2021 - Page 4 of 6 - Car Camera Shop

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Powering your dash cam with a cigarette lighter socket

Cigarette Car Accessory Socket

If you’re new to car cameras it’s important to know that they get their power from the car cigarette lighter socket. Car cameras can’t work off an internal battery alone because they will only last a couple of hours before running out. It’s worth noting that many cameras do have an internal battery which allow you to take the camera out of the car and use a still camera.

The benefit of running the camera off the car cigarette lighter socket is that the power to the cigarette lighter socket is turned off when the car is turned off. This allows the camera to turn on and off with the car, preventing the camera staying on and draining the car battery when the car has been switched off.

This is all rather excellent but there are a few things you need to be mindful of. Some modern cars provide continuous power to the cigarette lighter socket which will mean the camera will never turn itself off. If your car provides permanent power you have two options:

1. Remember to unplug the camera from the cigarette lighter socket when you get out of the car.
2. Have your cigarette lighter socket rewired by a trained technician – expect to pay around £50 for this service at a main dealer.

How will I know if my car provides permanent power?

A simple test is to plug a car phone charger in and see if the phone is charged when you turn the car off. You may need to leave the car for an hour or so since some cars run on a timer where the power is turned off after a set period of time.

Hard-wiring a car camera

As an alternative, you can hard-wire the camera straight to the car battery using a special hard-wiring kit. This provides permanent power to the camera but then cuts the power once the battery has reached a set level to prevent discharging. These are typically used when you want to take advantage of the parking protection mode some cameras provide.

Posted on July 14, 2021May 12, 2023 by Eric Rogers

A Car Camera Success Story

There are several reasons that we buy car cameras but the main one is so that we can prove our innocence in the case of an incident; in particular, those that result in damage to our vehicles. With even cosmetic repairs running to hundreds, or even thousands of pounds, being able to show, irrefutably, that it wasn’t your fault is crucial. And that’s exactly what I managed to do recently, thanks to the footage from my trusty Mini 0801 dashcam.

Last November, my car was parked in a busy service station car park and, while I was inside getting some food, someone reversed into my car and decided to drive off. The impact had been significant enough that some kind Samaritan parked a few spaces away heard the crash and made a note of their registration number, but they had already been captured on my dashcam!

I had recently installed a Mini 0801 car camera and was putting it through its paces for a review, and this was to be the acid test. I checked the footage on its screen and I had captured the driver returning to their vehicle, reversing into my car, pausing to view the damage and then driving off.

The damage wasn’t extreme, some paint had been scraped off my front bumper on the passenger side, but I’d only just bought the car, and as you can image, I wasn’t too pleased! So what next? I had incriminating evidence, but what were the next steps towards contacting the driver and getting my car fixed? And should I be involving the police?!

I decided that considering the extent of the damage, I’d rather try to contact the driver of the vehicle directly to reach an amicable conclusion. So I did consult the police, but only to get advice on how to go about this. They advised that I should contact the DVLA, with details of the incident and see if they deemed it serious enough to divulge the other driver’s details. After some searching online, I found out that it was a V888 form that I needed to complete so I duly filled in the form, including details of why I wanted to contact the driver and shipped it off with a £2.50 postal order.

After a week or so, I received my form back, with a letter to say that they required further information about the damage and quotes for carrying out the repairs. Thankfully, several local garages and body shops were able to give approximate quotations based on photos so a few phone calls and emails later and I had a handful of quotes. I also printed off pictures of the damage to help the process along.

I’ll be honest, when I received my next letter from the DVLA and I could tell before opening it that they hadn’t returned my form, I thought “GOTCHA!!”. I was excited as I opened the letter and was expecting to see the name and address of a total stranger who, although he didn’t know it yet, would be receiving a strongly-worded letter from me soon. However, it turned out that the car was registered to a company, which changed the complexion of my plan of attack!

If anything it made things slightly easier, as I could contact the company by phone and try to speak to someone about the issue straight away. Within minutes I was speaking to the company’s fleet manager and he confirmed that the vehicle was one of theirs. He seemed sceptical at first as I told him that one of his vehicles had caused damage to mine but he was interested to see the footage I’d captured. I managed to extract a short video clip that was of a file size that could be emailed and sent it over to him.

Within minutes, such is the undeniable power of video, he’d replied to say that the business would cover all costs!! No quibbles, no negotiation, just immediate acceptance of responsibility.

