That’s a very good deal. Thank you.
It’s interesting that the new model doesn’t have a heat sink, or perhaps it is internal and shunts heat out through the supporting attachment.
I’ll keep an eye on that should I ever get a quadcopter.
Sainsbury’s petrol kiosk had a dash cam for £20. Had the forecourt not been busy, with drivers queuing up behind me, I would have tried looking at it. The display box was stuck on the larger display so I couldn’t read more about it. I thought it might work as a rear cam, albeit a cheap one.
Here:
http://www.hobbyrc.co.uk/mobius-1-actioncam-1080p-fpv-video-camera
Currently out of stock but they get new batches of them regularly. They will email you when they come in.
Note that this is the “proper” V3 version with the larger 820mAh battery which gives 2hrs recording time.
There’s a previous version with just a 520mAh battery that gives about 1 hr recording. You can pick those up for just £49 here:
Thanks.
Wow, these things just get cheaper and cheaper.
Still, we’ve got two now so unfortunately too late, but worth keeping an eye on.
As you can see from Realist post, Hobbyking is the cheapest place to buy. They also have a UK warehouse in Ipswich.
Although the main depot is in the far East, I have bought stacks of stuff from them in the past.
Why not get a nextbase dashcam and hard wire it? no need for any battery fiddling and making sure it is charged up. They are the best according to all reports I have read.
Yes I have decided to get a Nextbase for my Son in law as his Christmas present. It is just a decision of what model.
Then it will be up to him what he wants to do with it.
As what usually happens on threads, it has gone a bit off topic, but still interesting information.
This is mine against the A pillar as a sensor window mesh is huge where it normally would go. Note there is no wiring showing and I have left enough in the roof lining to move the camera to a more window centre if necessary.
Even in this position the view angle still covers the pavements on either side and actually is a little more discrete than slap bang in the middle.
No wires hanging down to interfere with the driver, no worries about battery failure, no worries about switching on and off before/end of trips. placed here no driver distraction either
link to report on which is best
Mobus dashcams arn’t even in the top 8
I’ve done the same with both mine and my wife’s; run the cable under the trim on the window frame, then under the passenger glove box and emerging at the cigar lighter socket.
My wife leaves hers plugged in, as turning off the ignition cuts the power (Mazda). I remove my cigar lighter plug because power remains on when the ignition is off (Skoda). No big deal, though.
Although the Mobius camera is small enough to go unnoticed to the casual eye, I always remove mine when leaving the car for any length of time, certainly at night.
With regard to the Nextbase models, Which? magazine lists the Nextbase iN-CAR CAM 312GW Deluxe (at £88) as their best of all. The Mobius doesn’t even feature in their best buy list at all, I’m afraid, but they probably consider that to be a general camera (for drones, etc) rather than a specific dash cam.
Incidentally, when I got my very first dash cam, a Roadhawk, I initially installed it using the supplied windscreen suction mount, but unfortunately this was unreliable and it kept dropping off. Perhaps that was due to the prevalence of humps and especially pot holes around here! Does anyone find the suction mounts completely reliable?
When I was playing with the Nextbase that I mentioned earlier, I also found that the suction mount was coming off at inconvenient times.
The only time my Nextbase suction mount fails is when the car is parked facing strong sunlight for an excessive amount of time, e.g. a whole summer’s day.
Yes, I have used the self adhesive mount for both my car and my wife’s. These have never failed and, in fact, are very difficult to remove.
If and when we buy a new car, we can buy additional adhesive mounts rather than attempt to remove the existing ones. They are only a few pounds. The same applies if we ever have the need to replace a windscreen.
Our Mobius cameras ARE hard wired as explained in earlier posts. But they can equally run from the internal batteries if required and will provide 2 hrs of full HD recording.
The various “reports” about dashcams, like all technical devices, are simply biased propaganda articles funded by the manufacturers. Search for the best PVR recorders for example and the typical junkie sites (Which? etc) will all wax lyrical about Sky Plus boxes which for years have actually been completely under spec’d compared to other brands.
Why would I not get a Nextbase camera ?, because they are large indiscrete devices the size of sat navs. Leaving one inside your car on full display would be utterly foolhardy.
Having to remove it and put it back each and every time you leave the car would be a complete nuisance and who wants to be carrying a sat nav sized device in their jacket pocket all day ?!!
This picture from some internet site shows the tiny size and scale of the Mobius:
It can be installed extremely discretely and thus left in the car permanently.
Even better, you can buy an extension cable for the actual camera lens which allows you to remove the lens and install that separately to the rest of the unit. So for example I can install the main camera body inside the ceiling unit of my car where the light switches are and other stuff and have only the tiny camera lens visible by drilling a tiny hole in the front of that unit.
Then you have a completely integrated, hidden and secure dashcam that thieves won’t see let alone be able to take.
