The idea of having a permanent recording camera in your car can be realized inexpensively and simply using your old smartphone.
Why do it? Not so that you can be the only one to have recorded scenes of a meteorite or plane crash, but for more realistic situations, such as minor collisions, which are common in a big city.
Most of you probably have an old smartphone tucked away in a drawer somewhere. You could revive your old device and turn it into a traffic camera by installing a free, dedicated app for the purpose.
In addition to your old smartphone and an app, you'll need a charging cable long enough to reach your car's power outlet, as well as a mount for your dashboard or windshield.
You probably have the cable and car charger stored somewhere in your drawer. As for the stand, if you don't already have one, you can get one from electronics stores for around 20-25 euros. Choose a stable stand that doesn't hide the rear camera of your phone.
Once you have gathered the necessary materials, place your mount on the dashboard or windshield in such a way that the camera has the widest view of the road ahead. Make sure that the smartphone camera frame starts just below the middle of the hood and is equidistant to the left and right.
You may not be able to cover a large part of the road, you may have a range of 150 degrees or more, and you may not have the effect of a wide-angle action camera, but what you will achieve will meet your needs.
Make sure your phone is always plugged in. You don't want to run out of battery at a critical moment, as most older devices have batteries that have started to degrade and therefore don't last as long as new ones.
Finally, after you have mounted and wired your phone to the power supply, make sure that the device is secure and tight enough and that it cannot be moved by the vibration of the car or by a sudden braking. The cables should not prevent you from driving and the camera should not be covered by any accessory or obstacle. If all of this is in order, then it is time to look at the application.
When it comes to software, you have a lot of options. So-called blackbox apps come with a long list of features, but we need something that records continuously, tracks our location and estimated speed via GPS, the date, time, and has adjustable video quality.
This last bit is important because you need to make sure you don't run out of memory. Besides the fact that your old smartphone may have a lot of storage space, reducing the video quality automatically increases the recording time.
On the other hand, too low video quality can give you useless results, so you need to find a compromise. Another thing that can help is reducing the recording time saved. If your smartphone has a small memory capacity, then you can reduce the recording time saved and create a loop that records over the previous recording each time.
Also, don't forget that this is a smartphone. So if you don't have much storage space, you can always delete apps, photos, and other things, or just factory reset it (or get a larger SD card, if your phone supports it).
Android app: AutoBoy Dash Cam – Blackbox
If you have an old Android smartphone that you no longer use, it’s recommended to use something like Autoboy Dash Cam – Blackbox or Autoguard Dash Cam – Blackbox. As expected, there are quite a few dash cam apps on the Play Store, but these two are free and have the highest ratings.
AutoBoy has a clean, intuitive interface and is very easy to use. Let's take a look at just a few of the many settings. Under the general settings, you can enable the shock sensor which will measure the impact of a collision (obviously it uses your device's accelerometer), and you can also change the unit settings from miles to kilometers per hour.
Another unique feature is emergency call which will call an emergency number (for example: 112). You can set the recording time and the maximum storage allocation, which is 10GB by default.
Another important setting is the video quality. The lower the quality, the more recording time you can fit on a memory card.
We could do a more detailed analysis of the program's settings as there are quite a few features, but if you decide to use AutoBoy Dash Cam, don't hesitate to explore them more extensively from the Play Store.
iPhone app: DashCam
If you're using an old iPhone, then the choice is simple: DashCam. DashCam includes all the essential features you need, including speed, location, and loop recording.
There are many options on the App Store, but DashCam is the only one that doesn't seem to have any negative reviews, and the latest version has garnered particularly favorable reviews.
DashCam is really simple to use, while also being very powerful. It has loop recording capability and you can switch between high and low resolution video. There are very detailed reports on iTunes to peruse.
General Disadvantages: Heat and Thieves
While using your old smartphone as a dash cam is easy and inexpensive, there are drawbacks. The first one is heat.
Leaving a relatively thin electronic device in a locked car exposed to the sun can mean its quick demise. Compared to action cams or dash cams, smartphones are not heat-resistant, neither their bodies nor their batteries. If you decide to install a smartphone as a dash cam, then make sure not to leave your car unattended for long periods of time or remove your phone from the dashboard when you park it.
The second disadvantage is that your smartphone, even though it is old and of almost zero value, is still a target for thieves. And it's not that they will steal your old phone, it's that they will damage your car by breaking into it. So the option of taking your phone with you every time you park your vehicle is probably considered necessary.
