Thinkware F770 front and rear dash cam system

[Gyro]

Hi folks.

I've posted this on the "4M pics and videos" thread, but posting in a new thread here for anyone who may be interested but not following that thread.

Anyway, I bought the Thinkware F770 front and rear dash cam system from the RAC online shop, they send it to you and you arrange installation with Chameleon who are Thinkware authorised installers. They hardwire it into the ignition to enable parking mode). You get all the kit you need for the job including a 32 GB micro SD card, as well as an adapter to turn it into a normal SD card. Here is a rough guide to the capacities:

Front only
16GB SD Card - 124 minutes
32GB SD Card - 248 minutes
64GB SD Card - 496 minutes

Front and Rear Recording
16GB SD Card - 62 minutes
32GB SD Card - 124 minutes
64GB SD Card - 248 minutes

The installer will ensure the camera lenses are pointing in the optimum direction for best coverage, both are full HD. It comes with GPS and wifi capability, once installed, you download the app and connect to it via wifi. This allows you to go into your phone and setup the cam, the following are configurable (amongst others):

-Lane departure warning.
-Speed camera alert.
-Collision alert.
-Speed stamp on or off.
-Paring mode - time lapse or motion detection, you can also set the level of sensitivity for these functions.
-Amount of battery depletion permitted during parking mode before the cameras switch-
-Time - it picks this up from GPS but I had to go in and do "+ 1 hour" to account for BST, strange as I thought the GPS would change this automatically. Will be interesting to see if it changes back an hour when the clocks change next weekend.
-Etc. etc.

You can also view the videos taken (they are saved in one minute increments and are time stamped). You can download them to the app and then easily export them to the pic/video library on your phone. Each one minute segment is about 80 MB from and 80 MD rear.

Note - you have to be in the car, ignition on, and connected to the camera via wifi to do all of the above.

It took mine about a day to start picking up the GPS satellites, but works flawlessly now. When you turn the ignition on, you get an audible message telling you "continuous recording starts" and you drive along merrily. Once parked up it switches to whichever parking mode you've selected. When you get back in the car, it tells you how many incidents it has recoded whilst parked, if any. You can log into the wifi as above and view them. The menus in the app are very well laid out and easy to navigate and get what you need. It has a dual save mode and any footage that is saved is automatically-write protected.

My installation was around two hours and had a really good guy doing it - everything is very neat and all wires hidden. I've attached some pictures of the installed cameras - I have no issues with DAB reception with my front camera placed where it is, which I believe can be an issue. No other issues.

Here are links to front and rear footage I downloaded from the camera:

Thinkware F770 FRONT camera in Audi SQ7 - Eastbound on M9 - YouTube

Thinkware F770 REAR camera in Audi SQ7 - Eastbound M9 - YouTube

*** YouTube defaults to 360p - nowhere near HD. On YouTube, You can change it to 720p HD, but still not properly representing the resolution of the cameras...so don't be put off by this footage!

Here are the relevant links to purchase and arrange installation:

RAC - http://tinyurl.com/zq2damw
Chameleon - Dash Cams | Chameleon Codewing Ltd

Give me a shout if you have any questions etc...

Cheers
Scott

IMG_0519.JPGIMG_0525.JPGIMG_0526.JPGIMG_0529.JPGIMG_0530.JPGff.

[Fear Bainne]

Hi All,
For anybody interesting buying a dashcam, would suggest a visit to
the " Dash cam talk forum" you will find a lot of useful information.
One of the best cams. is a Street Guardian - model no. SG9665GC.
It's pricey for a single camera but both day & night video is excellent.
Night video is where the majority of dash cams fall down. Another plus
for this unit is it's form factor, it's very small and barely visible plus the
backup from supplier is top notch. This company is about to release a
dual channel system so perhaps worth waiting.
If you find this on the pricey side would suggest a look at the Viofo 119
or the 119S - excellent unit at about £80.00. Comes with GPS and all the
bells & whistles. Similar size to the Street Guardian if not smaller, these
units are tiny.

[easyeieio]

Thanks Gyro, looks interesting.

