V9 vs Dashcam comparisons

[pcons]

So, I formatted a usb stick today to compare some images/quality/FOV (field of view) with the V9 dashcam and the one I have been using for a few years now the mini 805.

Mini 0805 | DashCamTalk

My initial thoughts were that the V9 camera was not very good, but upon further side by side review I actually think the resolution is pretty decent. One thing that isn't great is that the FOV is significantly smaller than the mini805. I can see very wide and even the whole hood of the car in the 805. The image below shows when the car was at the same location. Notice that the speed sign on the right is halfway cutoff in the Tesla dash cam and how much wider the FOV is with the mini 805:

The tesla cam footage looks very grainy, and the mini 805 is smoother, but after looking closer it is actually that the tesla resolution is much better, though the quality is noisy/grainy. But the tesla cam footage works much better for resolving licence plates at dusk. Take a look at the 2 pics below.

First is when the car is at the same position for both (so the parked cars are 'further' away in the mini 805 image on the left):

Now, if I move the mini 805 footage forward so that the parked cars are about the same size as in the tesla cam, you can see that the licence plates are not resolved in the mini 805 and there is quite a bit of motion blur:

I'll do some more testing tomorrow in the daylight, but this initial test has made me fairly pleased with the v9 dash cam option. I would like it if you could record from the wide field camera as well, because it is good to capture the wider FOV as you can capture people coming up along side you and when sitting at a red light you can see the whole intersection.

So for now I'll continue to use both of these dash cams...I was hoping I could move my mini 805 to be rear facing and use the v9 front cam, but since the FOV is so small I'm keeping that one up there. Hope this is useful for others. I'll post some daytime comparisons tomorrow.

 

[Lon12]

Great work showing the quality of the camera. I personally like the wide angle lens for viewing events. So I might install a dedicated camera at some point.
I've had to reformat my micro SD that I have been using for the car's dash cam feature twice since installing the new software. Has anyone else had issues with their USB drives?

 

[Brian's ReX]

Has anyone else had issues with their USB drives?

Yes. When I finally got around to formatting a 32G flash drive (USB 3.0), it worked perfectly the first day. Camera icon with red dot was there, and when I removed it to play on my Mac, the footage was flawless. Upon reinsertion, the camera icon reappeared, and we were off to the races.

However, I just noticed today that the camera icon is no longer there. I did nothing to the drive, and have left it inserted in the vehicle since day one. I removed and reinserted the drive today, and still no camera icon.

Is it bad to leave the drive in the vehicle? Do we need to take it out every time the vehicle is turned off? Wondering why it would have just stopped working on it's own?

 

[pcons]

Yes. When I finally got around to formatting a 32G flash drive (USB 3.0), it worked perfectly the first day. Camera icon with red dot was there, and when I removed it to play on my Mac, the footage was flawless. Upon reinsertion, the camera icon reappeared, and we were off to the races.

However, I just noticed today that the camera icon is no longer there. I did nothing to the drive, and have left it inserted in the vehicle since day one. I removed and reinserted the drive today, and still no camera icon.

Is it bad to leave the drive in the vehicle? Do we need to take it out every time the vehicle is turned off? Wondering why it would have just stopped working on it's own?

I can't see any reason why leaving it inserted would be bad. Does the drive still work read/writing files on your computer?

 

[bijan]

Mine works a few times, but eventually I get a X on the dashcam icon and have to reformat to get it to work again. But then it eventually fails after a few times, and I'm tired of reformatting so will wait for a software update that hopefully fixes things...

 

[Lon12]

Guess we are not the only ones with the issue now:
V9 39.7 - Dashcam not working

 

[MsBlackP100D17]

Maybe try a new preformatted one designed for high speed HD vid. Cant find one? Then by a phone memory chip with included USB adapter from a reputable brand

 

[MsBlackP100D17]

DataTraveler SE9 G2 USB 3.0 - 8GB-128GB | Kingston

Read that they say usb 3 drives use less energy and are faster , even if vehicle is USB 2 . Its gotta work better than a usb 2 drive (higher spec)

 

[pcons]

Today was a bit overcast, but took a few more side by side comparisons with the mini 805 camera. One strange thing I noticed about the tesla dash cam is that it auto contrasts a fair bit, so if you have some highlights in a scene (like tail lights) everything else gets very dark. Also, I'm really not liking the narrow field of view. I know I said it before, but the shots below seal the deal. Look at how much more the mini 805 sees. Giving access to the wide FOV camera would be much better IMO.

Crazy how dark the image is because of the stop lights on the van in front of me. I took the screenshots from the same frames in each camera, look how much more of the surroundings you can see.

More examples above. No idea why its so dark....it was overcast, but the mini 805 image looks about like what it seemed like in real life. In the tesla cam footage it looks like its in a hurricane at dusk, but this was 3 in the afternoon.

Also, check this last comparison out....it took me a while to sync up the frames because the red car in the mini 805 dash cam is orange in the tesla cam.

 

[Lon12]

JSYK if you want to record while parking just turn on the HVAC from the phone app. Car is considered on.

 

[pcons]

So, I couldn't help but run one more test with more optimal lighting conditions to give the tesla cam a chance to redeem itself. Spoiler alert, it doesn't really redeem itself :|

Basically it has good resolution for seeing things like licence plates, but only because of the very large zoom. If you compare it to a reasonable wide angle dash cam in an apples to apples comparison I dont think its doing that hot. See below for more details/comparisons.

The below image is from the same frame from each dash cam. As above, notice how washed out/dark the colours look (also they aren't accurate at all) as well as the much wider FOV on the aftermarket dash cam.

In the next shot, I digitally zoomed in the aftermarket camera to the approximate same FOV as the tesla camera. Here you can can actually see the license plate resolved in both cameras quite well, but there does appear to be better resolution on the tesla camera. Which I though was most likely because it has a high magnification factor. The next images will test that...ie, is the lens on the telsa camera actually resolving more detail, or is it just over sampling compared to the after market camera with the larger FOV.

Notice the red box on the image on the upper left of the after market dash cam. This represents roughly how much less the tesla camera sees vs the after market camera. Its a huge difference.

Below I digitally zoomed the images so they were beyond 1:1 on my monitor and took screen grabs. As I alluded to above, the tesla camera here shows that it is resolving much finer detail (individual lights in the brake lights of the ford truck in front of me). These details are all lost in the after market camera, and while the license plate is still resolved you can clearly see it better in the tesla camera.

One would think this proves the tesla camera has better resolution, but that's not an accurate comparison. Because the tesla camera is operating at a higher magnification its pixels subtend a smaller feature size in each image, so the proper comparison is to have the objects be approximately the same size on the sensor chip, which is what I did in the next image.

So, this image set is a more appropriate comparison of the resolving capabilities of the lens/sensor combo in each dash cam. These are not of the same frame, but the tesla cam in a frame where the truck subtends approximately the same FOV as in the aftermarket camera. The magic happens in the next images where I zoom into the brake lights and license plate.

So, here you can clearly see that when the object is of similar size on the tesla cam it actually has worse resolution than the aftermarket camera. The licence plate is barely visible.

Now, I'm not saying the tesla cam is useless by any means. Its just surprising to me how differently it performs compared to my 3+ year old dash camera.