Google will soon let Pixel phones double as dashcams | Hacker News Reader

Google will soon let Pixel phones double as dashcams

9to5google.com

Not sure about negative comments here. You dont like it, dont use the feature! Its not like Google is forcing you to use this. I bet people will celebrate this feature when Apple rolls around implementing it two years from now. I for one, look forward to using this feature on my Pixel as I live in a city where drivers are very aggressive and in general have a disregard for following the rules. I have been in an accident where the other driver outright refused to accept their mistake and made up a completely false story and a dashcam would have proved their fault without a doubt. I did mount a dashcam in my car since then but using the phone would be a much better proposition.

If it's your word against the other driver's, the insurance company can find you each at fault.

I've gotten in the habit of recording my rides since then. Was using Droid Dashcam, but it make my Pixel feel slow/hot/buggy. Very keen to see a built-in version of the same functionality.

When Apple rolls this out as Continuity Recorder, it will require your car to be signed into your iCloud account.

> I bet people will celebrate this feature when Apple rolls around implementing it two years from now.

Not only will it be celebrated but people will claim its revolutionary

Apple would never put iPhones up to something this low-brow.

This is the company that put a charging port under a mouse so you wouldn't leave it hooked up all day: they're not going to encourage you to stick your phone in a creaky phone mount in hot sunlight all day so you can do a bad dashcam impression.

In Apple world you don't need your phone to be a dashcam because you can afford stupid accidents and other expenses that mostly screw over the poors

No need to wait for another two years, I already made an exact app you're talking about. it's not only a dash cam, but it's integrated with turn by turn navigation as well.

maybe I can claim it to be revolutionary :)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dashmap/id1638360259

Cool app.. but why subscription? this should be a one time payment.

Why not a subscription given with each iOS version comes new APIs and deprecations requiring time and effort to fix?

Hmmm.. Id say thats a cost of doing business on the app store? App stores should be doing a better job of making sure everything doesn’t require rework ever so often, but I don’t see why end customers have to pick up that tab. On a continued basis like in a subscription.

Subscriptions for apps are like paying the service fee to a skilled mechanic for your car's maintenance and upgrades. The developer acts as the mechanic, using the subscription revenue to continually improve the app's performance, security, and features. Just as the mechanic ensures your car runs smoothly and can add better features (tinted windows, reverse camera etc), the developer can deliver regular updates, replace outdated components, and introduce innovative features. Subscriptions support ongoing app maintenance and enhancement, providing users with a reliable and up-to-date experience, similar to how a mechanic's services keep your car in optimal condition.

That's a lot of fluff for meaning to say that subscriptions earn more than one-time purchase fees.

How often do you pay your mechanic

Once per maintenance change, not once per car you buy

By that logic you should pay the app only when the version changes, not every month

Great idea but there isn’t an easy way to manage that

It is unfortunately because of API cost from Mapbox. In Google's use case, they can obviously do it for free (for being Google and not integrated with navigation within the app). The 1 week tier is aimed for rental car users, for normal users, I'd recommend 1 month.

the biggest cost for me is the navigation, mapbox charges quite a lot...on a per trip basis, but you guys can use the promo code HACKERNEWS for 1 month free trial

Thats a good point.. I hadn’t considered the continued use of paid navigation apis for this app

I love apps like this. There’s a world full of high quality software out there that is just waiting to be discovered.

Thanks for sharing.

You're saying that as if it's the same people doing both. HN has a large enough number of users for both to happen and it not being hypocrisy.

> HN has a large enough number of users for both to happen and it not being hypocrisy.

Why would that matter in this hypothetical scenario? Releasing a feature two years after someone else has would not be revolutionary regardless of which phone someone uses.

Yeah, those comments calling on the hypocrisies of a crowd are really getting boring. Same thing on reddit where people call on an entire subreddit for having been wrong or having a different opinion in a different thread.

We are talking of hundreds of thousands of user, is that really surprising that we see different opinions in different threads? I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that a comment thread about Google and Android might attract an entirely different crowd than an Apple thread.

The operative word here is "let", since any linux OS computer could do this.

It's only been goggle's abomination on top of linux that has prevented it...

Isn't it nice of the mulit-trillion dollar corporation to "let" you do things?

Let's all just worship the mega-wealthy a little more...

Google is in no way interested in traffic safety and that's the reason I despise them for playing around in this field. For example, they encourage active use of the phone while driving by asking you to report and confirm/deny reports of "speed traps". It's similar to Tesla tinkering with self driving and using everyone around us as beta testers.

> they encourage active use of the phone while driving by asking you to report and confirm/deny reports of "speed traps"

Apple Maps does this also.

That's a bummer

So what are you implying here with the quotes on "speed traps"?

There are very real speed traps on roads, and they endanger drivers in exchange for generating ticket revenue.

> There are very real speed traps on roads, and they endanger drivers in exchange for generating ticket revenue.

Not if you drive the speed limit or less. Google endangers drivers (especially other drivers) by implicitly encouraging rapid deceleration at one of these "traps".

If someone slowing ahead of you puts you in danger, you were following too close. The parent was talking about encouraging users to use their phone to report the speed traps is a cause of distracted driving, which it is, which is dangerous.

And you know what. Cops NEVER go after people for following too close. You see them always out there just knocking out speeders. Going 70 in a 60 is not dangerous. Following someone 6 feet off their bumper at 55 in a 60 is far more dangerous, but that requires doing actual work, not sitting on the shoulder knocking out ticket after ticket.

