Dual camera dvr with wifi.

December 12, 2017

I finally got the new car dvr and got it installed. I thought I do the write up now since everything is still fresh in my brain.

Here's the box this came in and although there are single version of this camera, I got the dual camera version. Meaning it has this front camera that you see in the picture and also comes with another wire to connect a rear camera to it. It also comes with the rear camera.  If you get the single camera version of this, there is no way to add a rear camera to it since it doesn't have the extra plug for that. So make sure you choose the correct one.

Here are the specifications. Although the box states that it uses 32 and 64gb sd cards. You'll have to try this yourself, but unless you're driving very far, I think the 32gb card should do. No harm in getting a bigger one, but I have found out that these cameras tend to kill the sd cards. I have two that I can no longer use that were used on these type of cameras. Hence, the reason I don't suggest spending too much on a card. Sure, it's nice to have a bigger card, but at this point I'm not so sure about them working for too long when they are being over written more often than in any other place.

Everything was in the box and they also included that orange sd card reader which was nice of them. Unfortunately mine came a bit broken and I think now that I tried this other 32gb sd card, it was not working. So your mileage will vary but I appreciate the gesture as this is the first time anyone actually puts something a bit extra in an order. I did purchase the dual camera dvr myself.

Here's everything that comes in the box.

Unfortunately the tape the camera came with is gray which is not what you want on this unless you want that nice gray blob showing through your windshield. I don't.

The rear camera is smaller than my old one and more compact which is nice. The LED's are only if you use it as a back up camera. I'm still scratching my head as how that's suppose to work. Meaning there is no connection to an external lcd, so my guess it's that it would work only with the app at this point which still needs some work to make it work smoother.

This one was branded E-Ace but when I was looking around for this dual version, I only got a bunch of mirrors using that name, so I'll just call it the dual camera dvr with wifi.

As you can see this is a very chunky camera. I also took off that gray tape as I don't want that showing through my windshield.

I figure I take it a part to check the parts inside while I was here.

This is what the inside looks like and what it has.

Mine came with this one wire off. I don't know if it was soldered or not, so I'll check with the vendor.

I do like that you can move the lens and point it where you need it after installing it. And it stays there.

Here's a closer look at this wire.

I bought this black double sided tape at my local store. I ended up just using three pieces as you see here. The reason is that if you cover all of that surface, it will be very hard to take this off if you ever need to. One good thing about sticking the whole camera on my windshield is that I won't get that shake from the road like my old one. It just didn't fit snug on the mount and it would shake all the time. So this should be much better.

Here's the metal mount for the rear camera. I will need to make a new adapter for this one in order for it to sit correctly on my car. It's not a huge deal but it all depends on your car and where you mount it.

Here's the rear camera connection.So far this plug on both cameras seems to be the same as I was able to plug the new one on the old cable too.

Here's my old camera mounted. It's all plastic and much bigger than the new one. The lens is also further in as you can see allowing dirt and anything else to stay there and basic blocking the camera. It is also very hard to try to clean this one as I have tried but just didn't do much to clear it.

The new camera fit the old cable here.

Here's what the old dvr looked like mounted. Not very pretty or hidden as it stood out like a sore thumb.

I was just test fitting here and as you can see this thing is pretty big, specially on a small car. I ended up not using those extensions to keep it further up on my windshield.

And we finally get to the pain on my rear. The old cable and the new one here are different sizes. So because of this, I had to pull the new wires through in order to connect the new camera. You think they would make all of these the same by now. Nope.

Here's what my new and old rear camera look like. Big difference, I thought the old one was small when I got it. Also note that the old camera is concave and the new one convex. This I think will make a huge difference. Dirt and who knows what else gets on the old one and even though I tried to clean it, it just never looked clean as I mentioned earlier. On the new one the lens is protruding out which means that any dirt should at least fall to the ground and not stay on the camera. It should at least be easier to clean. The new one also has those four LED's. Those are only if you use this as a backup camera I believe. I'm not sure how that actually works, because there is no other plug for a monitor unless you are suppose to just use your phone. At the moment, the app is not as smooth as you would like it to. I guess you can also plug it in to light up the video when you're backing up at night. That won't do you much help, but maybe it would help in night videos if there is something you need to see later. Who knows.

Here's my first 3D printed adapter for the rear camera.

I had to make a thicker one for this camera since it's much smaller than my old one in order to make sure it had a good view of the back of the car.

These cables are weird on this camera but this is what it has. One is the cigarette lighter usb connector and the other is the rear camera connector.

I dug out the trunk and got started routing the wire. I decided to just leave the old on in place. That one has a plug for a monitor I think. I can't even remember how that got plugged in, so I may have to check that again since I was able to use the same dvr rear camera with the monitor on the radio. I can't do that with this new one. I'm pretty sure it had one of those rca plugs but again, I can't remember now.

I decided to leave this wire on this side. I got the other one on the other side and it still worked fine. I just didn't want to route a longer cable than was needed.

I routed the camera through this hinge and I just left the red and black wire dangling here. I thought I needed to connect these in order to make the camera work, but I later found out that you don't need to connect these in order for the camera to work. Again, it looks like these wires are only for the back up LED's  if you use that. I don't now but I was hoping to at least plug the rear camera to my radio screen, but there's no plug for it. So I'll go back and just tie these wires as I don't need them at the moment. Not to mention that they are too short to reach the backup light. They need to be longer. My car is small and if you have a truck or van, even the camera wire may not be long enough. I had only a bit of slack left. I'll connect these once I get them extended since they just won't reach the back as is.

The new power adapter has this huge red light. I decided to just leave my old adapter with the smaller led which works just fine. Not only that, but the new one is a 1 amp version and my old one is 2 amps so I get more breathing room there too. The new one also sticks straight out and the old one sort of bends down which I also like. It looks like a gun shape if you will so it works just fine. Even that small red LED is very bright at night which is not something you really want blinding you at night.

And finally here's the camera installed. That u shape still looks a bit weird since my mirror is not on the windshield, but at least it works. So maybe they should just rethink those tabs so that these can be used in any car with or without the mirror there. I had to move the antenna to the side so that it would go a bit higher. It worked out fine.

I would really like to be able to use this same camera with an lcd as a backup camera so until they add this to the same wires you will have to figure something out.

If you want to see what the old camera was just search for dvr to find that page where I have pictures of that camera.

Here are a few screenshots I just took of some of the videos from the camera.

 Unfortunately this model leaves a lot to be desired at night. Not many lights on this street so this is all you get. This is at 720p.

 Here's the rear camera at 720p.

 Here's the front camera during the day at the supposedly 1080p.

And the rear camera at 1080p. I thought this would at least look better than my old one, but apparently not. So I'm kind of disappointed with it. I couldn't tell you if the other version is any better, but I wouldn't hold my breath. This is too bad because I actually like the hardware setup, but it does leave a lot of room for improvement. It would be nice if the time stamp wasn't in front of the license plate like the front camera. It's been a while since I got my old one, but so far they still have a way to go unfortunately.

And last but not least, here's the video of this camera.