The App That Turns Phones Into Dashcams A startup has produced an app that turns a smartphone into a dashcam. The company hopes that the product could help consumers and businesses with insurance claims, fleet monitoring and even driverless technology.
The startup, DailyRoads, has built the technology and infrastructure to record and store or stream video from an Android phone. The app has been downloaded over two million time and Robert Fejer, founder of DailyRoads, reckons the app has a regular user-base of more than 400,000.
The system has already helped in an insurance case with a hit-and-run driver in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The driver was using DailyRoads’s Voyager app when he was hit by an overtaking car. The police accepted the footage as evidence and used it to help the case, Fejers says.
But this is not the case in all countries. Places such as Germany and Austria have ruled that dashcam footage is inadmissible in the court of law, he adds. “Still some consumers might like it as it allows them to capture other events on the road – anything from meteors to a spectacular sunset,” he says.
DailyRoads wanted to take the app and create a central streaming site, called DailyRoads LIVE, that would enable users to have up-to-the-moment information on road conditions. This would be of great use to consumers and – in particular – road users such as emergency services, Fejer says.
“You could be told there is an accident on the route you plan to take and look it up on the computer to see how it’s cleared up before you leave,” he adds. “Emergency vehicles would be able to use it to assess problems and coordinate responses long before they got there.”
The startup launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the expansion but was unsuccessful. Fejer puts this down to inexperience with media in getting the word out, concerns over security and an over anticipation of people’s willingness to use the data required to stream video to a remote site.
I discussed about the service on dashcam-related forums, and basically I saw the same reaction. People thought it would be useful to have the ability to remotely connect to a driver’s dashcam, but they wouldn’t participate now as streaming sources,” says Fejer. “If there are not enough drivers ready to share their location, then the service isn’t self-sustainable yet.”
Some people were also concerned about streaming near ‘sensitive’ areas – such as their home, place of work or school for example. One solution to this would be to have ‘geo-fences’ – boundaries at which the dashcam would automatically stop streaming, he adds.
But mostly, the campaign’s failure was down to a lack of awareness. Only around 700 people viewed the Kickstarter campaign video and promotion only happened after it went live – which was a mistake, Fejer says.
Going forward, Fejer is thinking about a modified service where the dashcams would send the occasional still photo. This would achieve a similar, if pared down, result. The company is also in discussion with fleet operators – private hire vehicles and logistics services – which run programmes pretty much continuously and thus have unlimited data available. Either way Fejer is sure the startup will find another way to succeed. “DailyRoads LIVE will become reality in one form or another, but a successful Kickstarter campaign would have made this happen sooner,” he says.
source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/freddiedaws ... -dashcams/
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