Pretty much everyone has a camera on them these days and it seems like every other car or motorcycle has a dashcam or action cam attached too, with all these images being produced and hours of footage being recorded and we thought it would be amazing to make use of all this data and link it with the position data recorded by your GPS Tracker.
We've added the ability to update photos and videos to the platform and sync the imagery with the trip data we get from the Tracker, we'll even try and extract the timestamp from photos and GoPro videos and sync everything up automatically to make uploads super easy. This is a new feature and given the number of cameras out there we've given this one a 'Beta' release meaning there may be a few bugs in there - if you see something odd, just let us know!
Adding photos and video to your trips has many different uses, after a road trip its nice to reminisce and look through your trips and photos and remember exactly where a photo was taken, but any media you upload will also be available when you share trips and during testing, we've had staff go off on road trips and adventures with our test cameras and upload photos and videos on route allowing us in the office as well as their family and friends following along at home and share in those special moments. We've also been able to share dashcam footage and the synchronized GPS data with an insurer following an accident, this quickly resulted in the claim being settled. We think there are lots of other uses for video and photos and we look forward to hearing your suggestions.
To use the feature you'll need to be on a Standard or Pro subscription and the amount of storage space you get depends on the subscription tier for that vehicle:
- Standard: 5GB per vehicle
- Pro: 10Gb per vehicle
How Does it work?
We've put together a quick video tutorial to help you get started or you can dive right in via the new Media tab on the Vehicle Details page.
What Cameras do you recommend?
During our testing of this feature we've uploaded footage from everything from the latest iPhone and Android handsets, a range of Dashcams from a range of suppliers, GoPro 4 through to GoPro 9 action cams and a selection of cheap 4K action cams from amazon (the cheapest was just £10.61!!).
For Dashcams in cars and vans we highly rated both the Garmin and Blackvue cameras, both are easy to install and produce high-quality video and audio, we particularly liked the Garmin Dashcam 55 for its small size.
For Action cams, we tried mounting all the cameras on Handlebars, frame mounts and helmet mounts and found all of them to produce reasonable video, even the cheapest camera was able to produce reasonably decent footage, however, we did find that the GoPro7,8 & 9 produced high quality, stable, footage with audio that wasn't just wind noise, in terms of the best camera from the money, we found the GoPro7 was excellent and will be taking one on our next office ride out.
What about connected Dashcams?
We also supply online, real-time dashcam solutions with internal and external (forward-facing) cameras available for small, medium and large fleets, these require professional installation into the vehicle, if this is of interest, please contact sales for more info.