If I’m honest, I’d have liked to have spoken to the driver as it was their poor driving and their decision to drive off that caused this whole mess, causing me frustration and effort. However, under the circumstances, and after a heartfelt apology from the company, I felt satisfied. The car was booked in at the garage and when I picked it up the day after it looked as good as new.

So after purchasing my car camera, for under £100, I was saved an expense several times that, thanks to the footage it captured. If I hadn’t had the camera, I might still have been able to get in touch with the driver thanks to someone who decided to jot down their registration plate, but that’s not always going to happen and can’t be relied upon. Also, would the driver, or in this case company, have been so willing to pay if it was just my word against theirs? Probably not. They hadn’t noticed any damage on their car so why would they believe me?

We always knew that car cameras could help drivers to prove their innocence in the case of any accident and now we have the proof and we wouldn’t be without our dashcams nowadays. And with cameras like the Mini 0801, Mobius and G1W, among others, offering superb video quality for as little as £49.99, the peace of mind they offer is easily affordable and they can pay for themselves in no time at all.

Have you used your dashcam footage to successfully prove your innocence in the case of an incident? We’d love to hear from you if you have! Comment below or contact us here.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Our guest appearance on national radio show Let’s Talk Business

Our guest appearance on national radio show Let's Talk Business

Let's Talk Business Presenter Alan Coote

Alan Coote, Presenter of Let’s Talk Business

This week we’re appearing on a radio station near you! Let’s Talk Business is a national radio programme for current and future entrepreneurs presented by Alan Coote. We were asked by the producers to talk for a few minutes about Car Camera Shop and the car camera and dash cam industry.

“Let’s Talk Business is the UK’s premiere weekly Radio programme for current and future entrepreneurs. It focuses what we would all like to do; To be our own boss and not have to worry about money. Every week, top guests who know their stuff, give valuable advice and information which means you’ll learn all the skills you need to be an entrepreneur.”

We talked about how we began Car Camera Shop and the benefits that car cameras can bring to both consumers and fleet owners alike. Car cameras are relatively new to the UK with their popularity growing every month.

The show is broadcast on over 30 radio stations across the UK with a weekly audience of over 3.5 million people.

Stay tuned and listen out for us this week! If you just can’t wait, you can listen to the show online.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Mini 0803: Coming Soon

Today we’ve been speaking to the Chinese company that manufacture the Mini 0801 about the next-generation of this hugely popular dashcam. To be named the Mini 0803, this new car camera is currently in the final stages of testing before it reaches mass-production.

Featuring an updated Amberalla A7L30 or A7L50 main chip and an AR0330 3MP image sensor we’re anticipating that the Mini 0803 will deliver ultra-clear video and with wide dynamic range (WDR), excellent image quality in all lighting conditions. With talk of including a lane departure warning system, which alerts you if you stray from your lane, this camera could include unique features that set it apart from the rest!

We’re hoping to get our hands on one as soon as possible so stay tuned for our first look reviews and sample video! You can view more information on the Mini 0803 camera on our product page.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Mobius ActionCam (Dash Cam Version) Review

The Mobius ActionCam is an all round action camera which comes with the basic dash cam features required to make it an ideal car camera. This includes loop recording, auto power on/off, range of car mounts, and auto recording amongst other things which turn this light and nimble action camera into the perfect dash cam.

Key Features

Full HD 1080p @ 30fps.
Loop recording, auto power on/off.
Photo mode.
Motion detection.
Range of mounts available.
MicroSD memory cards up to 32GB (class 6)

When you first hold the camera you realise just how small and light it actually is with an excellent build quality – it feels very strong and sturdy, more than enough to cope with even the worst drivers out there! It’s by far the smallest dash cam on the market and one of the cheapest. There’s no official box with the camera and there isn’t any instructions or software provided. However, you can download some Windows software to change the camera preferences and a PDF user manual created by third-parties (see download links below). Without the software, you can change the camera preferences by editing a text file on the memory card – it’s easy enough but can appear a little daunting at first.

The Mobius camera comes with lots of mounting options allowing you to mount it in the car with a suction or adhesive mount, depending on your preference. If you want to use the camera for other activities such as cycling or even snowboarding, you can purchase additional mounts. The camera mounts using a standard tripod thread which means you can use any mount with the tripod thread connection.

I’ve actually been using the little Mobius camera in my car for a few months and absolutely love it. During this time the manufacturer has released half a dozen firmware updates which improves reliability and adds new functionality. I’ve not had a single problem with the camera in the 3 months I’ve been using it and it has even captured an accident.

