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The Akenori 1080P Pro Cam is a small device that records HD video as you drive in your car. It incorporates a GPS which is used to embed the time, location and speed of the vehicle into the video. With many incidents of bad driving, accidents and 'dodgy' insurance claims this device could both reduce your insurance premiums and also be used as evidence to attribute blame if you are unfortunate enough to have an accident. The Akenori 1080P Pro Cam is priced at £269.95 and is available from Exeros Technologies www.exeros-technologies.com
The Akenori 1080P Pro Cam is just over 2 inches wide and tall and just a tad more deep. The camera points out towards the rear whilst the front sports a 2.4" display. The whole assembly hangs off a mounting bracket that is glued to your windscreen with very strong double sided tape. The device does not have an internal battery for recording, but then it doesn't need one, simply wire up the the USB power lead to your cigar lighter outlet and the 1080P Pro Cam will switch on with the ignition. This feature will only work for accessory power sockets that are activated by the car ignition.
There are a number of ways to configure the 1080P Pro Cam, my favourite is to have it continuously recording. This does tend to fill up the storage card, but that is not an issue as new video files overwrite the oldest on the card. Each video file represents about 10 minutes of travel. With an 8Gb memory card you can fit about 2 hours of video on it before the oldest files start to be overwritten. To prevent video from being overwritten press the leftmost button. This will save the current recording into a separate area on the storage card which will not be overwritten.
The 1080P Pro Cam also has G-sensors integrated that detect sudden movements along any of the 3 axises. These are used to trigger the emergency recording feature if one or more of the sensors determine that the car has been hit. The sensors can be configured to trigger the emergency recording with three levels of sensitivity.
Not only does the 1080P Pro Cam record video, it also records audio as well. I have not found this to be particularly useful, but then I have not had occasion to use the video to prove my driving conduct in an incident. The audio could assist in confirming that you were not distracted immediately before the event. It is possible to turn audio off for the current recording, via a button or permanently, via the system menus.
In addition to the audio and video (which are captured in the same file) the 1080P Pro Cam records a track log of the trip which maps to the video file. This track log keeps details of the position, speed and sensor status for later analysis. This is in a standard plain text format, and is used in the PC application mentioned below.
As you are driving along the screen of the 1080P Pro Cam can be showing either the image being recorded, your current speed, the time, or nothing. By default it displays the image being recorded. Pressing the rightmost button toggles the screen between these modes.
As mentioned above the 1080P Pro Cam is equipped with GPS. This allows the recording of your position and speed along with the time, and also the use of location aware information, which in this case means Speed Camera warnings. The GPS information is embedded in the video with the position in the bottom left, followed by the current speed. To the bottom right is the GPS timestamp. Having this data embedded in the video prevents any form of tampering providing the best and most reliable evidence for recreating event timelines.
The Speed Camera alerts provided on the system are currently for fixed cameras only. They do not warn about red light cameras or mobile cameras. Although the 1080P Pro Cam does warn about SPECS average speed cameras it only flags the individual cameras and not the stretch of road that they monitor. I have been told that red light cameras and full average speed camera monitoring will be implemented in a later software update. The review sample I tested was provided with came preloaded with speed camera data.
In use the 1080P Pro Cam is totally autonomous it switches on with the ignition, starts recording, saves the recording should the sensors detect a crash, the shuts down when the engine is turned off. The only thing to do is to ensure that the 1080P Pro Cam is mounted in the clip on the windscreen. This is really the only item that could do with being improved in the system. The mounting clip on the windscreen should be powered. Most people will want to install the video recorder in such a way that it has hard wired power (or at least hidden cables). This means that to use the device whilst having reasonable security the drive cam needs to be unclipped and the power cable removed. Then when returning to the car to start a new trip the recorder needs to be clipped in and the power cable inserted. It would be far better if the clip was powered so that when mounting the power is automatically applied making the insertion and removal of the camera much easier.
So looking at the video produced, which after all is the objective of the 1080P Pro Cam. The Akenori 1080P Pro Cam is sold as being a HD video recorder. Well the term HD is a pretty loose term that is used for all sorts of things and to a certain extent has lost it's original meaning. However the 1080P Pro Cam does indeed fulfil its promise of HD Video in that it produces video configurable to be either 1920x1080 or 1280x720. The physical size though is just one part of the equation the other side of it is the video compression. This is determined by the bit rate. In the case of the 1080P Pro Cam this is around 9Mbs which to put it into context is about twice the bitrate of an iTunes HD Video download (at 720p). All in all that means that the quality is very good. You can judge for yourself by viewing the accompanying video, this gives an indication of the type of quality you can get from it. The video is taken just before dusk so the light is fading.
There are challenges when recording in the dark. It produces reasonable video but due to the very low light levels the quality starts to suffer. I was able to use the 1080P Pro Cam in a variety of conditions, and the only one where the video was not great was when driving through a torrential downpour. This was mainly due to the general visibility available at the time rather than an issue with the recorder.
The one thing I have not mentioned yet is the PC application bundled with the 1080P Pro Cam. The reason for this is that I do not own a Windows PC and was therefore unable to test it out. However the screen shot of the application shows the features available: selection of the recorded file, overlay of the trip on Google Maps, playback of the video, and a readout of the speed/sensor values.