Actual speed traps cause rapid deceleration on purpose. There will suddenly be a speed limit sign that is very abrupt or very low or both.

A cop with a radar gun in a normal stretch of road with a reasonable speed limit is not a speed trap.

Though even for """speed traps""" that are just enforcement, if there is a big difference between the average speed and the speed limit then there's probably something wrong with the road design.

Wait, explain to me how a cop on the side of the road with a radar gun "endangers drivers"? If someone ahead of you slowing down before they get to a cop causes you danger, you were following unjustifiably close.

There are lots of things that can happen on a highway to take a car from 80mph to 0mph in just a few feet (very heavy things to run into) without warning, and if you don't have enough distance to react to that and stop, you are following too close.

Have you never seen how people hit their brakes, swerve into open lanes, and back up traffic for miles just because of a cop or some shit on the side of the road?

One, it's insane to ask drivers to input data while driving.

Two, these are not "speed traps", they are simply officers on the side of the road. These officers are doing a public service looking for cell phone users, and for aggressive speeders.

No they're not. They're too busy staring through the scope of their LIDAR gun to know what's actually going on on the freeway.

I personally have seen them staring through regular binoculars lately more often than a radar gun. I assume they are looking for people holding cell phones. This is in Northern California.

Also, being seen on the freeway at all helps the crazies in their dodge chargers slow donw a little. If they know the cops are out, they'll keep it to 95 instead of 105.

Waze just calls them cops on the road, I think?

But Google maps uses the euphemism speed trap so it doesn't look like just tracking cops.

Yes, I suspect it's a data collection project. Like the street view cars, but everywhere.

After watching dashcam crash videos for 5 years, I finally got around to getting a dashcam for myself (not that I intend to star in any of those videos, mind you).

From those crash videos, I've learned to never turn left in Russia. You'll get t-boned almost every time.

> Don't turn left in Russia. You'll get t-boned almost every time.

I'm skeptical. How does this happen if I yield to traffic that's already on the road?

Somebody decides to speed past you in the wrong lane as you try to turn?

Otherwise, it's not as dangerous as dashcam videos make it look. What's the opposite of survivor bias?

Oh, I see. I didn't lower my scumbag bar enough, I guess. Yeah, that's nuts.

> What's the opposite of survivor bias?

Confirmation bias, maybe.

Survivor bias is a specific case of selection bias, and the issue here is also selection bias: there's a selection effect on which dashcam videos you end up seeing.

The operative word here is "let", since any linux OS computer could do this.

It's only been goggle's abomination on top of linux that has prevented it...

Isn't it nice of the mulit-trillion dollar corporation to "let" you do things?

Let's all just worship the mega-wealthy a little more...

I was gonna say this. I've thought of this idea years and year ago. This is an old ass idea, and the only reason phones didn't do it before, is because Google and Apple wouldn't let us do it. It should be embarassing that it's taken them this long to come up with it.

I prefer to use my $25 dashcam on my car (I did my research to find a pretty decent one). This dashcams always recording and mounted.

Could you pass on the results of your research? I don't think I found a dashcam at that price range, and I was actually looking to use an old smartphone as my dashcam, but it didn't seem like a good solution as 1. I would have to start the app manually whenever the phone powers up, and 2. I wouldn't want to leave the phone in a holder in the car all the time as it could invite thieves.

> You dont like it, dont use the feature! Its not like Google is forcing you to use this.

And why only Sony have 3.5mm headphone jack now? I guess Apple did not force us right?

FTA:

> We also wonder about how Personal Safety will be able to do this type of always-on recording without generating excess heat, especially if your phone needs to be mounted in a position that’s likely to see a lot of direct sunlight.

That's what I immediately thought of. I can't see this working too well unless they solve the overheating issues.

I had my Google Pixel 7 Pro shut down due to overheating, on a reasonably hot day (~35C) where I was walking around and taking a bunch of photos.

I had to use my hands to absorb the heat, to cool it down enough to turn back on so I could call a Taxi and get somewhere cool.

A mount that moves AC air directly to phone should work.

you can have direct sunlight heating up the phone on a day that AC is not needed

this issue needs to be handled by the device and not with external resources

Buy a white phone and don't put a case on it.

Or buy a white case. That’s what I did and it seemed to work, as a Sat Nav device at least. Not sure about recording video which will produce more heat.

ha! not in Australia you cant.

That sun is murder on hot phones.

Assuming it’s not a snowy winter day in Michigan… ;)

The Exynos based Tensor, made by Samsung is very hot. Google should've collaborated with QC or MT and used TSMC to make their SOC.

Why are chips made by samsung vs tsmc are any different?

Why are cars made by Toyota and Ford any different?

A lot of different technical decisions have been made by different people along the way.

Both are producing same chips, maybe slightly different serial number. Perhaps better comparison would be why Chinese Tesla’s are better than American ones.

Are Chinese Tesla's better than American ones? Is it just higher quality control because of a newer manufacturing setup there?

Or why airlines are refusing to take deliveries of Boeing planes from a certain factory but not the others. If it's difficult to maintain consistent quality inside a single company, it's no surprise that differences like this can show up in "identical" CPUs fabricated by different companies.

No, Samsung's processes and TSMC's processes are not the same. They were not making the same chip; they each were making chips based on the same input design, that had been targeted to two different processes.

Samsung's foundries have struggled for the past few years to achieve their targets, whereas TSMC has continued improving at their projected rates. TSMC's process is now significantly ahead of Samsung's, such that the same designs are better on TSMC. These improvements are along the lines of fewer defects, higher switching speeds, less leakage, etc.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was made on Samsung's fabs. The 8+ Gen 1 is the same design on TSMC.