On a 16GB MicroSD memory card you can get around 2 hours of video at the full 1080p 30fps high quality setting. You can obviously get more if you reduce the quality down to 720p but you need the full HD to get the best quality footage available. The manufacturer recommends a class 6 memory card but I’ve been using a class 10 card without problems.

When you open the software you’ll notice that there’s lots of camera settings to play with. It’s worth having a play with the settings and trying the different options until you’re happy you have the best quality video for how you use it. Like many dash cams, it comes with High Dynamic Range (sometimes called Wide Dynamic Range) which improves the video quality in low-light or at night time. This can compromise the standard video however, since more noise is added to the video. If you rarely drive at night, then it’s best to leave this feature off.

After a recent firmware update, motion detection was added to the camera features. This works well but you cannot have motion detection running alongside normal recording. Unlike most dash cams, where the motion detection normally kicks in when you have parked the car, you will need to run the camera with motion detection on all the time which means you may miss out on footage whilst the car has stopped. It’s good to see the manufacturer releasing new firmware and features though – perhaps motion detection will improve over time.

The camera does lack some of the advanced features offered by other dash cams such as GPS maps, LCD screen, speed tracking, or a g-sensor. Event recording is not automatic (normally a g-sensor will automatically sense an impact and lock the video file) but there is a button on the camera which you can press to lock a file. This isn’t a feature I’ve ever used (I always forget which button it is!) so if you need to save a video file you can just stop the camera before it loops and overwrites the footage you want to keep.

Whilst it does lack some of the advanced car camera features, the quality of the full HD 1080p video is astonishing and trumps the top of the range £300+ cameras. It really is excellent both during the day and at night. So, if you’re looking for a small camera which takes exceptional video without the extra features this is the perfect camera.

video without the extra features this is the perfect camera.

Sample Mobius Videos

Sample Daytime Footage

Sample Night-time Footage

Comparison of the Mobius vs. BlackVue DR550

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Updating your Mini 0801 Firmware (Tutorial)

The Mini 0801 is one of our most popular car cameras, and it’s easy to see why. It records great video, has a handy little LCD screen and hides discreetly in any vehicle. I use one in my car in fact and wouldn’t go anywhere without it nowadays. On the rare occasion that I have to drive somewhere and have forgotten to put the memory card back in it, I feel vulnerable! Strange but true! I feel positive that the time my Mini 0801 isn’t recording, will be the time something happens!! Anyway, I’m rambling…

One way of ensuring your Mini 0801 dashcam is performing at it’s best is to keep the firmware up to date. Firmware is essentially the programming of your camera and manufacturers will release new firmware files as they develop their products so users can update them. This often adds new features and menu options, or fixes known issues and bugs. With each firmware upgrade your product will usually get better and more stable.

Firmware is provided in the shape of a small file that can be downloaded via the internet and uploaded to your camera either via the memory card, or occasionally by plugging the camera into a computer.

The steps below outline how you can update your Mini 0801 dashcam with the latest firmware. Please note: While these instructions are tried and tested, any changes or updates to your firmware are done so at your own risk.

How to check your current Mini 0801 firmware version
If you want to check which version of the firmware your Mini 0801 currently has, you can find this information in the menu. Press ok to stop your camera from recording if necessary and then hold the up button to access the menu. Press up again once the menu is open to highlight the ‘FIRMWARE’ option, then press OK. This will show you the firmware version you currently have.

STEP 1

Download the firmware file that is applicable to your camera. At the time of writing, the latest Mini 0801 firmware for the versions that we offer (without internal memory) is available below, and in the support section of our site. This is version 20131202.

Download: Mini 0801 Firmware (20131202)

STEP 2

Copy the firmware file onto a Micro SD card. If you’re using the one from your camera, format the card first so that the firmware is the only file remaining on it.

STEP 3

Insert the memory card into your Mini 0801 dashcam and turn the power on.

STEP 4

When prompted with ‘FIRMWARE UPDATE?’, press up top highlight YES in red, then press OK.

STEP 5

The screen will then display ‘PROCESSING…’ for a short time and the LED will stay solid blue. If your screen is set to turn off after a minute, it will do so but the update will continue to be carried out. The LED will remain blue until the update is finished (approximately 1m 40s later in our tests) at which point the camera will turn itself off. You may hear the power off tone and the LED will turn off.

