Hardwiring dashcam

Faults and Technical chat for the Skoda Karoq
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Milfmog
Posts: 365
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2018 11:35 am
Location: South Buckinghamshire

Post by Milfmog »

Thanks Mike.

I now have the Thinkware F770 2CH dash cam sat on my kitchen worktop. It is due to be fitted in 10 days so I will test it for myself. Quick trials with a stand alone Garmin and with a smartphone both showed no issue, so I will put that down to another urban myth. 8-)

Have fun,


Ian.
Karoq SE-L 1.5TSI DSG 2WD. Emerald green, beige leather, heated screen and steering wheel, lane assist, blind spot assist, adaptive cruise control.

My Fuelly page www.fuelly.com/car/skoda/karoq/2018/tazzymutt/798670

PDriver40
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon May 07, 2018 8:15 pm
Location: Kilkenny, Ireland

Post by PDriver40 »

Milfmog wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 4:04 pm.Have no fear of interference by a heated windscreen. I have 6 years of driving cars with such and it causes no problem to GPS or dashcams
Thank you for that Karob,

I am due to collect my car tomorrow and intend to install front and rear dash cams sooner rather than later. I am currently gravitating towards a Thinkware F77 2CH that includes GPS tracking but wondered whether the heated front screen would have a detrimental effect on the GPS reception. Does anyone have any experience of GPS receivers under a heated screen? Is signal degradation a problem?

Have fun,


Ian.
User avatar
Milfmog
Posts: 365
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2018 11:35 am
Location: South Buckinghamshire

Post by Milfmog »

My dashcam is now fitted and I have to compliment the team from www.dashcampros.uk on a quick and tidy job done very conveniently at my work car park while I was earning the pennies to pay for it. I opted for the web-based company since they could get the job done far sooner than I could get a Saturday morning appointment at Car Concepts. Arrived early, took care to hide all the wiring neatly having first agreed with me where he would site the cameras. When he'd finished (about 45 minutes after I arrived0 he spent some time with me to install the app on my phone and show me how it worked. Great service.

One unexpected side effect was that I parked in a bay to give easy access all around the car and, as a result, the rear camera had a great view of smokers corner, so I now have a video audit of how much time some of the shirkers spent burning the weed...

Have fun,


Ian.
Karoq SE-L 1.5TSI DSG 2WD. Emerald green, beige leather, heated screen and steering wheel, lane assist, blind spot assist, adaptive cruise control.

My Fuelly page www.fuelly.com/car/skoda/karoq/2018/tazzymutt/798670
User avatar
Milfmog
Posts: 365
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2018 11:35 am
Location: South Buckinghamshire

Post by Milfmog »

A bit late but time for an update on the dash cam

The camera (Thinkware F77 2CH) works well, both while the car is in use and in parking mode when it is motion activated. The camera is very sensitive to the memory card used and works perfectly with the card supplied with the camera but frequently reports memory card errors when used with a genuine Class 10 Samsung card.

The picture quality is OK (Full HD 1920 x 1080) however, it is not easy to read the registration numbers of vehicles coming towards me due to movement blurring. Not bad in good light but harder in dim or half-light. Anyone thinking of buying a dash cam should be aware of this and try to get some sample footage at camera level resolution, ie not compressed by YouTube. In my experience the manufacturers and to a lesser degree camera owners, tend to blame poor readability of registration numbers on YouTube's compression of the files. However, I can see little difference in picture quality between native files and the YouTube versions.

One other thing to note is that the Karoq start-stop puts quite a load on the battery and I have found that the resting voltage of the car battery is rarely above 12.3v and frequently drops to below 12v overnight, even when the car has done a couple of hundred miles the previous day. When in parking mode, the camera switches off at a selectable voltage level to prevent excessive flattening of the car battery. I have it set to switch off at 12v and it is frequently off when I go to the car first thing in the morning. This is not a fault of the dash cam, but may be indicative of a future issue with the Karoq, possibly requiring more frequent replacement of the (very expensive) battery that I would expect. Time will tell.

Hope that helps someone.

Have fun,


Ian.
Karoq SE-L 1.5TSI DSG 2WD. Emerald green, beige leather, heated screen and steering wheel, lane assist, blind spot assist, adaptive cruise control.

My Fuelly page www.fuelly.com/car/skoda/karoq/2018/tazzymutt/798670
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