To be clear, this is for Samsung's processor foundries. Their DRAM and flash memory still appear to be industry leaders.

It's not even a recent thing. Way back when Apple used both TSMC and Samsung foundries for their A9 SoC's, the Samsung ones were measured to perform worse than the TSMC ones. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/samsung-vs-tsmc-comp...

It's just the gap has become more noticeable in recent years. (Notably with things like the Snapdragon 888 handwarmer).

To put it in perspective, the latest Tensor G2 is outperformed by the 2019 A13 Bionic in geekbench.

Quality of manufacturing. Think about a mechanical assembly manufactured within specifications but where one is at the upper bound of tolerance and things rattle a bit while the other is a perfect fit.

In most quality systems those parts are equivalent (they meet spec). If you need or want better parts, you tighten the spec.

A sibling comment to yours points out that TSMC has better processes. That's probably a better way to state it, they can hit a tighter spec at the same price point.

> In most quality systems those parts are equivalent (they meet spec). If you need or want better parts, you tighten the spec.

Components being equivalent within spec doesn't mean they have the same performance. It only means they are all acceptable for their intended use. That's why the Apple A9 from TSCM were performing better than the Samsung ones in the same way batches of products made from the same blueprints can have widely different failure rates.

These are quality of manufacturing issues and yes it is due to TSCM having better processes than Samsung. That's not a better way to state it. One is the reason of the other.

Snapdragons overheat just fine too, it's not a unique issue. Also what is actually overheating most in this scenario is not the SoC but a display. Open your phone of any brand and model and walk around with it unlocked in the bright summer sunny day outside. The screen will work at max brightness and would become insanely hot from the internal heat in very short time span.

>The screen will work at max brightness and would become insanely hot from the internal heat in very short time span.

It's the sun heating up the black non-reflective back of screen. Probably wouldn't be as much of an issue with transreflective displays. The display showing full brightness definitely contributes to the problem, but it's not the main culprit.

My iPhone heats up uncomfortably if I leave it in the sun even if I don’t use it. The SoC is irrelevant here.

Good thing video recording can be practically fully offloaded to specialized blocks and doesn't need the main cores to be driven at high clock.

In my case with a Galaxy S9, it's the screen that overheats easily. It's a double whammy when in the bright outdoors, because sunlight hits the phone, and it needs to be bright so that the screen can be seen.

Presumably the device will do the recording with the screen turned off, so it will generate little heat internally. So I think placing most of the device behind something to shield it from sunlight should be enough to avoid heat issues.

Though I agree with others here that a cheap specialized dashcam device is much better.

I’d want to use the screen for navigation and the camera for Dashcam at the same time

android auto

not sure if you're using iOS, but I already made one for iPhone.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dashmap/id1638360259

Good luck. As soon as you tilt the screen towards you so you can read it, your dashcam is now capturing video off at some weird angle.

Still won't be enough. Driving I-5 from LA to SF on a reasonably warm day (85+F) means the phone will shut down within the hour if it's on the dashboard. I've specifically gotten a phone mount that attaches to the AC vents for that purpose.

I appreciate the thought, but unless it works up to at least 140F, it won't be useful

I always have my phone screen off while driving since it's hooked up via Android Auto, but I've had my phone shut off many times on warmer days. I'm not sure how I could reasonably shield it from sunlight and use it as a dash cam at the same time.

There are special phone cases/holders designed for that. I'm pretty sure Google will sell those too. Not to mention this might be a camera recording the driver-distraction and not the road. So it doesn't have to be in the sun. Or even for passengers in a driverless car

> this might be a camera recording the driver-distraction

I'm not sure why you would want to use your phone to record yourself while driving to see if you're distracted.

To use AI to alert you to when you're not paying attention.

That seems like it might be reasonable feature to be built in to vehicle, but I can't imagine many people who are that prone to distracted driving to take the time set up such a feature every time they drive.

Car phone mount with a heat sink on the back could help a good bit.

Mounting it right behind an A/C vent might be much better.

My pixel 4 died because of poor heat management.

"a new feature called “Dashcam” that, as the name suggests, records video (and audio, optionally) while you are driving. If your phone is mounted in the right spot, the recording should provide helpful information in the event of an accident or other unexpected situation."

A perfect way to collect information about your driving habits and vehicle. Insurance companies, auto sales and maintenance companies, and others would love to find new customers this way.

They already collect tracking data with Google Maps and already use car engine type to estimate gas usage on different routes.

Now they can collect not just yours, but also other people's license plate movements and facial recognition. It's great producing eyes for Google everywhere - which is why the Ring was worth a billion $ for Amazon.

Just found out that my Pixel 7 has, so deeply hidden I don't find it again easily, a check box limiting / allowing access to car data. I didn't turn it on...

Well, there is a long weekend coming up, maybe if I find time despite the huge home project backlog to install CalxyOS, I hate it that I cannot trust my phone to not spy on me and my activities despite everything being turned of. After all, some settings changed after various app updates.

If you want a phone you can trust, you might like a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).

(I know this doesn't really help you now, but) If you install your self-representing operating system as part of setting up a new phone, then you don't end up in a situation where it's some huge disruptive undertaking. Also doing so within the purchase return period assures that your phone can definitely be unlocked, rather than finding out otherwise when it's too late.