STEP 6

Your Mini 0801 is now updated, but before you proceed, remove the firmware file from your Micro SD card to prevent the camera from asking if you want to update your firmware the next time you turn it on.

STEP 7

Re-insert your Micro SD card, power up your camera and check that the latest firmware is installed. You may need to check the menu settings and adjust them as they will have been restored to the default settings.

And that’s it. Told you it was easy, and your Mini 0801 is now bang up-to-date!

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

Our guide to parking protection with real life footage

Parking protection is a popular feature on many dash cams but we’re often asked, just exactly, “what is it?” Does it help you park the car into a tight space? Does it record whilst you’re parked? Read on for our beginners guide to parking protection or watch our video for an overview by the lovely Katie.

If you’ve ever returned to your car in a car park and noticed a dent in the door or even worse, dented and scratched panels, you’ll immediately see the benefit parking protections can bring.

In a nutshell, parking protection is a mode on the camera which continues to record whilst you have parked and left your car. When the camera detects movement in front using motion detection or a shock using a built-in g-sensor, it will record and lock a file so you can play it back later should you need to.

If you’re new to car cameras, they use loop recording so that when the memory card fills up it starts to over-write the oldest footage first, to keep the camera recording. However, a locked file is a video file which won’t get over-written when the card fills up. Generally speaking, parking protection video files are locked so you don’t lose the footage after a few hours of driving. Many cameras also lock files when you experience a sudden change in direction or shock.

Depending on the camera, they usually save the video around 30 seconds before and after the motion/shock was detected. This ensures you have enough video of what happened at the time of the incident. Most cameras will automatically enter into parking protection mode after a few minutes without moving or when the car ignition is switched off but some require you to press a button to manually turn on parking protection mode as you leave your car parked.

Parking protection gives you peace of mind that if your vehicle is damaged when parked up, you can identify and bring the guilty person to justice and avoid claiming on your car insurance or paying for the repairs yourself. The footage can be used for tracking the driver down with the DVLA, making an insurance claim, or reporting the incident to the police. Of course, there is no guarantee that you’ll capture the culprit on camera but you never know. We know at first had how important parking protection can be – check out this video from a camera installed in one of our cars:

For cameras with multiple lenses such as a BlackVue DR550 or the Mi-Witness, the motion detection works for both the front and rear of the car and both angles are recorded and locked for playback later. This can help improve the chances of recording the incident and finding the person at fault.

For parking protection to work effectively, you will need a permanent power supply to the camera rather than connecting via the cigarette lighter socket. Some cameras do have internal batteries but at best they’ll only last an hour, so your recording time will be limited. By hard-wiring the camera to the car battery using one of the hard-wiring kits available you’ll be able to provide permanent power to the camera whilst protecting the battery from discharge.

Depending on where you park, the camera may record lots of footage so you will need to be mindful that the memory card doesn’t fill up with locked files. Some cameras will simply stop recording and others will start to overwrite the oldest locked files first so make sure to check the camera regularly and unlock any files which you do not need.

To sum up, parking protection offers video surveillance around the car when the camera detects movement or shock which can be vital in giving you the evidence you need should something happen to your car whilst parked up. There are lots of camera which offer parking protection so browse our full range of dash cams with parking protection.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers

BlackVue DR550GW-HD Car Camera Review

Posted by Car Camera Shop on Tuesday, 14 January 2014

We’ve tested a lot of dash cams here at Car Camera Shop, but never before one with a rear-facing camera. So when Pittasoft offered us a BlackVue DR550GW-HD to review, their first two-channel camera, we jumped at the chance. Having the ability to record behind your vehicle, as well as in front, greatly increases the chances of you capturing any activity that could lead to you needing to claim on your insurance.

Key Features

Full HD quality video (1920 x 1080) at 30fps.
139° wide angle lens with a 2.4MP Sony Exmor CMOS sensor.
Multi-lens to capture video from front and rear.
Wifi enabled to connect to a mobile app.
GPS maps for speed and location tracking.
G-shock sensor to detect sudden and severe movement.
Parking mode for protection when parked.
Photo mode.
MicroSD cards up to 32GB. 16GB card supplied.
Adjustable adhesive windscreen mount.

Upon opening the well-presented packaging, the build and design quality of both cameras is the first thing you notice, certainly in comparison to some of the budget range of cameras available in the market today. Continuing the sleek, barrel design of the existing BlackVue cameras, these are constructed of tough, beautifully finished plastic, with smart little design features, from the subtle placement of status LEDs to the touch-sensitive audio on/off sensor on the front camera. Even the air ventilation holes complement the design beautifully!