These enormous “nextbase” and other cameras are simply impractical. Gone are the days when people want to carry the equivalent of digital cameras around with them like the old Canon Ixus models. It’s bad enough people having to lug huge smart phones around which simply don’t fit in the average trouser pocket.
The Mobius is smaller than a matchbox, completely indiscrete and therefore scores massively over the competition which is bulkier, cumbersome, can’t be left in the car and a nuisance to carry about.
TBH the picture you put up (copied below) highlights perfectly my points:
https://i.imgur.com/mqtd9vz.jpg
That is a relatively huge unit and is plainly visible to thieves.
Even if you detached the camera unit every time you get in and out of the car (which eventually you will get bored of and won’t do) you will leave the suction housing attached to the windscreen which equally tells thieves there is a dashcam or sat nav in the car. They will break in assuming you’ve stupidly left it in the glove compartment, which of course many dim motorists actually do !
I can’t find any hard wire kit for the Mobius dashcam on the internet
What “kit” would you be expecting?
All you need is a long USB cable as per the ones I already linked to in this thread.
As stated in last post too, you can buy the extension cable for the actual lens which looks like this:
http://rcsearch.info/hobbyking/pics/f51/51958/51958.jpg
So then you can install the tiny lens anywhere and hide the main unit.
One like Nextbase have
Sorry mate but the concept of hardwiring your Nextbase is just ridiculous. The camera is too big, too visible.
If you plan on leaving it inside your car you may as well tape 5 x £20 notes to the windscreen and hope that no-one breaks in to steal them.
Anyone who buys a dashcam like this, and the market is awash with them, is consigning themselves to having to remove the unit every time they leave the car and put it back every time they come back. Aside from the strain that puts on connections which will eventually fail, you’ve then got to lug that unit around with you every where you go.
The entire concept is poorly thought out and a practical disaster.
Even if you do remove the unit every time, you are still forced to leave the tell-tale windscreen suction (or other) housing which tells thieves you have a camera or sat nav. So they may well break into the car anyway just in case you left it inside somewhere.
The tiny action cameras, of which there are a fair few on the market fit the dashcam requirement perfectly. Some are better than others. The Mobius is an absolute winner, with its full HD recording, fully configurable interface, loop recording and other features.
Although as I said earlier, I have and use a Möbius as a dash cam amongst other uses. It does not have ‘G force’ function that saves the incident as a separate file on the card.
It don’t have GPS so that it also saves location in the file.
I think there could be other options that dedicated dashcams have, and the Möbius does not.
None of these “features” are remotely needed for the purpose of recording an incident.
Anyone who has a dashcam and is involved in an accident will, in that same day, plug their camera into a computer and download the footage to their PC/Laptop to both review it and keep a backup copy of it safe and sound.
Therefore the “G Force” feature of some cameras is completely and utterly redundant.
Anyone who has a dashcam and only puts a tiny little SD card in it is frankly an idiot. You need a card big enough to record many hours of footage at high (full HD) resolution.
Otherwise you could be in a long car trip from one end of the country to the other and find your loop recording overwriting earlier parts of the journey.
“G Force” features are a gimmick and a useless one at that. There are numerous reports that various bumps and jolts along an average car journey cause the G Force to be triggered thus creating lots of parts of the SD card that can’t be overwritten. Not a good thing.
The other feature, having in-built GPS is equally a gimmick and unnecessary. The camera footage itself will adequately proof conclusively where the accident took place. The claimant is going to provide details to the insurance company of the location, street name, time, date, weather conditions etc. It would be ridiculously easy to prove where the footage was taken by having anyone go to that location and compare the footage with reality. Of course that’s just never going to be needed is it. I mean no-one is going to lie about where the accident took place IF there is dashcam footage.
So, GPS, another totally redundant “feature” of some silly dashcams which serves only to draw far more battery power to fuel that GPS chip. Rather pointless imo.
The dashcam world is sadly being crafted along the lines of dumb motorists who are not tech savvy and they are piling gimmicks into them because dumb people think gimmicks are important.
The most important aspect of any dashcam is good high resolution footage in both day and night conditions, end of.
The next most important aspects are portability and discreteness imo.
Nextbase don’t have a great reputation for build quality. There are lots of bad reviews out there from people whose devices packed in after 1 year. There’s more to go wrong with a device that not only records but also has a built in viewing LCS screen and all the associated controls and operating firmware (play,pause, FFwd etc etc). All of that totally unnecessary.
You can watch recorded footage in the comfort of your own home on a computer with any dashcam so a viewing screen is entirely not necessary. The screen is responsible for the ridiculous size and bulk of those dashcams and for the battery drain.
Each to their own of course but I find the current market of mainstream dashcams utterly farcical.
I may have mentioned earlier…press down hard on the suction cup before pressing the clamp lever.