Since the main reason not to use grapheneOS is that it only supports Pixels and you already have one, you might also consider it. Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod.

https://grapheneos.org/

>Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod.

this is a great teaser statement

I miss the days of having to open 9 xda threads to figure out how to install some ROM. That whole scene seems to have died off as Android puts up more walls to increase reliance on locked down services

There is plenty navigation/maps<->insurance or police-detection<->insurance cooperation here in Poland. It analyzes your driving and offers discounts based on that.

There is also plenty of dedicated dashcam apps and functions in map apps so I'm curious why this Pixel addon brings attention.

Car companies already advertise new models as fully Googlyfied (as if that is a good thing) so when informed people lament that a large part of the population are basically convenience seeking, gullible imbeciles its not far from the truth.

That such an important aspect of our lives as privacy would come to be trampled so easily is just mind boggling.

Wisdom of the crowds my a*. The only way you can prevent organized corporate abuse is to have very empowered and savvy regulators that somehow truly work for the interests of the many.

A highly non-trivial catch-22 given that in a democracy they can only draw legitimacy for their actions by appealing to the same inane and manipulated multitudes.

That most people are not aligned with your privacy-maximalist worldview does not make us imbeciles.

No, but it's not far from the truth.

Dashcams should 100% be required in every car. Too many accidents are a he-said-she-said situation, sometimes without any impartial witnesses.

Everyone should be free to choose if they have a car that automatically generates tons of evidence against themselves that the cops just have to seize.

It's bad enough with eCall and the trend to insurances requiring recording blackboxes (or modern cars doing that all on their own), but dashcams? I can already see police demanding laws allowing them to force you to hand them over access to the footage at a roadside traffic stop and them running AI scans on it to see if you ran a stop sign or red light or if you were speeding.

Where there's feeding troughs of data, the pigs will always come to demand being fed (a rough translation of the German saying "Wenn man den Trog hat, kommen die Schweine von ganz alleine").

no thanks. pervasive surveillance is bad enough already without the requirement that the surveiled pay for the hardware themselves.

Why is surveillance a requirement? Local recordings would have virtually no downsides unless the intention is to evade responsibility for traffic collisions.

I do actually have a dashcam built into my personal vehicle. I have mixed feelings about it, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks.

that said, the risks are not to be taken lightly. even if the recording is only stored locally, it can be seized by authorities or subpoenaed later. you can't guarantee it will only be used to settle minor traffic disputes.

like I said, I'm (mostly) happy to make that decision for myself. but having the government require people to collect evidence against themselves is a hard no from me.

>but having the government require people to collect evidence against themselves is a hard no from me.

Not an expert on US constitution, but Isn't that a violation?

Driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right, which is why it's legal for them to institutes requirements like "must have insurance" or "must have a driver's license".

I read that you get a nontrivial discount on your car insurance in Russia if you have a dashcam. So basically everyone there has one, which is why it seems like all the dashcam videos on the internet take place in Russia.

I think that sort of system makes sense. We shouldn't require dashcam, but any policy which reduces expensive he-said-she-said litigation in our society should be encouraged.

I suspect we'd find a pleasant second-order benefit as well: humans might simply drive better if they know they're being recorded. We know that interactions with the police are much less likely to escalate to the point of violence when both parties are recording each other, and I imagine the same principle could apply to our roads.

They're pretty ubiquitous here in Hong Kong too. As much for protection against scams than actual accidents (i.e. other vehicles and pedestrians falsely claiming you hit them).

>I suspect we'd find a pleasant second-order benefit as well: humans might simply drive better if they know they're being recorded.

If only:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUoSq8KTzJw (HK crash compilation)

There's also a channel uploading all sorts of transgressions throughout the day [1] and a cornucopia of "Teslun" channels and IG accounts

[1] https://m.youtube.com/@hkpkdriving/videos

Insurance companies already offer you “discounts” (or pretend to) if you install their pervasive tracking dongle. How they use that data is NOT to the consumers benefit. When I was in school, an insurance company (idk which one but it’s in Cleveland area) pitched us to work for them on this system. They laughed to us about all the fools who give them data. They bill you more if you travel through intersections with lights (every intersection has a risk score), take left turns on your way home from work, etc. - they had some insane amount of data. If they shared the safety data with everyone then I’d be more ok with it. I wish I could ask Apple/Google maps to route me “safely”.

I was going to refuse my spy dongle, but they offered a >80% discount. Everyone has a price, but I wish the government disincentivized this behavior.

> If they shared the safety data with everyone then I’d be more ok with it. I wish I could ask Apple/Google maps to route me “safely”.

This sounds like a wonderfully non-controversial idea that could save many lives. I'd absolutely use this feature.

I know there are many people that work for Apple & Google on this site - if you needed a nudge, this is it.

Better driver training and education is what should be required first. Seeing people on the road makes me think most people don't know about the physics of tailgating or speeding.

When I grew up in Germany it was the ADAC driver training, a half day of driving on a long and wide patch of road almost like an airport apron, and doing different manoeuvres and exercises that made me a much much more humble (and slow) driver.

> Better driver training and education is what should be required first. Seeing people on the road makes me think most people don't know about the physics of tailgating or speeding

You can train people all you want but a great many still aren't going to understand the physics of driving and use that to drive more safely.

Driving is for most people an activity imbued with primal feelings and behaviors. Otherwise we'd all be driving small nimble cars in a way that maintained a large safety margin.

In reality our reptilian brains want to be in the biggest vehicle that we can do that we survive the crash, while speeding or tailgating to satisfy whatever need or anxiety that services.

