This Mobius camera can play back its recordings perfectly well on the included Windows video viewing software.
As for my RoadHawk dashcam, I’m afraid its recordings are in ub1 format (whatever that might be). I find it inconvenient because, although they will play back using the downloaded RoadHawk software, I can find no way of converting the videos to common formats like mpg or avi, which an insurance company would prefer.
Having compared the two, I have to say that the Mobius videos are far superior in clarity and detail compared to those of the RoadHawk although, admittedly, mine is quite old now and has been superseded by more recent and presumably higher quality cameras by the same manufacturer.
Although the Mobius camera doesn’t include GPS, as does the RoadHawk, I have decided to get a Mobius camera for my car as well on the grounds that the image quality provides much clearer detail for the purpose of identification, especially number plate details.
The pictures are excellent; far superior detail quality than my old RoadHawk camera. Number plates are easily read, which is the most important thing.
The only thing I found slightly worrying was that the heat sinks became very hot - too hot to touch, really, although it was a hot day today. This was for a journey of less than one hour overall, with four breaks. (We were looking at kitchen places.)
I expected to find very hot heat sinks if using the battery, but was led to believe that with capacitors there would be much less heat output. That’s what the online information says, anyway.
Still, if that’s accounted for in the design and the thing doesn’t burst into flame on a protracted journey, that’s OK I suppose!
I was wondering if you’d noticed the high temperature, Realist.
Yep it’s quality footage and that’s because it is HD quality.
Yes they do get hot in usage but the heat sinks should effectively dissipate the heat. I had thought like yourself, that use of capacitors might lower he heat but I guess not.
With batteries, using the device as a dashcam would have reduced their life.
Originally the möbius were made for outdoor use, such as helmet cams and model cams. So being in the open air, it had that for cooling. My one did not even get very warm.
Thanks for your response. I can live with this, of course, as long as the camera continues to perform and doesn’t stop working/melt/burst into flames soon after the year’s warranty is up!
Yes, by the way, I checked and it does state they come with a 12 month warranty.
I just find it a little strange that my old RoadHawk camera doesn’t become at all hot (and no heat sinks), although admittedly it is certainly not HD.
Yes, I can understand that. In the online instruction manual it does mention that they should not be used as a dash cam on a hot day without some sort of external cooling system (air conditioning perhaps?), but this is after explaining the preference of changing the battery with capacitors to reduce heating.
I think its a good idea, its frightening to think of these idiots on the road, but people must remember not to post their videos on line or it can’t be used as evidence
I’m all in favour of it. I wouldn’t hesitate to offer my dashcam footage to help with the conviction of an idiot or arrogant driver.
Having said that, I’d resist handing over my dashcam to the police, and would prefer to send them a copy of the recording. I’d worry that they might ‘lose’ my camera. If they insisted, I suppose I’d give them the memory card and hope that I don’t need it until I get home.
I’d be interested to know whether the police insist on taking the card or camera there and then.
I feel sure that a copy of the video could be sent to them. Or if they wanted the card, then you could always carry a spare.
Also some cameras over write previous recording after a certain time, as in a ‘loop’ system.
This would depend on the size of the card.
If you recorded an incident, you should change the card to save it being over written.
I forgot how much space recording eats up. I checked my card recently, weeks after my drive to/from Lowestoft, and saw the card was full. Looking at the footage I realised that most of the outward journey had been written over, so deleting my little excited dance (or mostly the audio part of me squealing happily!!) in my seat as the Red Arrows went over! All that footage of the places going past before them, as I made my way down the straight A406! I was gutted.
I think that there should be a warning that tells you when the card is full. Also maybe an option for not letting it being overwritten.
But saying all that, I suppose the object of the exercise is for it to record any event that might happen on the journey.
This boils down to the size of the SD Card you have chosen to use.
As soon as you have a new dashcam and have driven around for an hour you can review the contents of the card.
By looking at the size of files it creates you can very simply calculate how much footage (in terms of time) the card can store and thus how long before it starts overwriting old files.
For example, I use a 64GB card.
The dashcam is set on loop recording at the highest HD resolution in 3 min chunks.
That results in files of about 300MB being created for each 3 min clip of footage.
So simple math:
64000 MB capacity divided by 300MB chunks = 213 chunks
Each chunk is 3 min of footage so I will get 213 x 3 = 639 mins in total on the card
That’s about 10 and a half hours.
So, if I have an accident, I can rest in the knowledge that it will be a full 10.5 hours of driving before that accident footage starts to get overwritten by the loop recording.
So unless I am planning on driving the length of the country in the same day I have nothing to worry about. I can simple keep driving and then at the end of the day when I get home, make a copy of the important footage.
The smaller your SD Card the less time you will have before loop overwriting begins. I suggest getting a decent sized card like the 64GB or alternatively reducing the resolution of the recording so the camera can record more footage on the card.
Usually no need - if there is a collision then it creates a separate read only copy of the previous 30 seconds and the following 30 secs so it can’t be over written. You can usually set the severity of the collision for example I have to change mine for dirt roads other wise it records every time you go over a rut (at its most sensitive).
If there is no collision then there is often a button on the camera which has the same effect - all the cameras I have owned have had this facility. I find that very useful for recording wildlife that you pass on the road for example or indeed incidents that occur right in front of you. A one minute recording usually records all you need and more.
If you are buying a camera don’t get one without the "save’ facility button it is a valuable asset to have. Be cautious about reducing the resolution because number plates are quite small and the thing is useless if it doesn’t record readable number plates while travelling at normal speed on a less than perfect surface.
That’s interesting Bruce. I did not know that about dedicated car cams.
But I use a Möbius that I use for other things. It is so small that I use it on my flying models as well.
As Realist suggested, I am also going to do a 10 minute test to see how much the card eats. Then I can work out how Long it will record on the card before over writing.
Done it. On the 32 gig card that I have in it, I can get approx 5.5 hours. Before it over writes. Long enough for me.
I just realised that I could have used Realist calculations and half it.
I have a 32G card but don’t think it held 5 1/2 hours. Most probably an hour or more less than that. On checking the footage, the first clip was somewhere well along my journey, so it had started over riding. Each journey time (from and to home) was about 3 hours, and I didn’t use the cam during the week.