There are also some nice finishing touches such as the BlackVue logo on the lens cap and even etched underneath the adhesive pad on the rear camera that, while not strictly necessary, really do paint the picture that this is a premium quality product. The camera isn’t cluttered with buttons which helps retain its sense of style, but that doesn’t mean that it’s short on functionality either. At one end, a touch-sensitive panel enables you to turn audio recording on and off easily while driving and at the opposite end, alongside the power and rear camera connectors, a single button engages the DR550GW’s own WiFi hotspot. This enables you to access a wealth of setting and options via your smartphone, but we’ll talk more about that later!

Installation was easy, and we were impressed with the quality of the cables provided. Every connection felt made-to-measure, particularly the AV in/out cable connecting the two cameras which clicked into place firmly. All cables were long enough to route around the car, completely hidden from view behind the trim and beneath the carpet. The only complication we encountered was the amount of slack cable required to allow our hatchback boot to open. This loop of cable couldn’t be hidden as well as we’d have liked when the boot was closed, but it didn’t cause any visibility issues in the slightest and wasn’t very noticeable.

There’s definitely something very comforting about having a car camera installed. The peace-of-mind that comes from knowing you’ll have footage if anything happens on the road is appreciated. So catching sight of the additional rear camera in our mirror was very welcome. Its subtle white LED let us know that it was powered up and recording.

On powering up the camera for the first time we’re welcomed with a voice message, “BlackVue for your safe driving”. These voice prompts give you updates as to the status of the camera to make sure you it’s all working properly. While they’re a novelty at first, we eventually turned them off, preferring our camera to be seen and not heard. With this in mind, and despite the DR550-GW-HD being bigger than some cameras on the market, the main unit was discreetly hidden behind our rear-view mirror.

Using the free BlackVue app, available for iOS and Android devices, you can adjust just about anything you could wish to on your camera. From the video brightness and g-sensor sensitivity to the length of videos being recorded and which voice alerts you wish to hear. It also lets you view a live feed of what the front and rear cameras are viewing which is invaluable in positioning them in your vehicle. More importantly, the app is one of the key ways in which you can view the videos that your camera has recorded and we were impressed at how easy it is to use. The video files are easily identified as either ‘normal’, ‘event’ or ‘parking’ and by being either front or rear facing videos. They can be easily filtered so you can access the files you want quickly and easily.

Once playing, the videos streamed well from the camera and the image looked sharp. The view could be switched from front to back seamlessly at the push of a button. Depending on the device you’re using, you might not quite be able to make out registration plate numbers, but rest assured that the detail will be there once you view them on a bigger screen, such as on your PC or Mac.

The software provided is also intuitive and uses the same filtering system as the app to let you find the videos that you’re looking for easily. Using a smart picture-in-picture mechanism, you’re able to view the front and rear-facing footage simultaneously giving you a complete picture of activity around you at the time of any incident. To view more detail, the videos can be viewed at full screen size.

The only issue we found with the footage was that at speed, areas of the video became blocky and pixelated which was disappointing. When stationary, both the front and rear images look very sharp but they quickly deteriorate as the cameras struggle to process the images. This issue is caused by the low bitrate that each camera has. Even updating the camera to the latest firmware, which improved the video quality, we still noticed issues with the image quality. We’ve contacted Pittasoft for comment and will update this review once we hear from them. With the dashcam community happy to feedback to manufacturers to help them develop their products, we’d like to think that future updates will help to resolve this issue.

We also missed the ability to be able to lock video files of our choosing if, for example, something happened on the road around us that we wanted to keep a record of, but that we weren’t directly involved in; for example, a near-miss between other cars on the road or some anti-social behavior. With other dashcams, you can press a button to create an ‘;event’ file which won’t be overwritten by the camera and will be kept safe. It’s purely down to personal preference but we’d like to see this feature on the DR550GW-HD as we regularly use this feature on other test cameras. With so many people sharing video files of their experiences on the road nowadays, this is a very popular feature.

And so, in conclusion, the BlackVue DR550GW-HD really does set the bar high in terms of build quality and features, but has improvements to make in the video quality department. We genuinely hope that future firmware updates will rectify the issues that the camera currently has, at which point this camera has the potential to become one of the best cameras on the market.