America chose to build itself around cars, which makes it politically untenable to put any non-trivial gate in front of driving, which is why you can pass a half hour "test" once at 16 and be set for life, even as you approach dementia. It's even worse now, because even if we succeed at making automobiles not a necessity for average life, a huge subset of the american population believes they are a core part of their identity.

Why don't cars come with these by default yet? I have two backup cameras on a 7 year old entry level Honda but no integrated dashcam.

Legal issues. Dash cams aren't allowed universally, and even when they are they tend to have restrictions (how it's mounted, how footage is handled, etc). They've just decided dealing with this pain point is not worth the purchase conversions since users can just add one themselves.

There are some brands that have them, usually as an additional package depending on where you are. Like Toyota's Genuine Dash in Canada, Tesla Dashcam, BMW Car Eye, etc.

All you need is a toggle in the settings that is off by default. They also already deal with regional law differences regarding speed camera warnings, so it isn't an insane idea for them to maintain a list of countries where the feature is blocked (although that's not the solution I would prefer)

The simple answer is that backup cameras are required by regulation for safety, whereas dashcams don't increase safety.

> whereas dashcams don't increase safety

I'd like to see your source for that claim!

Well, maybe the observer effect comes into play, but they don't directly, actively impact safety in the manner that backup cameras do.

Reversing cameras don't increase safety on my cars, because I still turn my head and use the mirrors. Old habits die hard.

You would still have a major blind spot if a child or small animal is directly behind your car. The NHTSA estimated it would save over 70 lives per year (an underestimate), which is invaluable considering the small cost.

True, although I already check behind/around my car before I set off.

I appreciate the motivitions of those who think technology is the answer to accident prevention but now you are discouraging people from developing proper safety habits ("I don't need to check around my car because the cameras/sensors will tell me if I'm going to hit something") and then one day a sensor fails or they are driving a car that doesn't have this technology.

I already see this with my wife who has those little blinker lights in her side mirrors that warn if a car is next to you when you are changing lanes. She doesn't really look anymore, just makes sure the lights aren't blinking. I always turn my head and look; I don't trust the sensors and I also set my side mirrors to cover the typical blind spot.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjus...

And for those of us who drive minivans, there are huge areas that you just can't see without a back up camera. You still look out windows and check all your mirrors, but being able to see the ground behind your car is important.

Unfortunately rear windows have been getting smaller and smaller, so without backup cameras you have very limited vision.

Which is why the car will likely have other sensors that yell at you when you are trying to back out and a small object or person is in your blind spot. My backup camera can just see more than I can from the drivers seat, because it is on the very back of the car, which is very useful when my small hatchback is constantly dwarfed by megatrucks on all sides in every parking lot.

I'd prefer cars just add standardized mount points with power and maybe data lines. Then I could install different cheap products I selected, or none at all.

Remember when cars have standardized ashtrays?

Ashtrays were standard, but they were not standardized. Lots of different form factors, no consistency.

Why would they do that? Cars used to have slots that you could put your own radio in. Then manufacturers figured they make more if they sell you their own system for 2000€.

Their own systems are garbage too. I hate newer cars. I can build a better stereo with 5 speakers for under $500 and it would blow away what any car company can engineer into their 42 speaker stereo.

This is one of my larger personal pet peeves and hills I prefer to die on for no particular reason.

I recently purchased a new car, and it has 23 cameras. 23. I can literally get a 360 degree view of my car on the display, and also directly tap into the rear/front/side cams.

Why the @#$@# is there no port for an NVR, or a built-in NVR at least? Why do I need to deal with running wires through a brand new car, and sticking something ugly to my windshield?

Very frustrating. I know some folks have made mod kits to tap into the equipped cameras for recording, I simply am not that committed to the cause.

Commited enough to die on the hill, but not that commited.

As soon as car manufacturers implement dash cams, government will regulate it to require that it records the speed of the car as well, which I think owners will hate and make them want to avoid those models of cars. I think it's gonna end up as damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

> As soon as car manufacturers implement dash cams, government will regulate it to require that it records the speed of the car as well

Why would a camera force this regulation when every car already has a ... speedometer?

Does a speedometer record how fast you were going 1 minute before the crash.

Yes, since the mid-2000s in the U.S., at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...

Google Maps records everything and sends it to the cloud to log your entire journey while using the app. They've made it into a feature to show "average speed" and similar details in the Maps app.

They have your speed, where you began and where you were going. Way more damning.

You car already records your speed. It's not stored forever, but in the event of a crash your last X seconds of speed, throttle, brakes, steering, and more are being stored in a rolling buffer

https://www.govtech.com/fs/in-car-devices-records-informatio...

http://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/OM/AH/AT202222IOM/en...

Without government influence, auto manufacturers already have "black boxes" that record speed and other telemetry. I'm very conscious of the erosion of privacy, but I'm a 40-something computer nerd. People actively, deliberately record themselves doing crimes of all stripes and post it to public social networks.

In the states, there's rampant violation of vehicle-related laws and minimal enforcement (fake temporary tags, deliberate obstruction of real license plates, deeply tinted windshield and driver/passenger glass, not to mention rolling stops and speeding)

Modern cars record their speed today, no one bats an eye. Even before in-car tech could do this, you could passively enforce speeding by using toll booth data, but that doesn't happen. Neither side cares enough to bother.

> passively enforce speeding by using toll booth data

Some EU countries do that on tollways but don't keep them always-on because they generate too many tickets to handle.

