Thijs Schalk

Why you need a dashcam

You probably want one for insurance reasons. If something happens to your car on the road you’ll have video footage to send to your insurance company. This might help your case and help you actually get insurance money, since they’re more likely to pay out if you provide them with hard evidence like a video. Or imagine making an appeal.

Camera’s always provide a sense of security. Whether it’s in your house or on the dashboard of your car. In case of a crash or theft you’ll have video footage. This is useful when something happens to your car, but the dashcam is pointed towards your windshield. You might catch something happening to a house or a person. This footage can help you, others and the police a lot!

As you can see there are lots of benefits. And as you’ll read in a bit, you’re able to get one very cheap! So the benefits outweigh the costs greatly.

Finding a cheap dashcam

I started scouring the Internet for good dashcams. After some research the price range of dashcams is anywhere from $50 – $700. Is there really no cheap, good dashcam for people on a budget? Wait a second… I remembered I had an action camera collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. The Nikkei Extreme X6S. It was perfect for recording our backpacking trip to Vietnam, so I thought: “Maybe I can just use that.”. As it turns out it had several features which makes it perfect for using it as a dashcam!

Advantages of using an action camera as dashcam

Action camera’s are cheap… At least when you’re not buying a GoPro Hero. I have a Nikkei Extreme X6S which was $30, but since that one isn’t for sale anymore you can try the Apexcam or the Dragon Touch action camera. They come with a heap of accessories to attach it to basically anything. These cameras have a wide angle lens, so it records a lot of what’s in front of your car (and even parts of the side). And since it’s 2024 the 4K resolution is a standard nowadays. And even image stabilization. This makes the image very smooth, sharp and therefore makes reading license plates or traffic signs from a distance a breeze. 99% of action camera’s are powered by USB. That means low power consumption. You can even make it wireless. Can you see why I was so excited about this?

How to use a cheap action camera as dashcam

Power supply

You can use it as a wireless dashcam by charging it manually before every drive and not connect it to any power source while driving. I wouldn’t recommend this due to its impracticality. You can also use it while it’s connected to a simple powerbank. This way you don’t have to keep mounting and unmounting the camera everytime you want to take a drive and it can keep recording when your car isn’t running. Just recharge the powerbank every now and then. Protip: Buy a solar powered powerbank and leave it on your dashboard. This way you don’t need to charge it that often.

There are better ways if your car supports it. If your car has a USB port you can use that. Otherwise you’ll be able to use the auxiliary power outlet (cigarette lighter) in combination with a usb charger plug. It requires low power consumption so it doesn’t drain your car battery that much.

Configuring the camera settings

You can either manually turn the camera on and off when you enter the car or check if the camera has a feature that automatically turns on and off the camera by whether it’s connected to a power source. Most cars supply power when the car is turned on and they stop supplying power when the car stops. Usually it also checks whether the key is in or not. This differs from car to car, so check your car manual to prevent it from drawing power until your battery is empty when you’re not driving.

I recorded two videos showing how my action camera turns on and off with the car. This worked better than expected! As you can see I need to open my door after I remove the key from my car to actually fully power off.

Recordings are usually saved on a small SD card. When you record it fills the SD card with video files. You don’t want it to stop recording when the SD card storage is full. So check if there is a loop recording option. This replaces the oldest video files on the full SD card to make sure it can keep recording without stopping.

Optionally you can check whether you the action camera can chunk your recordings. Since SD cards are pretty slow you don’t want to copy a file of 32GB from the SD card to your PC. When the camera can chunk recordings into for example 5 minute chunks or 2GB chunks it’s faster to transfer them.

Mounting it in your car

Fortunately action camera’s come with lots of accessories to attach them to anything to record your action. These accessories can make mounting it in your car a breeze. I mounted mine on the back of my rear view mirror using one of the accessories. This makes the view of the camera perfect and it won’t block your view. Don’t mind the cable management. I really didn’t care, but you could do some better cable management and get rid of the cable. You can also use a suction mount to mount it to the windshield or the dashboard.