Android Plug and Play Dashcam

Thanks to @916tundra for introducing the forum to the Android HU. An alternative option that knocks it out of the park as far as ROI. Piggybacking on his awesome thread, I thought I would start a new thread on the USB plug and play dashcam option.

Firstly, I need to let everyone know that the Android unit I purchased was manufactured by Idoing. I've done much research and contacted many vendors on aliexpress only to find out that these units consists of mostly the same general components with tweaking on the UI and rebranded to many different names across the Chinese Android Auto Industry.

My unit is a 1 Din unit which I like since I have the option of having an extra cubby hole in the trim kit (purely preference). The following link is to the USB 2.0 Front Camera Dash Cam (FOR $17 bucks, its a no brainer for me to test and ended up loving):

https://www.aliexpress.com/ in the search field put: idoing front camera

I know its USB 2.0 but the transfer rate is trivial considering it has its own SD Card so reading/writing/deleting functionality is done directly from the unit as opposed to being controlled from the HU. HU only serves as a realtime monitoring interface. Here it is when first purchased. Just basically a USB Cable and the unit itself. I purchased a 64GB microsd card (THIS IS LARGEST CAPACITY YOU CAN PURCHASE FOR THIS DASHCAM) for the unit which is fairly inexpensive nowadays on Amazon and actually purchased a 2 pack so I could use the other one on the HU itself since it has two slots for quicker mounting of A/V files.



The dashcam just basically plugs into any of your three USB plug dongles from your headunit. I routed two of my USBs to my glove so I basically mounted it on the windshield.

(PLEASE NOTE: Do not peel back double stick tape until you are absolutely certain of its final location after you install and update the software and can see it on your HU screen for obvious reasons ... the double stick tape is super strong and once you have it mounted, you cant tear it down. I made that mistake but luckily it was mounted fairly at a nice angle. Make sure to not include too much sky in the view for obvious reasons and the Dashcam does pivot on a vertical axis). I know for the lane control option you need the camera positioned at a certain X/Y axis on the screen for the image to be analyzed with the algorithm but I won't go into that since I bypassed it and now its stuck on. LOL.

After mounting, I routed it along the headliner (using a trim pry tool to bring the headliner down to tuck) then down the A pillar and to the glove. There is more than ample length on the USB cord for this.







Make sure you are in range of a Wifi connection for the HU since you will need to update the software.

(So a disclosure: It is Chinese made so there are Chinese wording as you can see later and although I am Chinese/Vietnamese, I am more Americanized than anything so this will be as foreign to me as to most of you on the Tundra forum. LOL)

Once plugged in, the Dashcam itself will be recognized as a Jumpdrive so once its mounted, you can go into the file explorer program of your HU and peruse to the newly mounted drive. In the folder will be an apk file to install the software. Below is a how to video created by Idoing that they sent me just in case. The video software is older since the video's release but the steps are the same.



VERY IMPORTANT: After installation, please update the software since the new software runs much better. I had mine for over 5 months and have used every iteration of the software and the most current is by far the best. You can update by simply clicking on the Settings button and from there, scrolling down on the right half of the screen to update. Once updated, your new camera should automatically launch whenever you turn on your car. The old software ran in the background but did not have the floating window automatically launch as you can see below:



It will usually launch on top of all apps in your car launcher preference. Above is a screenshot of it on top of my home launcer. You can simply move it around to where you want to dock it by long pressing on the center image and dragging it to the new location. I found the lower right of the display was the best for most applications I launched and pretty much out of the way. You can also close it by just clicking on the X box in the mini screen. You can return to the app by clicking the return arrow or snap a quick pic by pressing the camera. (Sorry I work in IT and do a lot of end user documentation so I apologize if I sound condescending from a end user standpoint).

So let's get into the app itself, Once you update you will presented with a screen like below. with all control settings on the bottom and a Chinese message window in the middle. This window as far as I can discern is the QR code to access the phone app that you can use to control the unit using a Wifi hotspot ... we can talk about this later if anyone chooses.

(I chose not to do this because after I installed it I thought about installing a foreign app on my phone connected to a data connection that can monitor my movements and it just didn't sound right. LOL Plus its all in Chinese which is basically mumble jumble for me. Maybe we have a Chinese member that can help with deciphering this if anyone wants to explore this option. )




So I just click skip. Unfortunately this window comes up every time you maximize or launch the program. I'm sure we can figure out how to disable this somehow but it does cause some ridiculous banter for me and my passengers ... whenever I'm demoing the interface.

So after clicking skip you will have a screen like below:



clicking on the middle part of the screen will make the control settings along the bottom disappear and clicking it again will make the it reappear:



The cool thing is it has the bottom geographical info hard coded into the recording ... Time in YYYY/MM/DD format (wish we can change that), Time in 24HR format, Coordinates (Frickin awesome), and unfortunately, speed in KM/H) Please help if you can figure out how to change to MPH/H.

The button on the top left will dock it again to your last app screen.

I won't go into the functionality of the control settings yet because I've typed way too much but perhaps later. There is options to do lane control, speed settings, sound on/off with recording (sound is terrible so i left it off, especially while bumping music) and other stuff too but I will end this post for now and let you all explore if you want.

One note: On playback option, you must realize that it continually is programmed to record once the HU is powered on which is what we all want but therefore when accessing the "Playback" option, the realtime recording will be cut so you can view the most current while it creates a new playback file.

I have not ejected the SD Card from the unit but suspect it basically consists of a folder that houses all the avi files if you feel the need to keep the file for investigative purposes. You can even lock the file to prevent auto deletion in the playback settings. Also this is where it stores the photo when you click the camera button to snap photos.

The quality is amazing and with the fish eye angle lens it is more than ample and the security of knowing I have continuous recording in HD always on hand for $17 investment is awesome. I haven't measured the full time frame capacity of a 64GB but all I know is when a video is needed, it is usually in the time frame of within 30 mins of real time and it stores way more than that .

Hope this helps those guys and gals out there that want a dashcam for their android auto HU.

Oh you can also set the recording time interval from 3 to 5 mins. in the settings as well.

Cheers

 

Very cool - thank you. I've been wanting to put a dash cam in my Tundra but didn't want to buy another Rexing

 

Best bang for your buck brother! Glad I could help.

 

I can't seem to find that camera. So this camera is just USB no other wires needed ?