Hey. What's up guys? So a lot of you have asked about my four channel dash cam setup
that I run here in my vehicle that allows me to record not only both in the front and rear,
but also to the sides, both left and right. And in this video I'd like to share some
more information about both my current setup that I run here in the vehicle,
as well as some of the upcoming changes that I plan on making here to this setup. And I'd also
like to talk about the pros and cons of running a four channel dash cam set up like this, which
I think should definitely be helpful, especially if maybe you'd like to do something similar.
Now as far as the setup that I run here, I run two separate two channel dash cams. I'm running both
the Blackvue DR900S two channel, as well as the Blackvue DR750S two channel. And I'm running this
because I used to run the DR750S as my main dash cam and then eventually I upgraded to the DR900S
and I wanted to just throw in more dash cams and instead of just replacing the DR750, I thought
I'd maybe toss it to the rear and then use both of their dash cams, their normal rear dash cams,
and just set them up instead as side facing dash cams. Now these side facing dash cams, this is
what's a little bit unique and different here with my setup. I've basically taken their little tiny
rear cameras and I've set them up on the little fixed windows in the rear of my vehicle.
And I've chosen those windows specifically because those windows don't go up and down like well the
regular windows do. That way I have a fixed and permanent place to mount them. And then what's
normally the main front dash cams for both setups I run the DR900S up front for the 4K
recording and then I run my older DR750S on the rear window. And with this setup, it gives me
effectively a 360 degree view of the outside of my vehicle. And I like this because instead of
just running the traditional setup with front and rear dash cams, which is great for the main areas
that you want to record, doing that kind of leaves some blind spots on the side of the vehicles and
that's what the side dash cams, of course, are designed to fill. So let's say I'm parked and
something happens on the side of the vehicle. That's where the side facing dash cams come into
play. They're not quite as useful when I'm driving just because it's a little weird to watch the road
go by sideways, but I guess it could be nice in case maybe somebody T-bones me or something like
that. I definitely have the side facing footage as well instead of just the front and rear ones.
Now where I have those side facing dash cams mounted in my car, they're way in the back there.
And what I like is the dash cams have a pretty wide field of view. So it's nice in case somebody
comes up to the side of the vehicle. For example, maybe for police encounters and whatnot. It does
work for that. Though one of the limitations is if they come really close to your side window and
the driver or passenger side, it may not be able to see their face there and what's going on.
But otherwise, if they're maybe backed up a little bit or something or just walking past your car,
you'll definitely capture that. And with this setup, I definitely get a lot more than just
having the front and rear dash cams alone. Now if you really want a dash cam that can record
maybe a police officer right there or for police interactions, that kind of stuff, there are other
dash cams that I think would be a better fit. The DR900S here that I have doesn't rotate or
anything. It's fixed directly to the windshield. There are other dash cams like the Blueseasky
B2W, which has two rotatable lenses, which are designed to record both in the front and the rear,
but you can also rotate those lenses to point out either side, if you like. So maybe in case of, for
example, a police encounter, you can just rotate both of the lenses and record out the side.
So that's an option. There's also dash cams that have like a dedicated fixed interior camera with
infrared LEDs and whatnot. Those can work too, though they may not necessarily be wide enough
to record the sides. They might, depending on where you have it mounted in your car and stuff,
but that's another option that can work as well. There's obviously a ton of different ways of
going about this. And this is the setup that I've done. Now having two separate standalone dash cam
setups like this also has its pros and cons. For example, both the front and rear dash cams have
their own memory card. So if I want to pull out the front footage or the rear footage, I do have
to go out to the different dash cams. Plus for the side facing dash cams I always have to remember
like if I want the left facing dash cam, is that hooked up to the front dash camera to the rear?