Conclusion:
The Akenori 1080P Pro Cam is a neat little device that does what it says on the box. The recording features are well thought out and work well in a completely unattended road. I would like to see a powered clip to make the insertion and removal of the recorder easier. The speed camera warnings are somewhat incomplete at the moment, but you do get warned about fixed speed cameras.
Is this something I would buy? Probably not for me personally at the moment. Although it is possible to get 15% discount on your insurance I already have a cheap deal, and I tend not to drive in busy cities where the likelihood of an incident is higher. Although the 1080P Pro Cam is around average pricing for these systems they are still a tad expensive, but should become cheaper as they become more mass-market products.
As you are driving along the screen of the DriveCam can be showing either the image being recorded, your current speed, the time, or nothing. By default it displays the image being recorded.
Is this actually legal in the UK as the screen is within the drivers field of vision, I appreciate you can turn the screen to a blank display but having the default view showing the road ahead could invite the Police to have a more than healthy interest in your car when behind you - Mike
Posted by M8TJT on Mon Aug 06, 2012 7:26 pm
Is this not true of other similar devices?
Posted by carl_w on Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:09 pm
Let's be honest, if you had slotted in behind the Audi as you should have when you realized it was going faster than you even though you were in the overtaking lane, the Astra would never have been able to undertake.
Posted by MikeB on Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:24 pm
carl_w Wrote:
Let's be honest, if you had slotted in behind the Audi as you should have when you realized it was going faster than you even though you were in the overtaking lane, the Astra would never have been able to undertake.
Hmm I was not in the overtaking lane, but in the correct place to join the carriageway travelling at the correct speed limit.
Mike Barrett
Posted by carl_w on Wed Aug 08, 2012 7:09 am
I would disagree -- if you were not travelling faster than the Audi then why not use the left lane?
However, this highlights the problem I have with these sorts of devices. I can imagine it won't be long before they're mandated by insurance companies (or effectively mandated by making your insurance ludicrously expensive unless you have one). And TBH whilst I'm not the world's worst driver I don't drive like a saint all the time.
Posted by Oldboy on Wed Aug 08, 2012 8:40 am
carl_w Wrote:
... if you were not travelling faster than the Audi then why not use the left lane?
Presumably because there was a car in the left hand lane that would preclude such a move.
Richard
TT 910 V7.903: Europe Map v1045
TT Via 135 App 12.075: Europe Map v1140
Posted by carl_w on Wed Aug 08, 2012 8:55 am
Oldboy Wrote:
Presumably because there was a car in the left hand lane that would preclude such a move.
A fact which is not recorded on the camera, limiting its usefulness IMHO.
Posted by aj2052 on Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:34 pm
Oldboy wrote:
Quote:
Presumably because there was a car in the left hand lane that would preclude such a move.
Not at the traffic lights, although nobody in his lane but moved into overtaking lane and subsequently car pulled up at nearside lane after.
Moto G5s Plus, Sygic 17.4.8
Posted by johnnym100 on Fri Aug 10, 2012 9:58 am
Mike
Thanks for the review and the professional video clip, and I am keen to stay away from any driving etiquette discussions.
I do have some questions:
How does it compare with a RoadHawk? (I have an RH-1 but even comparing with the DC-whatever would be useful). Putting the Video screen & speed camera warnings aside as those are not features on the RoadHawk.
How does the video quality compare? I assume much better quality on this device as my RoadHawk can only make out a number plate from about 15 feet away. Any info on how Low light performance compares?
As the camera hangs down from the mount (or mirror I think from the video) does it obscure windscreen view to the nearside? Is this legal e.g. The dangling air fresheners, trinkets, furry dice etc are MOT failures.
As a pocketGPSworld subscriber, can your speed camera database be installed on it?
John.
Posted by Philhen on Fri Aug 10, 2012 10:00 am
On a completely different tack, I have just finished working as an accident investigator (over 12 years) and whilst a large number of accidents happen at the front of the car, there are also a large number that occur on either side and at the rear. You cannot rely on the fact that it will happen in front of you, it just doesn't work that way. Rear end shunts are all too common! Another area of incident is where someone pulls out onto an apparently clear road, and before you know it, there is a motorcycle (or a car) travelling at high speed which ploughs into the side of your vehicle, usually with distastrous consequences and not unusually fatal. All motorcyclists claim that they were travelling under the local speed limit at the time of the accident!
My point in all this is that an in-car camera is not worth spending money on unless it can see all round your vehicle - it is then, and only then, that you are protected from all the spurious claims from 3rd parties and their legal representatives!
Philhen.
Posted by MaFt on Fri Aug 10, 2012 10:19 am
Philhen Wrote:
...a large number of accidents happen at the front of the car...
...an in-car camera is not worth spending money on unless it can see all round your vehicle - it is then, and only then, that you are protected from all the spurious claims from 3rd parties and their legal representatives!
But if a large number happen in front of the car then a device such as this would be useful in a large number of cases. It's also useful from a witness point of view. If you're following a vehicle and someone crashes into the side of it you can offer the camera recording as evidence of what happened instead of just relying on eyewitness accounts.
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Posted by mikealder on Mon Aug 06, 2012 7:18 pm
