Stolen car by the dash cam lights.

Dave

Dave

Staff member
So this guy in Lansing, MI gets his car stolen. He has a dash cam that the person does not remove and he's posted all the videos captured to YouTube. (And turned them over to the police.) It's a 34 video playlist from hell. The first few are kinda boring but it gives you an idea of the caliber of person who stole the car. Drugged out & a model citizen.

 
strawman

strawman

That was my thought, but 4 hours of even heavily compressed HD video is 2GB, and that could happen in a single day of driving on a regular basis. I don't think the value proposition makes sense.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

stienman said:
That was my thought, but 4 hours of even heavily compressed HD video is 2GB, and that could happen in a single day of driving on a regular basis. I don't think the value proposition makes sense.
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There are specific types of car alarm and dashcam that start automatically, only when the car is started improperly, and stream the whole thing to a central dispatching/control room. If you steal/hotwire/start without permission some car marks in Belgium, I'll be watching. And telling the cops where your car's going.
So it definitely exists. And it's not all that crappy as quality goes, either - enough to identify the driver (because obviously there's an internal cam too, for some brands), street,....

I don't think it works via 4G, though, all satellite. A bit of latency doesn't really matter after all.
 
strawman

strawman

Well, I'd be surprised if it were satellite. You might be able to get slow data from a satellite without a dish (ie, GPS), but sending anything more than text messages without an aimed dish, even slowly, is not terribly likely. There are some beam forming antennas you can get that could do it without an unwieldy dish on top of the vehicle, but if you have some technology that allows images, even just a single frame per minute, sent via satellite cheaply without any visible satellite dish then I'd certainly like to hear more about it.

As it is I suspect it's cellular, wimax, or similar terrestrial based radio system. Belgium is small enough that a security service might feasibly build out its own radio system, but it's more likely on an existing carrier's network.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

stienman said:
Belgium is small enough that a security service might feasibly build out its own radio system, but it's more likely on an existing carrier's network.
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It's not a Belgian system - it's the manufacturer's. We only get the feed if the car's in Belgium ;)
The GPS tracking and motor intervention are through satellite, camera is indeed by local radio network.
 
strawman

strawman

Bubble181 said:
It's not a Belgian system - it's the manufacturer's. We only get the feed if the car's in Belgium ;)
The GPS tracking and motor intervention are through satellite, camera is indeed by local radio network.
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Ah, that makes much more sense! Yes, satellite location tracking is easy enough without a dish, in fact you can get the satellite modem modules as a hobbyist now - https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745 - but of course you can only send small short messages and the cost is high. Splitting the images to a separate radio network makes a lot of sense, with the satellite as 100% coverage backup regardless of location or local service coverage.
 
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