My Raspberry Pi dashcam

[NONOCE]

I recently started the project of making a dashcam for my car out of the Raspberry Pi and it's camera.

I've first written a script that make the Raspberry Pi autonomous for taking videos when the device is powered. It records videos, give them a proper name and delete the oldest of them if the sdcard is near full.

Then I tried to install the device into my car. I hadn't planned a place for it but I found a nice one I hope. Here is some pictures of my advancements :


The camera is visible above the rear view mirror. It is rather well hidden.


I've put the Raspberry Pi here, I had to remove the interior lights though :/


The installation is rather temporary, maybe I can hide that mess a little better but it's not so bad. The camera cable goes between the plastic case and the roof of the car.

Finaly I drove my car around and the Raspberry Pi took a video. I'm quite satisfacted with the quality, the video isn't shaking and the resolution is good at 1080p. The field of vision is a little low maybe and I don't know how the capture will do in the rain as it seems my screen whipers don't reach high enough to clean where the camera is.

I will try to make a more permanent installation for this project after more testing as it seems to be working well.

I've got some questions then. I can play the recordings with omxplayer and vlc but I haven't found a working video editor. Virtual Dub and Windows Movie Maker won't open them even after I installed ffdshow. What should I install for that ? Also, is there a way to acces the sd card main partition on windows ? I tried to install Ext2Fsd but it won't recognize it after I plug the card. Well there are some more tools I should try.

[NONOCE]

Here is a picture of the inside of the plastic case:

Yes the Raspberry Pi is screwed on a piece of cardboard :s

Edit: About how the Raspberry Pi react when the power is cut, the last seconds ( 10-20 ? ) of the recording are lost at that point, I will need to do more practical tests to see if this is acceptable or if there are solutions to this like using the command "sync".
Also I just found out that it is possible to power the Raspberry Pi directly on my radio usb connector.

[NONOCE]

I've finaly been able to find a good enough video editor, I've uploaded a short clip of a recording result on youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awrAj3VE0zE

Edit: The next steps will be to put back the interior lightings and try to power the raspberry pi from the wires that come from the ceiling and make a better casing for the camera. Also I will try to create a very simple linux system instead of raspbian so the device will boost faster. I will take my time to make all of this though.

[SP3IIL2]

Could you help me with the programming part of the install? I have a Logitech c525 I bought for a dashcam, but I couldn't figure out how to do what yours is.

[NONOCE]

I used the Raspberry Pi camera, it was easy to install and there are integrated commands on the raspbian distribution to control it. You should figure out how to do the same with your camera but I don't know how to do this myself, though it must be possible.

[SuperGizmo]

Hey Guys,

I've just come across this post and for what I can say is a cool install. I've never even touched a Pi before and would be hopefully buying my one soon. However, I'm really interested in creating a car dash-cam, however what is the maximum size SD card the Pi can take? Can you get the system, if run on an extra external battery, upload the days driving to a cloud server for remote viewing? rather than having to take the SD card out all the time.

Thanks,

Daniel.

[Robpol86]

Very nice, thanks for sharing the video! I've been thinking of doing the same thing.