And so I always have to kind of keep note of that. One little trick I've done is I just take a look
at the way the cable is pointed out the side of the dash cam. And I have, for example, the left
facing dash cam runs out to the front dash cam and then the right facing dash cam, that cable runs
back to the rear dash cam. So that's just a thing that I've kind of got in mind just to help me
remember which dash cam is plugged into what. It would be nice to have maybe just one memory card
that records on all four dash cams just for the sake of convenience. That would be a lot to put
onto a one memory card. There are some setups that do that, but there's not really a lot of good four
channel dash cams. I've seen one from Thinkware that they've revealed at CES and SEMA, but I
don't know if that's actually going to come to fruition and it's definitely not available yet.
Plus that LCD was pretty bulky and stuff and I prefer a more compact setup like this.
Another thing that's nice is instead of having one main dash cam that records everywhere, having two
separate standalone systems is nice. It's just an extra layer of reliability. Let's say maybe one
of the dash cam fails for whatever reason, the other dash cam is still recording. And so maybe
you won't get all the 360 degree video footage, but you're still going to have some of the footage
that you need maybe recording something else. And this was actually pretty helpful. I had an
issue with the DR750S not switching into parking mode properly. And so I took that dash cam and I
mailed it back to Blackvue for repairs and I'd tried mounting other rear dash camps in place,
but they had issues actually sticking to the rear window, for example.
And it was unfortunate because I actually got rear-ended and I wasn't running the rear dash
cam at the time. It was kind of wild having a four channel dash cam set up and having no rear facing
dash cam. But the nice thing was I had a separate front facing dash cam and one of the side facing
dash cams, which could show kind of the shadow of the vehicle kind of hitting me from behind. So it
was nice to have a separate setup as just in case something happens maybe to one of the dash cams.
So I like kind of having the extra separate systems just in case something like that goes
wrong because you never know. Now, to power all these different dash cams I have three different
battery packs in the rear of my vehicle and well, let's actually go take a look at that.
These batteries are designed to recharge while I drive and then they provide power
to the dash cams when I'm parked. If I want, I can start unplugging stuff, maybe plug it into
the wall at home or something. But in general, I usually don't do that just because it gets
kind of tedious. And then back here, I also have my wifi hotspot that I use to provide an
internet connection for the dash cam. So they had the cloud capability as well as for my phones,
radar detectors, and everything else. Now I've been pretty happy with this setup here
overall. I've got a nice 360 degree view around my vehicle, I've got 4K recording up front, 1080p
otherwise, and I've got a cloud connected setup. So my dash cams I can always access remotely,
which is nice to kind of treat them like a security camera in case something happens while
I'm parked. I've got the kind of remote access, which is something that I really like with the
wifi hotspot in the rear. Now that said, let's talk about kind of future updates. For example,
there's the new Blackvue DR900X that recently came out. I just did a video about that. And
it's basically the successor to the DR900S that I've been running up front here. Similar idea,
same 4k video quality and 1080P for the rear camera or what will be my side cams,
but it also has improved cooling. So if I'm parked in a really hot day,
it will be less likely to actually overheat and shut down, which is nice. Plus the wiring
has been changed here for the power cable for the parking mode specifically. So it kind of behaves
differently as far as how it switches between driving mode and parking mode. And it's a change
that I do like. Unfortunately though, the power cables that I have here for the DR900S and 750S,
they're not compatible with the DR900X. I can't pull out my old dash cams and pop the new ones in.
Everything works as far as the mounts and the cables for the rear or side cameras, all
that kind of stuff, but unfortunately the power cables are not compatible. So for that reason,
I'm going to have to run all new power cables when I want to upgrade.
And I was thinking like, "Okay. Well if I'm running all new power cables anyway, I could
run different power cables for any dash cam. Do I want to stick here with the Blackvue setup?"
Now I was thinking of actually maybe switching over to the Thinkware U1000. I had recently
installed that in my mom's car. And I was like, "Well, cool. I can do the same thing. Maybe do
two different U1000's. Front, rear, left, and right." That would give me even better 4K video
quality than the DR900X plus its rear cameras, or what would be my side cams, are going to bump from
1080P up to 2K resolution or 1440p. So better video quality all the way around. However, the
U1000's cloud capabilities just aren't nearly as good as what I've got here with the Blackvue.