If you have the app for your auto insurance on your phone, they are probably attempting to track your "misbehavior" through that, in the same way they do with their offerings that use GPS enabled ODBII dongles. Unless it is explicitly, extremely illegal in an execs go to prison kind of way, they will do it.

Tesla has been doing this for years. It is indeed unfortunate other car makers don't care to enable recording even though they have the cameras.

It would be unlawful in the state of California to mount a mobile phone in a position that would make it suitable for this purpose, in the way that most people would do it. Technically you can mount a Pixel-sized device in the furthest corner from the driver but nobody is going to bother doing it that way.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Edit: I’m removing this comment. It’s not productive and doesn’t contribute to the discussion. My apologies.

If the phone isn’t too big, and Google added the relevant capabilities, maybe exception 11(A) could work.

Sounds more like 13.

Also useful for bicycles and motorbikes. Phone mounts go on the handlebars, so this CVC (windshield mounting) wouldn't apply.

I have trouble imagining Google complying with all the conditions of 13.

It sounds to me like you if you place it on the dashboard where it's not in the line of sight between the driver and the windshield it wouldn't be something that "obstructs or reduces the driver’s clear view" and so wouldn't be covered?

Hm, let's see: Do I want to wear out the flash memory in an $800 phone, or get a $150 dash cam?

This comment applies to Android phones that wouldn't let this thing write to a micro-SD card, of course.

Yeah, all I could think of was "that's an insane amount of thrashing on the storage on this very expensive phone" alongside my second thought which was: "My Pixel 7 Pro can't record video for more than a couple minutes before it microwaves itself into oblivion, there's absolutely no chance it survives for even a couple seconds as a dashcam."

I mean, if you've got to put in a dock/holder anyway, why not use external storage?

Time to put that 5G hype to the test, stream it directly to google servers like Nest cam cvr

And their flash is known to brick a lot

I had a pixel 3xl bricking after an update. They get a lot of updates and wear the ?cheap flash

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rt6tn9/my_pixe...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/mmcn93/my_pixe...

https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/xtwgap/pixel_5...

Bad flash in phones isn't that uncommon or specific to Google. There's at least a few Samsung phones whose flash dies after two years due to a firmware bug in the emmc. Samsung of course never fixed it since they just ran the clock on the warranty. There was at least once individual once refurbishing said failed phones by using a exploit to update said emmc.

It'll probably be an in-memory circular buffer of the last n minutes, and then you get to save it if anything happens

+1 and copy buffer to storage immediately if the gyro detects a abnormally sharp movement

One problem is that virtually all dash cams use the same sensor that kind of sucks. You're usually not able to make out people's license plates.

I installed a new one with the new sony starvis 2 sensor, it can read license plates at night pretty good I would say.

My dashcam was priced like a new iPhone but the recording quality is superb, licence plates of a car 10m away is clearly readable.

Do tell!

I believe it's called Aviline DVR-B

you can buy comma.ai hardware, its base use is "dashcam"

you can, at your discretion, load self-driving software (openpilot), which can take over driving for you, in addition to maintaining dashcam footage

they have a subscription that will store footage in the cloud too, iirc

https://github.com/commaai/openpilot

And the $200 dashcam usually have super capacitor instead of battery for reliability

You've worn out the memory in your phone before? How do you pull that off?

I've never worn out NAND flash on my phone, but I'm not sure if I record 3h of video everyday. 16Mbps * 3h = 20GiB, so 6 TBW for 300 days)

The concept separation of concerns I apply every where, and I like my dashcam not connected to any cloud, if I ever needed a footage, I’ll just take it from the sdcard.

> I’ll just take it from the sdcard

What about in the situation of a theft?

I will check the garage CCTV cam.

Except for malls, grocery stores, events, train station, movie theaters... Work...

If you live in an area with a high probability of getting your car stolen, you better protect your investment properly and install a gnss tracker, not just it is more reliable, accurate, and use way less data on your cellular plan, but also you can hide it and conceal it in a location (like near the engine) that you have a better chance to find your car before the tracker is found, unlike a dashcam, that will obviously consume more data, but also the first thing will be thrown out of the window after the successful robbery.

Yeah, you could work around this with anti-tamper APIs and trip-wires and tech solutions to secure your phone.

But then you're playing an arms-race game against inventive thieves with jammers and portable Faraday cages.

Another solution is legal. Make a dashcam phone a "Protected Insurance Entity" or some shit. Maybe have it always streaming as part of some Citizens on Patrol Star Watcher campaign. Bump the punishment to federal level insurance fraud.

Jesus, this fucking future.

Obviously, we will save lives, and that is great. It just takes one drunk driver and one teddy bear falling from the sky.

I imagined a future hopping between cyber corps if you have that power.

But this feels different.

You might be able to get your employer to share parking lot footage?

Dashcams are generally for recording collisions, rather than thefts.

After all, if you're parking in a high crime area - would you leave your smartphone on display in the front windscreen?

Then it would not contain any traffic accident footage?

Get a Magnavolt for your car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtqRir7dco https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=bMtqRir7dco

Nothing in the settings shows any way to upload the videos to the cloud.

There's a good chance that it'll save to a folder which is synced with Google Drive.

Cloud backups are e2e encrypted. If you mean it's using a mechanism other than cloud backups, that wouldn't make sense because the user would have to at least agree to their storage being used.

Not necessarily the video itself -although I don’t even trust google studio app-, but the meta data google will collect: when did you use the cam, duration, location, and other data that will be collected “to enhance the service” that’s already crap from the get go.

