Grinder34
Track Monkey
After watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRC7RO2tOJQ
I started looking into dash-cams. It turns out there are a few good FREE programs for android OS, so i've downloaded a few already. Right now I'm using Daily Roads, which is working well for me. Mini-review below.
Of course, my car mount had the camera blocked off. Nothing a drill couldnt fix! I didnt get the hole EXACTLY centered, so the upper right portion of the image is dark, but thats a pretty boring part of the video anyway.
Next I'll have to try:
AutoBoy Blackbox
Autoguard Blackbox (has a free and upgraded/pay version)
Anyone have any experience with these, or recommendations of others to try?
Mini-Review of DailyRoads:
So far it's worked quite well. The GPS coordinates and the speed are saved in a subtitles file that will play alongside the video. I particularly like that feature as I can use it in case of an over-zealous cop giving me a speeding ticket. The glitchiest part for me is the auto-on feature. The app is *supposed* to launch when the phone is placed in the car dock, but mine never does. I've taken to hitting the shortcut right before placing it in the dock. Certainly not a game-changer but a minor annoyance. My V1 droid lacks a particularly good camera, but the videos are fairly watchable for daytime driving. At night, it becomes useless. I'd like to try the auto-backup feature where it will upload videos to a server, but haven't gotten around to that yet. There's a built in auto-detect feature for collisions that I thankfully haven't had to use yet! However, I noticed that the defaults were causing the app to think i was getting in collisions when driving over large bumps--probably due to my suspension. Consequently, I had to up the auto-detect threshold. The camera also works in background mode, so you can have navigation up while the camera is still recording. However, things become VERY slow when trying to record and do just about anything else. That's probably due to the older nature of my phone's processor and ram, so newer phones might not have to worry about the multi-tasking issue.
The app has been good enough for me to not start playing around with any of the others that I listed, but perhaps I'll switch now--for science of course!
I started looking into dash-cams. It turns out there are a few good FREE programs for android OS, so i've downloaded a few already. Right now I'm using Daily Roads, which is working well for me. Mini-review below.
Of course, my car mount had the camera blocked off. Nothing a drill couldnt fix! I didnt get the hole EXACTLY centered, so the upper right portion of the image is dark, but thats a pretty boring part of the video anyway.
Next I'll have to try:
AutoBoy Blackbox
Autoguard Blackbox (has a free and upgraded/pay version)
Anyone have any experience with these, or recommendations of others to try?
Mini-Review of DailyRoads:
So far it's worked quite well. The GPS coordinates and the speed are saved in a subtitles file that will play alongside the video. I particularly like that feature as I can use it in case of an over-zealous cop giving me a speeding ticket. The glitchiest part for me is the auto-on feature. The app is *supposed* to launch when the phone is placed in the car dock, but mine never does. I've taken to hitting the shortcut right before placing it in the dock. Certainly not a game-changer but a minor annoyance. My V1 droid lacks a particularly good camera, but the videos are fairly watchable for daytime driving. At night, it becomes useless. I'd like to try the auto-backup feature where it will upload videos to a server, but haven't gotten around to that yet. There's a built in auto-detect feature for collisions that I thankfully haven't had to use yet! However, I noticed that the defaults were causing the app to think i was getting in collisions when driving over large bumps--probably due to my suspension. Consequently, I had to up the auto-detect threshold. The camera also works in background mode, so you can have navigation up while the camera is still recording. However, things become VERY slow when trying to record and do just about anything else. That's probably due to the older nature of my phone's processor and ram, so newer phones might not have to worry about the multi-tasking issue.
The app has been good enough for me to not start playing around with any of the others that I listed, but perhaps I'll switch now--for science of course!
