Taxi Driver Online

Any ideas of suitable CCTV with the following in mind

It must be capable of recording and storing footage for a minimum of 14 days

The CCTV must be capable of capturing images that, in low light conditions, must be of sufficient quality to enable identification of any person(s) travelling in the vehicle

The CCTV must provide that the hard disk or memory card is not accessible by the proprietor or driver of the vehicle

The CCTV system must provide that the data unit is stored separately from the cameras and out of view of any persons travelling in the vehicle

TIA

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Think this place can meet council specs, or adapt accordingly -

https://cabcams.co.uk/pages/councils

Hello Toots, long time, no see.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

You must have a CCTV fitter up your way, maybe someone who also fits meters.

Most of the CCTVs nowadays are good, even the rubbish ones.

Have you considered a dash cam, some of them are surprisingly good. I am not sure how long they record but if you had 3 or 4 of the bigger SD cards that would cover the 14 days.

I have a system that records at night, and colour during the day, front and interior cameras, that records for min 28 days, a little screen for the dash, and it costs about £500 fitted.

Most drivers rent them down here, which for the above is £23 a month, which includes any retrieval and updating costs.

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IDFIMH

Pretty sure the guy from the NPHA, David Pawlaszek-Lawrie does them

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

They’re akin to hens teeth here, they’re not a requirement. If you have them fitted the above is the regulations surrounding them. Do dash cams record sound?

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Yes.

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IDFIMH

What size of SD cards are you talking about? I've got a 128GB micro-SD card in mine, and it only gives about five or six hours before it starts overwriting the earliest files

On the other hand it depends on resolution and the like - I've got a front and rear dashcam, and it records two files in each direction - a high res and low res file for each camera, thus four in total.

Of course, you can set it to record lower-res videos, and thus record more footage without overwriting, but even at that I'd guess you'd need one big micro-SD card per day if you wanted to store a fortnight's worth

But that wouldn't meet Toots's CCTV spec anyway, because she'd be able to access the footage, which of course would be required to change the card, so even if you could buy a sealed dashcam system the storage just wouldn't be adequate - I'd guess the CCTV systems that can store a week or two's worth of footage require some sort of hard drive rather than just a removeable storage card, which is possibly why they're normally located in the boot, or at least some other place that's difficult to access?

But if anyone wants a CCTV system that's not that onerous to install and maintain, then a dashcam is certainly a good alternative.

Mine's is a Nextbase 322 dashcam, which has a rear cam add-on, which just plugs into the side of the main unit (you can buy them separately). Interestingly, there are two different rearcam plug-ins, and they both look the same, but one is called a rear view cam, while the other is called a cabin view cam.

You can see them here halfway down the page - although they look identical, the difference is where they focus and the type of lens. The rear view cam focuses on the road behind, while the cabin view cam is more like a CCTV view.

And you can see from the graphics for each cam what kind of view they're intended to record and where they're pointing, precisely:

https://nextbase.co.uk/dash-cams/

I've got the rear view cam, so strictly speaking it's not really classed as an internal camera, but it does record faces in the back reasonably clearly (but won't record someone in the front passenger seat).

Although I've got mine pointing quite high specifically to avoid directly recording faces, it could be pointed a bit lower for a good view of faces and still able to record the whole of what can be seen out of the rear window. (And it does catch faces better when people are getting in, because at that point their heads are a tad higher than when they're seated.) And the precise rear view will also depend on your front head rests etc, and where you actually mount the camera on the windscreen, and where precisely you point it towards the rear.

(There's a third rear cam option which fits in the rear window, but which requires a lot of extra wiring, plus it obviously won't record faces in the rear, although it does record a lot more out of the back window than the rear cam option mounted on your windscreen, for obvious reasons. And its view isn't restricted by rear headrests.)

And it does record sound, as I'd guess most dashcams do these days, apart from the very cheapest, perhaps. But the sound recording can be disabled.

For what it's worth, these are the two grabs Nextbase uses to show the difference between the views in the two rear-facing cameras, although they both look identical units when fixed to the standard front-facing cam:

The first one is the add-on I've got, and not sure mine shows quite so much of what's visible outside my rear window, although this below looks like an estate car rather than the narrower window area in my Octavia hatchback. Also no sign of any headrest encroachment here either, but I'd guess they'll remove them for these images

So although a set-up like that certainly wouldn't meet Toots's council's spec for CCTV, maybe the bigger question is when a dashcam becomes a CCTV system, and thus the likes of a Nextbase set-up just wouldn't meet the spec.

I'd guess a standard frontview dashcam would be OK. Or the likes of the dashcam above with the rearcam add-on mounted on the rear window.

On the other hand, the cabin view add-on above would mean it's then a CCTV system, and to that extent wouldn't meet an onerous council spec. Our council doesn't regulate CCTV systems, therefore the set-up I've got is OK.

But what about the rear view add-on which points out the rear window, but might catch passengers' faces?

And whether or not audio recording is disabled might make a difference...