I'm all for privacy, but if you have your Pixel phone on you it will already send a ton of data to Google, even without using it as a dashcam.

but not use my camera

There are anecdotes if minor crashes there the other person threatens the person with the dash cam to hand over footage.

Good luck with getting stabbed.

Anecdata is not data.

Fine, I'll tape a knife to the dashcam in case of emergency.

(this is a joke, HN)

Sounds very British!

I like this British musician named Jake Bugg. He's got a song about going to this house party at some criminal's house and one line is about a friend taking him aside and warning him, gravely, that everyone there's got a knife. It almost ruins the song as an American, because the line's just hilarious. "Everyone has a knife? What, you mean like literally any gathering of adults whatsoever that doesn't have bouncers patting people down and/or metal detectors? Everyone has a knife at the grocery store for god's sake!"

(Not literally everyone, of course, but it's entirely normal, non-threatening, and fairly common to carry a pocket knife or knife-including-multitool in the US—anywhere you go that's not screening for metal objects, some of the people there probably have knives, it's not on anyone's radar as something to be worried about. It's like being warned that everyone's wearing underwear, or something)

They're not talking about multitools.

These sort of things are what they mean: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zombie+knife&iax=images&ia=images

Oh, yikes, fixed-blades and things as long as shortish machetes? OK, yeah, people don't usually carry those here. Folding pocket knives in the 3"-6" range are common, but not fixed or very-long blades.

Yeah, anything larger than a pocketknife is explicitly illegal to carry in the UK, plus a whole bunch of random moral panic stuff like nunchucks. What the verse means is people carrying knives with intent; that you're entering a subculture where people might stab you in a drunken argument that turns into a fight.

(Used to be Glasgow, these days it's London, always young men in "gang" contexts)

This means the original "tape a knife to the dashcam" gag would be illegal. For car self-defence purposes you're better off with a tyre iron, "breaker bar", socket extender or something else that's a plausible car tool that you just happen to grab.

> What the verse means is people carrying knives with intent; that you're entering a subculture where people might stab you in a drunken argument that turns into a fight.

Right, yeah, I got the intent, it just comes off real goofy in a place where sometimes you see people open-carrying guns, and a hell of a lot more are concealed-carrying, and I was certainly imagining long-side-of-normal folding pocket knives, not something closer to combat knives.

Thanks for explaining, the context does help.

https://f-droid.org/packages/es.esy.CosyDVR/

You don't want your dashcam uploaded to the cloud because if you caused the accident, you need to be able to delete the evidence.

My Pixel 6 Pro gets too hot on my dash that it stops working when it's in the sun. There's even a notification from the device that tells me it's too hot to operate normally!

So I doubt this will work too well unless Pixel >=7 phones perform better under high temperature than mine does.

What color is your Pixel?

Sounds like an excellent way to wear out the flash memory.

Getting rid of SD cards is the worst thing to happen to phones in a while.

It'll probably be an in-memory circular buffer of the last n minutes, and then you get to save it if anything happens

To conserve storage space, your recordings are automatically deleted after three days unless you save them.

Circular buffer still worn out NAND flash

An in-memory circular buffer will wear out NAND flash? Which phones use NAND flash as memory?

No need for a system one if there's an app... But... Is there a FLOSS dashcam for Android? Nothing that I could see on F-droid when I looked a few months back.

A quick search brought up CosyDVR on f-droid. Might not play nice with new Android versions, though.

Yeah, it crashes immediately on my Pixel 6 Pro.

That's a non working app. Any working suggestions? Cheers.

There are already apps for this, its not obvious what the big deal is here unless there is some hardware change providing improvements wrt eg. overheating etc.

I guess a simple mode change built in is a nice idea, but I agree with others who suggest a dedicated wired-in device is always preferable; the phone useful as a backup for rare occasions when the dashcam isn't available or as an interface.

Two replies to this:

1 - Auto-record when connecting to car bluetooth seems very handy, and possibly only available for a system level feature as opposed to a third party app

2 - Dedicated device is best, but personally my car dash is already overcrowded then with dashcam + navigation + phone.

Flitsmeister is an app that warns you of speed checks. They have an accessory that auto-starts the app when connected over Bluetooth, so I suspect that's not exclusive to first party apps.

I have an old iPhone 8 lying around and might try out some dash cam apps for it. Remember seeing a Linus Tech Tips video about how bad most dashcam cameras are, so even though the iPhone 8 camera isn’t stellar the bar is pretty low.

Wonder if they'll use the footage for streetview or AV training data.

That would be cool, but it seems like Google nowadays don't have departments collaborating with each other, how many chat apps do they have still?

Maybe Google Maps will next come with "Record your journey!" mode...

AFAIK, they have two text chat systems:

- The Android SMS/RCS client

- Google Chat, accessible through both Gmail and a dedicated app

and one video chat system (Google Meet). In the past few years, they've consolidated their communications products.

Seems like it would be pretty heavy data usage pushing all that video up over the mobile network.

Pixels have built in "AI" engines or whatever. Maybe they do preprocessing, only store relevant stuff, and then upload when you get back on wifi.

Ideally it should record video from the main, ultrawide and the front cameras. The ultrawide in case something happens out of the view of the main camera and the front cam in case something hits you from the back (if the phone is mounted so it has visibility through the back window).

You can get dashcams with both forward- and rearward-facing cameras.

But they're mostly used by trucking companies who want to confirm who was driving, tell them off for distracted driving or if they weren't wearing a seatbelt, and so on.