Sample footage: Front view

Sample footage: Rear view

Sample footage: BlackVue HD Software

Note: the software footage above appears jerky due to our screen capture software. On-screen the footage is perfectly smooth.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers — Leave a comment

Monitor your kids behind the wheel

If you’re a parent, handing the keys to your precious car over to your 17 year old son or daughter can be a tough decision – especially if you love your car.. and your child!

We all know that statistically drivers under 25 are at a higher risk of being involved in a car accident. There are many reasons for this including lack of experience and attention, excessive speed, poorly maintained cars, night-time driving, and perhaps a false sense of confidence.

You obviously want your child to be safe and to reduce the likelihood of them being involved in an accident, whether this be a small bump in a car park or a serious high-speed crash. We’ve found that many parents are turning to car cameras as a way to help improve their children’s driving and reduce the risk of an accident.

Aside from saving on car insurance and providing irrefutable evidence in case of an accident, it has been proven that having a car camera actually makes you a more safety conscious and better driver – ideal for young drivers. Of course, if they do have an accident you’ll have video evidence of exactly what happened to help with the insurance claim. Young drivers are vulnerable so this evidence could prove vital in determining the party at fault in an accident.

It’s up to the parent on how they introduce the dash cam but many parents offer their car (or buy a car) providing they use a car camera which can be viewed at any time. As the parent, you can view the footage of their driving and even see their speed and location on a map, providing your camera comes equipped with GPS. You can also see the g-forces being applied so you can identify quick and dangerous moves on the road! Quite a powerful tool for a parent!

You could argue that this is all rather big brother but if you love your kids and want them to be safe, this is a very effective way to ensure they drive safely and reduce the risk of having an accident.

Posted on July 14, 2021January 24, 2023 by Eric Rogers — Leave a comment

10 tips for getting the best dash cam footage

Congratulations on owning a car camera! You’re now fully enjoying the benefits they bring and probably can’t live without it any more? Now you’ve got your camera, you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of it and record the best quality footage you can. We’ve put a simple list of 10 things you can do to improve the video quality and get the most out of owning a car camera.

1. Position the camera in the centre of the screen

It may sound obvious, but we’ve seen plenty of videos where the camera is mounted in the corner which tends to distort the footage making for a less clear picture, especially when driving at night. The camera should be positioned in the centre of the windscreen near the top, ideally behind the rear view mirror.

2. Reduce the amount of sky in the picture

Everyone loves the sky but, unless you’re trying to capture the next meteorite landing, you should limit the amount of sky you capture as you drive. The more sky you have the more sunlight you get which results in more glare, reducing the quality of the video. The camera will also try to compensate for the brightness of the sky, darkening the video, which can make the detail on other vehicles harder to make out. It doesn’t matter if you record more of the car dashboard – as long as you capture the road ahead.

3. Adjust g-sensor sensitivity settings

Many car cameras equipped with a g-sensor automatically lock a video clip if it detects an accident. Sometimes, the camera will lock a file by mistake when you go over a bump or take a sharp turn. You can usually tweak the sensitivity of the g-sensors to prevent your memory card filling up with locked files. Adjust to a setting which works well for you – some cars, particularly performance cars, require a less sensitive g-sensor.

4. Mute/unmute the audio

This is down to preference of whether you want to record sound. Personally, I prefer to mute the sound so I don’t record my dreadful singing or telephone calls on the video. The important thing is the video so sound is an added bonus.

5. Clean your windscreen

It’s vital that you keep your windscreen clean. Aside from being able to see where you’re driving, you’ll have clearer footage should you be involved in an accident. Try and clean the inside with window cleaner every month and make sure you keep your windscreen washer fluid topped up – especially in the Winter.

When driving in the rain or wet conditions make sure to use your wipers to not only see where you’re going (very important!) but to clear the windscreen for the camera. If you have muck or light drizzle on the windscreen the quality of the video footage will be significantly worse.

6. Adjust video quality and frame rate

All cameras provide the option to change the resolution (Full HD, HD, VGA etc.) and possibly the frame rate. Generally speaking, there is no real need for 60fps for a car camera and we recommend the highest resolution possible. When we get a new camera we always experiment with the different resolutions and frame rates to see which works best during the days and equally at night.

When it comes to night time driving, many cameras come equipped with a WDR (Wide Dynamic Range) mode. This mode improve the light for night time driving but does tend to add noise to the footage which can reduce the quality of day-time footage. Generally speaking, if you drive a lot at night then it’s worth using, otherwise, leave it off. Try the settings and see what works for you.