My Elite has something included. Haven’t tried to figure it out yet...
1 - 20 of 59 Posts
photos of the 2011 Ridgeline install . This is the F750 . the F800 is even smaller.
![Windshield Glass Automotive exterior Vehicle Luxury vehicle]()
![Vehicle Automotive mirror Rear-view mirror Car Auto part]()
![Windshield Mode of transport Automotive mirror Glass Rear-view mirror]()
"Well, Mr. KenA, I see you were traveling OVER the speed limit when you hit my client, Mrs. Grandma. Do you think if you were driving AT the speed limit, you might have had the time to stop?"
Seriously, to each his own. My suggestion was just to make others aware of the options. Personally, I think the odds that I'd have to prove that I was driving no faster than the speed limit are smaller than having to explain why I was doing 5 over.
Recently installed a Blacksys-CH200. This is a two channel (which means front and rear cameras) I got from Blackboxmycar. They matched Amazon's price. I did the install myself. Wasn't too bad, took me about 2 hours as I've never done an install before.. The tricky part was getting the rear panels off of the tailgate. There was a Youtube video of a guy showing how this is done. Really easy.
The really hard part was routing the rear cable through the tailgate conduit so that the camera mounts to the tail gate instead sitting on the rear dome light. My wife helped pushed the cable through after I tied it a thin balloon stick. The advantage is now I don't risk knocking the rear camera off when loading/unloading the stuff.
A couple of caveats:
1. Some states, like Washington, make it illegal to attach anything to the windshield that may obstruct vision. This law is really meant to stop radar detectors, but can be applied to cameras. So ideally you want something that could mount to the rear view mirror or to the plastic box that sits behind the rear view mirror (this is what I did).
2. In some states (Washington) it is illegal to record audio without consent. You might look for a unit that you can turn the audio recording on and off at will. The Blacksys does this.
3. If you hard wire the camera (which is what I did) parking mode is going to drain your battery. The Blacksys has a voltage cutoff, which works great, however....what has happened is that the battery never gets fully charged from short trips and the Parking Mode often doesn't last for more than a few minutes.
Ideally, you want a unit that you can either turn off the parking mode at will, or you can easily unplug the camera (which is what I do at home).
Blackboxmycar offers secondary batteries. But think about it. Eventually the batteries will drain down and you're arguably going to be in the same position as not having a battery. If you want to use parking mode at night, every night, every day, I don't think it's possible, but I could be wrong. I unplug it in my drive way and at work, and that usually allows me enough juice to use it during the day.
4. You might not get license plates at night. Take a look at this:
Notice the license plate? It's essentially unreadable. I installed HID's on my Pilot, but the real problem is the angle. The SUV headlamps are higher up and hit cars right in the rear plate which, in the US, is ultra reflective. The only way around this is to drive around with the main lamps turned off.
5. Anyone can do the install, it's not super difficult, it just takes time and resolve. The hard parts were removing the plastic cover from the box behind the rear view mirror, routing the rear camera cable all the way along the back of the Pilot. Routing through to the tail gate (which you don't have to do), and then finding the right fuses.
6. There is no perfect dashcam. I reviewed many of the top of the line models and they all do some good things and some annoying things. Some thoughts:
- Many of the elite dashcams have cloud service. This is really meant for people who have a fleet of vehicles.
- Some dashcams have major issues in summer heat. Check customer reviews.
- Not all dashcams can accept the same size of storage cards. The Blacksys can take up to 256. I run a 128 and it gives me about 4 days of looped driving.
- A quality dashcam will separate normal looped recording from contact events from parking events. This is important because you may not realize you got hit in a parking lot for a day or two and you don't want that video overwritten by normal looping. The Blacksys and others will let you partition the storage so this doesn't happen.
- The one thing I love about the Blacksys is that I mounted the front with velcro, so I can take it with me on vacation and use it in a rental car using the cigarette adapter. I just carry some velcro with me and then attach it to the rental car. That makes it easy to simply pull out of the car at night or when I am parked (parking mode doesn't work on these camera's if you aren't had wired).
7. ADA (automated driver assist) functions are kind of pointless for modern cards. These include things like collision detection, lane departure, forward motion, red light detection. The problem is none of these are tied into your vehicle's systems. The only one I use is the forward motion (which tells me when the car in front of me starts moving) and it's probably only been useful 1 in 100 times it's gone off. The rest of these might be useful in a budget rental car
Some of the newer ones might tie into traffic camera's and maybe even police radar reported by other drivers. YMMV
You can go on Youtube and see video of all these camera's, so I won't post any here.
Indeed."Well, Mr. KenA, I see you were traveling OVER the speed limit when you hit my client, Mrs. Grandma. Do you think if you were driving AT the speed limit, you might have had the time to stop?"
Seriously, to each his own. My suggestion was just to make others aware of the options. Personally, I think the odds that I'd have to prove that I was driving no faster than the speed limit are smaller than having to explain why I was doing 5 over.
And it's funny you mention grandma cause my 300ZX TT was totaled by a sedan full of very apologetic blue hairs.
1 - 20 of 59 Posts