I think this feature would be unpopular if it recorded the camera facing the driver, once a few bad drivers got punished based on evidence from their own camera.

Phones have multiple lenses and sensors, but they don't have multiple sets of sensor readout capacity. Even when the theoretical maximum pixel througput (as in biggest sensor the SoC can be paired with) is big enough on paper to do all sensors in a time division multiplex, I wouldn't be surprised if the switch wasn't fast enough.

(personally I'd love to have a camera app that did all-lens release for stills, I'm of the "beyond point-and-shoot" school of photography, shoot without much pointing, sort them out later)

Samsung has directors view which records front and back simultaneously. Would be surprised if flagship devices can't do this due to hardware limitations.

> they don't have multiple sets of sensor readout capacity.

That's wrong, Android has multi-camera API since Android 9 (API level 28). Modern phones can record 2 or sometimes 3 camera streams simultaneously.

This is pretty interesting. I currently use a pixel 4a which will no longer get updates this summer.

If I could turn it into a full time dashcam I could reuse my still-working old phone, I wouldn’t have to dispose of it and save money.

You can switch to grapheneos, it should still receive the latest updates.

Dashcam (called a black box in Korea) is very common in Korea. According to 2021 statistics, it is installed in more than 80% of vehicles. There are plenty of products on the market for less than $200, and some people are already using their phones as DashCams, so Google's response probably won't resonate much. I also looked up the statistics of other countries, and European countries showed a penetration rate of around 10%, and the United States showed a penetration rate of around 30%. So I can understand why many people at HN question the value of Dashcam.

Neat trick, buy I really don't see this as something I'd use unless I'm in a pinch. Phones (pretty much every phone) will heat up too much in this scenario.

There's really no reason for this. Everyone should have a dashcam, that much I agree on.

But dashcams are cheap(ish), reliable, and you don't have to think much about them.

The whole point, to me at least, is that it's always there, like a silent guardian. We shouldn't have to remember, or fiddle with our phones, or block our field of vision for this.

I spent about $100 on a dual front and rear facing cam. It tucks out of the way, turns on with the vehicle, has shock protection when parked, night vision, etc.

I don't quite understand how this would work physically.

You'll want to be simultaneously using your phone for directions/music/etc., which means that instead of mounting your phone against an air vent or similar just below the windshield...

...you'd need to be mounting this much higher, yet still within arm's reach, so it could see out the windshield but where it would be significantly obstructing your view of the road.

I don't see how that would be safe at all.

I guess it would depend on the shape of the dash. In my Jeep, with the windshield so close and the seat already high, this would work fine.

I wonder what captcha-like mechanism they'll use for annotating this new dataset for their self-driving cars. Gamifying the videos post-drive with AR?

It's useless for this. Interesting things don't happen often enough and it's too blurry on bumpy roads.

I thought there were already apps to do this with most phones. The phone itself has a poor form factor for a dashcam though, and it uses too much power.

Yep, I used to use Sygic for some time as I needed an offline maps in the middle of nowhere, and they have a dashcam addon that worked pretty well, except the heating issue others mentioned.

This has been possible with CamOnRoad for years (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camonroada...). I used an old iPhone 5S for demoing this app to some friends... just attach it and keep it powered using USB.

The operative word here is "let", since any linux OS computer could do this.

It's only been goggle's abomination on top of linux that has prevented it...

Isn't it nice of the mulit-trillion dollar corporation to "let" you do things?

Let's all just worship the mega-wealthy a little more...

There is this android app called background video recorder that records in background, with screen off and screen on. Just mount the phone high enough on the dashboard. It can go for hours without any heating, if you select a little lower resolution.

Could this potentially be used for self-driving or other AI training, now or in the future? I can imagine ways one might use data like that, even without access to the car’s driving inputs and even without having to upload the video anywhere.

"Let us wait until we figure out how to monetize the data we'll collect from giving away this 'feature'."

Google doesn't give away Pixel phones, they sell them.

This is apparently the only way you could get a 4k recording running at 60 fps. No other dashcams on the market do this.

Where should we go next? Well, I have an idea for a market segment we could plunder. Just for the kicks.

Don't phones get really hot if you record video for long periods of time?

Edit: Whoops - the article mentions that.

I've been curious about why that is, surely it's just pumping data from the camera sensor, through a hardware-encode unit, then straight to flash?

No, they now do a lot of processing for each individual frame (and imagine doing that for 60 frames per second).

Thermally, mobile phones are not rated or designed for constant work. They want to do stuff only like 1 out of every 10 seconds and are designed to dissipate heat that way. At least the way I understand it. Even if there was nothing being done to the raw frames from the sensor, which hasn't been the case for a while, it's likely the processor would have to do other stuff to manage the resources.

Without a doubt, they are using this to collect data for a self driving car algorithm.

Oh I bet they will

of fucking course they will, its so generous of them, totally selfless, nothing else motivating them other than providing a service to the public :eyeroll:

They couldn't even build a phone that makes phone calls. So I am not holding my breath.

alternate title: google includes more crap most people won't use, making the OS interface have more crap to go through to find your thing.

here in the real world, if you want your phone to be a dashcam, you've been able to do that with an app for over a decade.

what we need is the phone to natively convert between british, us, and metric, specifically for paprika measurements during the cooking of various dishes. google should put those conversions in the first top-swipe. if you swipe again, then you see notifications. if you swipe a third time, it'll tell you that you've turned your data off, and give you an option to turn it back on. forth time swipe you'll be able to adjust brightness.

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