The camera itself is also taller and bulkier, especially if I want to add on the radar module
next to it to give me the long-term and buffered parking mode recording capabilities. Additionally,
I'm not a huge fan of the idea of my car emitting K band all the time and being another source
of false alerts with people for other people driving by with radar detectors. Plus that would
be an issue for me because I'm constantly doing videos in here with my radar detectors with the
car powered off so I'm not burning gas and stuff. And I would have to then go and start unplugging
my radar modules and stuff so that my radar detectors in the car don't start falsing. And so
I could use the U1000 the same way I use the Blackvue and just kind of normal recording with
parked recording mode and no radar module. That could be an option. But then again,
I wind up losing the cloud capability, which is something that I do like. I kind of figured
at first it would be more of a novelty, but now that I've used it for a little while,
I've actually grown to like it. And so overall, I think I'm going to stick here with the Blackvue
DR900X. Now I was thinking of maybe augmenting it with the Viofo A129 Pro and running that as
a second dash cam upfront as well. And this would specifically be to give me an even better 4K video
quality upfront plus giving me an additional dash cam, which would actually be pretty helpful. The
idea would be that the Viofo A129 Pro, just like the Thinkware U1000 is going to have even better
video quality here than the Blackvue DR900S or DR900X. And personally, I love having really good
video quality, the best video quality possible. So that would be a big plus for me. I also have
the wireless Bluetooth button here next to me and this is pretty nice in case I want to manually
record a clip. I can just press the button here on my dash and it'll trigger the dash cam up here
on my windshield. No more having to reach over to the dash cam to push the button, which is a
nice convenience thing. Now when it comes time to share any of that video footage here to YouTube,
I can then just pop out the memory card from the A129 Pro, pop into my computer, download it,
and it's good to go with even better video quality than what I would get with the DR900X. As a nice
bonus, when I have the memory card back at home, my Blackvue's will continue to record for me,
plus in case maybe I forget to bring that memory card back into the car,
which has definitely happened more than once. I don't have to then go run back home to grab that
card to pop back into the dash cam. And speaking of which, I need to grab a few more spares and put
them in my glove box again. Viofo does do parking mode and buffered parking mode like the Blackvue,
but I don't like the event notifications quite as much. And then of course it doesn't have any
of the cloud capabilities at all, which is, I guess, why I wouldn't want to altogether replace
my Blackvue. So basically when it comes time to rerun the cables for the DR900X, I'm thinking of
running an additional cable for the Viofo A129 Pro. This way I've got my high quality
4K recording upfront, I've got my 360 degree video quality with the Blackvue, which has
4k front rear, and then 1080p left and right. And those Blackvue's will be always recording
both when I'm driving and I'm parked and I get the cloud functionality. Again,
with the Viofo running up front, just to give me the very best video quality possible,
which is what I would normally share on YouTube. That would give me a total of then five dash cams,
which honestly is probably overkill, but oh well. This stuff is fun and I like doing it. So yeah,
that would make five dash cams. I could of course start adding more to do interior facing dash cams,
but I don't necessarily like to do that. I prefer having the exterior facing dash cams.
And so that's how I run it here in my vehicle with a four channel dash cam set up to record all 360
degrees. Now, all of the stuff that I've talked about here in this video, I'll put links to all
the different dash cams and cables and batteries and all that kind of stuff that I use.
I'll link to all of that down in the video description. And
I'm also curious for you guys, if any of you are running something similar,
let me know what kind of setup you're using as far as multiple exterior dash cams. Do you run
interior facing dash cams? And the pros and cons. Let me know you use, what you like,
and what you don't like about it. I'm definitely curious. I'm always experimenting here myself.
And finally, speaking of experimenting and testing, I just recently updated my a buyer's
guide on my website that goes over the very best dash cams on the market. So if you're looking for
a different dash cam, maybe something fancier like what I do or just something more simple and basic,
either way, definitely check that out. I'll link to that down in the video description as well.
So you can check that out too. Thanks so much for watching. Hopefully you've enjoyed this
video. Let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next one. Bye.