Sorry if this has been discussed before but I have not seen any mention of this.
With so many accidents and he says / she says proof of fault; insurance scams; random acts of nature; road rage happening around our cars (/trucks, motorbikes, etc), and with the rise of dash-cams, I don't understand why dash-cams are so expensive, especially the ones with GPS-tracking, LCD display, logging, G-Sensor, etc, many hundreds of dollars for the cheapest one - when we all already have all the hardware, camera, gps, G-sensor, screen, CPU, microSD / wifi /3G storage options already - why are we doubling up on costs to get a dash-cam?
Especially in Australia where (since 1st Nov 2012) we now have no mobile phone road rules severely restricting the use of phones and GPS in the car - the GPS device (including smartphone GPS) must be mounted in a secured mount properly to be used. And when mounting our Android smartphones properly for GPS-use, what just so happens to be on the back of our phones aimed directly at the road in front of us? A still/video camera!!!!
I don't understand why someone hasn't written / ported some of the good user-friendly, responsive software used in the dedicated dash-cams for the Android.
Instead of a tiny percentage of drivers handing over hundreds of dollars for a dedicated dash-cam, with your GPS-smartphone mounted by its side for mapping, I envisage thousands or more paying several $s each for a decent configurable app - such that you could have a widget that you simply tap as you mount it and it starts recording, looping after a pre-set time, with an incident-button to write-protect the current recording, and switch the recording to a Hi-res hi-frame mode if the default is below the maximum.
There could be several pricing models - a cheap $1, or maybe free option with ads overlaid in the recording itself, a $2-$5 option ad-free with low-res or some limitations, and a premium $10-$20 option with all the bells and whistles.
I'd pay $20 for one device that did my bluetooth phonecalls, musicplayer, gps navigation and dash-cam recording, with one hardware cost and one device to mount and dismount each time.
With so many accidents and he says / she says proof of fault; insurance scams; random acts of nature; road rage happening around our cars (/trucks, motorbikes, etc), and with the rise of dash-cams, I don't understand why dash-cams are so expensive, especially the ones with GPS-tracking, LCD display, logging, G-Sensor, etc, many hundreds of dollars for the cheapest one - when we all already have all the hardware, camera, gps, G-sensor, screen, CPU, microSD / wifi /3G storage options already - why are we doubling up on costs to get a dash-cam?
Especially in Australia where (since 1st Nov 2012) we now have no mobile phone road rules severely restricting the use of phones and GPS in the car - the GPS device (including smartphone GPS) must be mounted in a secured mount properly to be used. And when mounting our Android smartphones properly for GPS-use, what just so happens to be on the back of our phones aimed directly at the road in front of us? A still/video camera!!!!
I don't understand why someone hasn't written / ported some of the good user-friendly, responsive software used in the dedicated dash-cams for the Android.
Instead of a tiny percentage of drivers handing over hundreds of dollars for a dedicated dash-cam, with your GPS-smartphone mounted by its side for mapping, I envisage thousands or more paying several $s each for a decent configurable app - such that you could have a widget that you simply tap as you mount it and it starts recording, looping after a pre-set time, with an incident-button to write-protect the current recording, and switch the recording to a Hi-res hi-frame mode if the default is below the maximum.
There could be several pricing models - a cheap $1, or maybe free option with ads overlaid in the recording itself, a $2-$5 option ad-free with low-res or some limitations, and a premium $10-$20 option with all the bells and whistles.
I'd pay $20 for one device that did my bluetooth phonecalls, musicplayer, gps navigation and dash-cam recording, with one hardware cost and one device to mount and dismount each time.