Rednroll

There's been quite a few instances in the past where hindsight being 20/20 I wish I had a dash cam. 3 of those instances and there's been others situations, I had gotten into accidents in parking lots which weren't my fault, where the lesson learned in all 3 instances is that people will lie to protect their own ass, where when the police come to make the report, it ends up being your word against the other driver, and then the police write up the report stating 50/50 at fault. With most of my insurances and in my state if you're less than 50% at fault, the person at majority fault insurance pays your deductible. So seeing I have a $500 deductible, and these were minor fender benders in a parking lot, the repairs ended up costing me money to fix in all 3 instances since I could not prove the other driver was a majority at fault. A dash cam would have eliminated those problems.

As a heads up when you start shopping, aside from size and video quality there's a few different features that separate the dash cams from each other where the 0906 and 0805 mini seemed to have the ones which I felt were most important for my needs.
1. GPS- Cams with GPS will be able to record the date/time, and most important your speed and record that info onto the video. Important if you need to prove you weren't speeding and will also show you braking due to the speed reduction being displayed.
2. Infared Night Vision. These seem to have the better quality for night vision recording.
3. Auto-save/protect upon innocent (ie motion sensor activated). The cams will continually record and depending on the size of SD card, it will start overwriting the older videos. When it detects an accident, it will auto-save that recorded footage so it protects it from getting overwritten. The 0906/0805's also have a button which you can press for a manual auto-save/protect as well. You just climbed over Mt. Rushmore with your Jeep? It might be good to protect that recording to show everyone, before it gets overwritten by the loop record mode.
4. Parking mode operation.

The last one is where I felt the mini series set themselves apart from the rest. They have 4 modes to choose between when parked. The concern is that you don't want your battery to drain while parked but still be able to capture an incident while you're parked and away from the vehicle. You also don't want to be filling up your SD Card with a bunch of video record space when you're parked. The cams which have both an ignition and constant B+ 12V connection will be able to provide the most options since they know when your engine is running through the IG wire connection, as well as have constant BATT power to offer additional features when your ignition is off and parked.

This is what the mini's provide for parking mode operations.
AUTO SWITCH LAPSE
ALWAYS TIME LAPSE
MOTION DETECTION
NORMAL RECORDING

The mini was the only one which I saw that had the "Lapse" mode recording when parked. How it works is that the cameras will record at 2 frames per second when parked therefore, reducing the battery drain and SD storage space consumption. It stitches those frames together, where it looks kind of like a FastForward record, but catching enough video to see what is going on. If it detects motion, then it will auto switch into 720p 30FPS full record mode. So that's how the "AUTO SWITCH LAPSE" operation works. Most only have the "MOTION DETECTION" operation for parking. So someone smashed into your Jeep while you're parked, it will start recording AFTER the innocent, so you miss everything that occurred prior until something actually happened and the camera detected the motion.

After I get the 0906 mini dual cam setup installed and have some time to try it out and see how I like it, I'm considering buying another setup to mount on my side rear windows. Those people that like to park next to me, then carelessly throw their doors open and leave me some door dents with no note left behind, I would like to be able to have some video to catch them as well. My thought is, I would then be able to catch the Innocent of them giving me a door dent, scrape, etc, then capture their license plate of them driving away and have some good footage to make a police report, so that person's insurance can pay for the repairs.

jedg

Is front and rear cameras infrared? That's what I've had trouble finding. Most say just the front.

Rednroll

Good question. I read through the specs in the manual and couldn't find a definite answer. The best I could find is a multi-cam comparison video which shows both the front and rear Mini cams in night time city driving conditions.


Here's what I was able to find on a product description listing from Amazon.

"Eximious Night Vision: This dual channel dash cam uses industry-leading Sony Exmor sensor (Front IMX290/291 and Rear IMX 322/323), collocating with large aperture (Front F1.7 / Rear F2.0), present you an excellent night vision performance; Clearly records license number even at night "

jedg

Thanks. I'm convinced I want front and rear. Just a matter of which one.

Rednroll

A front and rear cam setup seems like a good idea, as shown by RiverRat72's video.

Based upon the images below, the smaller size and value price of the mini, that a dual/dual cam setup may not be a bad idea as well to get the sides as well.

baileyj

Got the Smitty Built front and rear too, good to see them in action, very tough. Glad everyone is ok.

WaterRat72

Sorry I have been away for a bit. I do run 2 separate cameras. One attached to the back window and one attached to the windshield.

Rednroll

Thanks for confirming! I kept going back and forth with myself and thinking, "should I go with 2 separate front cams, or get the newer dual cam setups?"

I was considering going with a dual front cam setup like you did may have some advantages, such as not having to run a wire connected to the front cam, all the way to the rear and just tap into some power wires in the rear by putting a front cam in the rear. The front cams by themselves also seem to have better image quality and features My plan is to see how I like the dual cam setup I got and if I don't prefer it then I may purchase 2 separate front cams like your setup and use those for the front/rear views and then move the dual cam setup I got for the side views. However, if I do prefer the dual cam setup I will just purchase a 2nd dual cam setup for the sides. I'm waiting for some warmer weather to get this installed. Hopefully, I don't run into any incidents like you did between now and then and wished I had installed it sooner.

07WrangX

What are you all doing when the soft top is on? I was thinking of mounting the rear camera to one of the roll bars.

Rednroll

That's one of the things I'm currently trying to figure out when I go to do my install. My thought was that I would make a Y-adapter cable and run one line of the Y to the rear window area and the other to the roll bar and then be able to plug/unplug the rear cam, then mount the rear cam either on the rear window with hard top on, or the roll bar with hard top off.

Honestly, that was another reason I was considering that maybe a dual front dash cam setup may work out better. There is a special cable that runs from the front cam to the rear cam. The benefits of using that cable is that you record to a single SD card which is plugged into the front cam and the front/rear videos would be in sync. I don't think either of those benefits are that much of a benefit. The front cam of the 0906 has a quick connect/disconnect mount which is intended so you can remove the cam for theft prevention. However, what I'm starting to consider is that if I could have a second quick connect mount and put 2 of the mounts in the rear to move the rear cam between a rear window mount and roll bar mount, then that may work out better. Heck....I don't know, I may end up with (3) of these 0906 setups the more I think about it, where I could also have some interior cams and be able to put one of the front cams in the rear.

I haven't quite figured that all out yet, but would definitely be interested to learn what others may have come up with. Maybe we should start another thread since this one was likely intended more about the accident captured and the bumpers but we kind of hijacked it and turned it into a cam discussion?