Is the 48 hour parking record time limit the usual on dashcams? I often leave my car parked for several days, and concerned this wouldn't help me much if limited to 2 days . Is it longer if on motion detect mode?

Excuse my ignorance, not had a dashcam before, but really like the look of this

Cheers

Ian

[Gyro]

Thanks Gyro, looks interesting.

Is the 48 hour parking record time limit the usual on dashcams? I often leave my car parked for several days, and concerned this wouldn't help me much if limited to 2 days . Is it longer if on motion detect mode?

Excuse my ignorance, not had a dashcam before, but really like the look of this

Cheers

Ian

Hi Ian, AFAIK the only things that would limit the parking time is either the car battery being depleted to the point where the camera switches off (this voltage threshold can be specified in the settings) OR the memory card capacity. I've read the manual and had a quick search on line and can't see the 48 hr thing? Happy to be corrected though.

[cupra]

Like the look of these cams. I have the Blackvue DR650 front and rear cameras but not yet fitted them to the car yet. Currently just have a Nextbase front camera in it at the moment.

I would be interested to see how you get on with these over time as I would like a change.

Blackvue has the same basic functionality other than the various drive assist functions but as I already have these built into the car I don't suppose I would use these functions.

One thing I have noticed with the Blackvue is that it takes a fit every now and then and keeps switching itself off and on and has to be powered down for a while.

This also has the park function although this is controlled via a separate power box with little dip switches to select the voltage and duration.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[srbsq7]

Had mine installed this morning and very pleased with it so far. The installer from Chameleon did a great job and really happy with how neat it is. Apart from the dash cam functionality, I've also enabled the speed camera warning which seems to work well too. I did a parking test incident (gave the car a gentle shake!) which it detected and notified me as soon as i got in and started the ignition. Interested to see how long the parking camera stays active with the low mileage i do.

[Gyro]

Had mine installed this morning and very pleased with it so far. The installer from Chameleon did a great job and really happy with how neat it is. Apart from the dash cam functionality, I've also enabled the speed camera warning which seems to work well too. I did a parking test incident (gave the car a gentle shake!) which it detected and notified me as soon as i got in and started the ignition. Interested to see how long the parking camera stays active with the low mileage i do.

Great stuff, glad you like it. Did it connect to GPS straight away? It took a day for mine to connect and now it connects straight away every time - only downside is that slightly annoying female American voice notification!

Did you go and set the threshold for the battery cut-off? I've set mine to medium/low. Also remember to switch off the speed stamp!

[srbsq7]

I think it took a couple of hours before it connected but wasn't long after he'd finished installing. I've turned the volume down to 0 so the only notifications I get are: incident alerts when you get in the car, continuous recording disabled when connecting smartphone and speed camera warnings. Much better!

I thought about turning off the speed stamps but thought the police could probably work it out from the film or GPS info anyway (hopefully it won't ever come to that!).

Here's my settings:

[dghdgh]

If the need occurs remove the memory card and swallow.

[srbsq7]

I swapped out the 32GB SD Card that came with it for the 128GB one I had in the Android tablet I bought to use with the OBDeleven (Samsung Memory 128 GB EVO). Seems to work without issue and has obviously increased the length of time it can record in parking mode. In the default format, it is now recording the last 16 hours in time-lapse mode in the default SD format A. I will probably switch to format C which allocates a lot more time to parking mode.

Also not had it cut off due to battery drain and although early days, its encouraging that when I pull up at the first junction after setting off, the engine stops so the battery drain must be fairly light.

The only negative is the reflections captured in bright sunlight, particularly off the front windscreen. I managed to find this demo of polarising filters specifically for the F770. I went for both but I think it's probably just the front that's really worth it (music is bad!):

Moovika Filters for Thinkware F770 Dash Cam - YouTube

Pics here: New CPL Filter ThinkWare F770 by Moovika | DashCamTalk

Ordered them from this french site (using Chrome's translate feature!)
* Front: Polarizer Filter ThinkWare F770
* Rear: Polarizer Filter ThinkWare F750