the GiiNii, all the buttons are on the sides of the unit and not friendly for fat fingers.
Hey Willie59, I dont know much about dash cams, so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is it going all the time? Or does it somehow take one of those jolts to start the video? If it records all the time, how much video time do you get off a 30 gig card? I think its a great idea, just have never looked into it. Could you move it to different trucks very easily? Thanks!
Hey willie59, most of the dash cam dvr's have a menu item to turn off the 'collision detect' that tags a file to be non-overwrite. I found out the hard way as I would always have mine recording and just overwriting as it needs... so one day for a burn investigation demo job I parked my truck facing the work area so I would have some good video of myself operating or so I thought.... when I got done driving home about and hour and a half away... took out the card and popped it into the computer only to find all I had was the last 30 minutes of driving home and a bunch of older files from weeks past when there would be a bump in the road or something So since then I turned off the impact detection or whatever it's called.
I have a Geeko Dash Cam ( chinese cheapie) +- $50. It records 3 minutes. The quality is not wonderfull but does the job. Here is an example.
Which ever one you get make sure it doesn't have speed indicating. If something happens and you were doing more then the limit it won't look good if there is a fight going on
I have an Armorall that was given to me. The thing works but getting the files off the card is kind of aggravating. It is in AVI files and in order to read it I have to drop it into an editing program and convert it to another format. I set it up to take 10 minute segments to make the thing work properly. Still don't know how to review footage inside the camera when I want to look. I suppose it will work if I ever get in an accident that I wasn't at fault on. I know people act different when ever they see the thing in the windshield. I had one operator being a bit obnoxious that I moved over in front of the truck. When he asked why we had to talk there I pointed out the camera. He left me alone after that.
That's not a stupid question IHdiesel, rather that's a good question. They record in a continuous loop. You can choose to record 2 minute, 3 minute, or 5 minute segments. So if you choose 5 minutes, every five minutes it starts a new recording file and saves them on the card. Once you've recorded enough files to use up the card it goes back and records over the oldest files on the card, erases the old files and begins saving the latest recorded files, recording is a continuous loop. The thing that doesn't apply to loop recording is the impact detection that's described by Ronsii a few post above. It protects those files, doesn't allow them to be erased during loop recording. Like he said, you can fill your card up with "protected files" and not have any memory left on the card to do loop recording of new files. Same way on the GeeNii GD250, the only way to erase those protected files is to re-format the card, something you have to do frequently. I'm going to have to investigate to see if I can turn of the impact detection on my unit Aside from that, I love having a dash cam record what the idiots are doing around me.
That's a helluva road your driving on seatwarmer, thanks for posting that!
This is one of the reasons I like having a dashcam, if I had pulled out maybe 3 seconds sooner this fellow would have plowed into my front bumper and I wouldn't be able to do a thing to prevent it from happening.
Here is another 3 minutes to enjoy
The real reason why I'm looking at dash cams
That is the kind of roads I learned to drive on
The company I work uses dash cams. So far in a year and a half the cams have paid for them selves- 45 cameras. We use Lytx Drive Cam. Very simple to install. http://info.drivecam.com/rs/lytx/images/Lytx_Standard Installation_303D_0214_0233.pdf Truck Shop
Just looked up Lytx trying to see what they sell their stuff for and where its available. Appears they are a service and don't sell to the public
That very well could be because if one of their cameras is damaged in a wreck they can retrieve the footage. Plus it comes with a monitoring service as well. I do know if you bump the kingpin on a trailer a little to hard it will start recording. According to our drivers. Truck Shop
Thanks for the posts guys