Have you checked out the Viofo A139 Pro? It has the new STARVIS 2 sensor and 4k rear camera. The STARVIS 2 is supposed to pick up license plates at night a lot better.
I was thinking of getting that same camera since I have some Ford reward points. I didn't dig that deep, but at first glance if you look at the installation manual it makes it sound like it plugs into the OBD port or something. That turned me off.
It does use an OBD connection (it doesn't take up your port though). That's why I was wondering if there is some added smart functionality to the Ford system over the standard Thinkware one.
You would hope so, unless they just somehow found it simpler to wire it that way to tap into the power sources and such.
I know a few of you guys on the forum have been sending me DM’s asking about my dash cam set up so I wanted to go ahead and cut some information about the amazing set up. I put together after doing tons of research on dash cam’s.
The unfortunate thing is, nowadays we all seem to get into accidents from time to time, and with people running red lights, or doing mischievous thing and vandalizing things. When you’re not around, I felt it was going to be a better peace of mind for myself to get the best dash cam available.
I started out with the Thinkware U1000 it’s an amazing set up with 4K video front facing and 2K video rear, facing which I was able to catch my car being rear ended in August on the 210 freeway here in Southern California with. There are a lot of dash cams out there but if they are not great you miss all the details you need from the video like plate numbers that's where the Thinkware u1000 really stands out. Nowadays people seem to want to say it wasn’t them or run from the scene, so having it on video that shows the exact situation is amazingly helpful with Law enforcement as well as the insurance company.
The great thing with U1000 is the amazing clarity and detail that you get in the pictures and video. Also that you can pull up the videos directly to your phone connected by Wi-Fi to the camera system. They also have a cloud service available to save your videos to if needed.
The camera actually has safety features as well for forward, collision warning, system, and lane departure warning system. For those people, they do not have those features on the vehicle.
Now, what I was truly also worried about is monitoring my vehicle when it’s parked on the street and in parking lots and so on. The great thing with this camera is it will record based on motion or impact when your car is parked in monitor it which gives me a tremendous peace of mind. Obviously, we can only do so much to protect our vehicles but having this is a great part of the puzzle.
My other concern with this was possible battery drainage on one of my cars is that I don’t drive continuously and having the camera constantly monitoring mode so I recently got a brand new just released Ivolt Xtra external battery that was installed under my seat. The battery charges when you’re driving the car and then when your car is parked, the camera uses the battery for monitoring so that it doesn’t directly drain your car battery.
With using the new external battery, when my car is in park mode in energy saving mode. It will be able to record 40 days a video using the external battery and not my car battery. The external battery also has an app to monitor the batteries condition and battery temperature on your phone being connected by Bluetooth. It’s definitely a Amazing top of the line set up
So I would definitely highly recommend adding the external battery if you wanna monitor your car when it’s part not being used to add a little bit of safety.
I can honestly say with all the homework I did on dash cams, trying to find the right set up this thing where you u1000 and the ivolt extra external battery is highly advanced, and probably the best quality system on the market.
I just wanted to try to help out the forum and post the information because I know it gets very confusing looking for these products, but nowadays, we really need them to have proof of possible problems.
Those that are in Southern California if we ever run into each other and a car event, please feel free to ask any questions or once again feel free to send me a direct message if you need help with anything.
I'm running this on my 2021 Shelby GT500 and will be using the same set up on my Wildtrak Bronco when it gets here.
I would bet on them using it as the easy way to wire in power.
