I find online dashcam footage strangely fascinating. The collisions, near misses, and the downright bad attitudes of entitled drivers compel me to watch more, and I don’t know why.
Margo wanted to give me a frivolous gift. When asked, I replied with what fascinated me. I now have a two-camera dashcam set (technically, a dash and a rear window camera) fitted to my car.
One points forward to the road I’m about to travel, and the other points through the rear window and sees the road that’s passed.
I didn’t know much about dashcams. I wasn’t aware that they came with multiple cameras. Before we shopped for the gift, we thought one camera was standard. It looked over the bonnet of the car, showed the road ahead and recorded it as the driver drove. But as I looked into the finer details, I discovered that dashcams come in many versions. And the one-camera version is just a basic start.
There are many one-cam dashcams. Mostly, the differences come down to how many pixels the camera captures and how much low light it can handle before it struggles to see in the dark.
The next tier is the first of the twin-camera variants. But hold on. This is not the backward-facing road camera setup I was gifted. This is where two cameras are packed into the same unit. One lens faces the road and the other peers back into the cabin. It’s great for Uber and Taxi drivers who want to keep watch on the people behind them.
Again, pixel numbers and lux levels dictate quality and price.
The expanded dual camera variant is the one we chose. It’s when the first camera goes on the windscreen, and a separate camera (with a long lead) is mounted on the rear window of the vehicle, looking at the road behind the car (it could be pointed right or left, up or down; the user chooses where it goes).
Two-camera dashcams aren’t the only multi-view option on the market. All sides of a car can be covered if you like. The sky is the limit. I didn’t care for that. Two was enough.
And then there’s when the cam/s record stuff. Recording could be limited to when the car is moving along the road, but some will even do it when the car is parked, and the driver is away! They sense movement outside the car, self-activate and stop recording when the action is done.
And here’s where that part gets tricky.
It’s great to have a camera record stuff like that, but it’s not great to drain the car’s battery while doing it. If the cam/s is/are not powered by an independent battery, it’ll require a special management device to help regulate the flow of electricity from the car’s battery to the camera/s. It’s got to monitor it. If the vehicle’s battery drops to an unacceptable level, the device must know when to shut the camera(s) down.
The last thing you want is a dead car when you want it most.
Another feature of cams is their ability to handle temperature. In Australia, dashcams must contend with extreme heat. If the gear can’t handle it here, the gear packs it in. My cam has what’s called a supercapacitor. It keeps the memory circuits alive when the car is off. The supercapacitor is far more stable than an in-built battery when enduring these high temperatures.
Now it’s time for some driving and road recording. The cameras have already captured some poor driving behaviours by some road users! Have a look!
–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)
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SEETHINGS II follows the return of the Storm Killer as a body on a secluded beach in Moreton Bay, igniting fear and denial. While police dismiss the link, the media doesn’t. Mitchell Felding forms a dangerous bond with a man who understands his darkest impulses. When Natasha enters his life, carrying love letters from her murdered mother, intimacy deepens, and truth closes in. Some futures are inherited. Some have escaped.
SEETHINGS (first in the series) is downloadable and free for a limited time here.
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