On the other hand, the Nextbase unit above can easily be dismounted from the screen quickly (the mount itself is semi-permanent on the windscreen, but the camera attaches via a magnetic mount). Alternatively, the rear cam add-on just plugs into the main dashcam unit, and can be pulled out in an instant if necessary

Of course, the downside of storing images in a micro-SD card slotted into the camera, and with the camera fairly easy to remove, is that if push came to shove then some knacker could just grab the camera and the footage is gone...

...presumably the more permanent storage systems mean that the punters as well as the driver would find it less easy to destroy the footage. Short of torching the car, of course

Some more suggestions for those thinking of buying a dashcam, whether as a conventional dashcam or with a rear-facing function, thus effectively a CCTV system as well as a dashcam.

(Of course, there are plenty of brands and various prices depending on your budget, but Nextbase seems to be one of the most popular, and the one I’ve got, so the only one I can really comment on in any depth.)

Anyway, thought it a good idea to hardwire it (Nextbase sells a hardwire kit, which will obviously cost a bit more) rather than using the 12v plug in adapter (which I don’t think so many new cars have now anyway). At least with the VW I had when I first used the dashcam, the 12v sockets were switched with the ignition, so when you killed the ignition the camera is off (and the internal battery is poor). I wanted it on all the time, for sitting on the rank stationary, for example, or when leaving the car in the supermarket car park, or suchlike. And to that extent if you’re using the piggyback fuse connectors supplied with the likes of the Nextbase hardwire kit, you’ll need a permanent live feed – if it’s a switched fuse then like the 12V sockets it’ll die when the ignition is switched off.

Don’t know how well the piggyback fuse connectors work with the most modern cars – it was straightforward enough with my old Passat, but my autoelectrician who installed the meter told me it’s a bit more difficult these days, and he actually added a permanent live feed for my dashcam when he was installing the meter.

My Octavia actually has a USB-C socket up near the rear-view mirror which I think is intended to be used by dashcams etc, but again it’s switched with the ignition, so no use if you want the camera on all the time.

But it’s got all kinds of bells and whistles, and not really sure how well any of them work – I just switch the dashcam on manually when I get in the car, and switch it off again when I’m finished (the draw is tiny, so I’d guess you could leave the dashcam running for hours without it affecting the car battery).

And if I need to look at anything that’s been recorded, I just pull the dasham off the mount and plug it into my laptop, and it appears as a micro-SD drive on your laptop, and you can copy the files over as normal etc. (As I said, on my configuration you get two files in each direction, thus high-res and low-res files for both the front-facing and rear-facing lenses, and each file lasts one minute. The high-res files are big (270MB for the forward view), but a lot smaller on low-res (20MB for forward view).

Nextbase will tell you that you’ll need to buy one of their supa-dupa micro-SD cards, but I’ve got a Sandisk card, which is less than half the price of the branded Nextbase ones.

I see Nextbase are doing quite reasonably priced bundles at the moment with the front and rear facing cams, but unless you go for the dearest package it looks like the bundles only include a 32GB card, which will only record an hour or so of footage at my configuration. This 128MB card is reasonably cheap on Amazon, and I think it’s the same spec as the Nextbase card, but you have to check the spec carefully – any old micro-SD card won’t do.

But this 128GB high-spec card on Amazon is less than £15, and the 128GB branded Nextbase card is currently £55:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Endura ... d_source=1

Maybe the branded Nextbase card is better, but who knows? My dashcam very occasionally freezes and has to be reset (easy enough by pressing a small button underneath), and this may be due to an issue with the card, but who knows? But if you don’t buy a high-spec card like the one above then you’ll almost certainly have issues. And you need to format it every few days to avoid such issues, but that's easy enough via the dashcam's onscreen menu.

£500 plus £120 (cash) fitting

to swap vehicle to new vehicle £150

to sell system back to him......£50

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

I’m not sure what model nextbase you have Stuart, I have the 522gw. By using the my nextbase connect App I can look at any files I need to (and put them direct onto my phone) easily through my phone.

Thanks, X-ray - mine's is the 322GW (which when I bought it in 2020 was the cheapest model that had the rear-facing lens plug-in option - in fact I think it's is the cheapest Nextbase cam to do this).

But I think it's got the thing you mention, but as regards my phone I think that when it's using too much stuff then there can be conflicts, and I'm sure that when I used it as a wi-fi hotspot that was slowing down my card-reader or stalling it completely at times. And when I got my new Skoda recently I had it connected to the Android Auto thing, and I'm sure that was also conflicting with my card reader, so disconnected that too.

So basically since the card-reader is the most important thing I try to use my phone for as little as possible to minimise the risk my card reader will be, er, unresponsive

On the other hand, that was the plan when I'd assumed I would rarely need to actually view footage, whereas it's unsual to go a whole shift without taking the dashcam off at the end of the shift to view something

So might have another look at what you're talking about - I've got a backup phone on a different network to avoid signal issues etc, so might give that a try...