I’m looking to get a dashcam for my work truck with front and rear perspectives but I’m getting a topper put onto my truck and I’m worried that the topper will interfere with the rear camera by not letting enough light to give clear recording. If anyone has any experience with this kind of setup and what dashcam they would recommend

 

There are several old threads here about dash cams - you should search them up & read what's already been posted. After one of the more-recent ones, I bought this for my Taurus. I like it so much, I'm putting them in some of my trucks & Broncos. My trucks don't have campers, but the Broncos do. I'm probably going to put those rear cameras in the CHMSLs. I certainly wouldn't put a camera on a truck cab with a camper right behind it - you'd never see anything useful. Extend the cable if necessary to put the camera on the rear of the camper.


On another truck, I installed this (which may not be available now) which has adaptive reversing lines - that's something else to consider.

 

You won't get a good view looking through a topper.

I recommend stand alone one channel cameras, two, one front and one rear. This way you can get full whatever spec for the rear and also if one of them goes belly up, having the other one can be a surprising amount of valuable footage even if the impact was the other direction.

Consider putting the rear camera in the actual rear at the back of the topper

Viofo or Street Guardian

 

I can't say I fully endorse this product but I will give some info and a couple screen shots from video.

This is the unit I put in my 13 Lariat.

I wanted front and rear cameras with GPS location and speed which this system provides. I wanted to mount the rear camera on the back bumper since my windows came with the dark tint but the rear camera cable wasn't long enough to mount there. You can see the video okay through the tint but you lose some field of view because of the bed tonneau. The system just comes with a lighter plug cord. They sent me the hardwire cord for free when I asked for it. The hardwire cord leaves a lot to be desired. It has some switches that are not defined well in the instructions and one illustration that is reversed. I ended up wiring it backwards on the first installation but that was easily corrected. They should have provided a cable to plug it into the OBD port which would have made it plug and play simple. I suggested that and they said they would consider that for future models. I either don't understand it or the parking monitor function doesn't work.

My computer system doesn't support over 1080P so I have to play any higher res videos through a free VLC player. I was already using that so it's no big deal. Having the video recordings set to higher resolution makes them look slightly grainy and notchy during playback but the paused images are clearer. With the resolution set to 1080P the video playback is smoother. The highest frame rate is 30 FPS. I would like to have had 60 FPS.

All in all it works acceptably for my wants. The videos report that the claimed values are true when I look at the properties in the windows file system. I have tried one before that claimed 1080P and they were actually 720P. That seems to be fairly common in the misrepresented systems.

Here are a couple screen shots. This was set at the 2K video resolution setting on the front camera.

 

 

Would you mind typing into the forum what your takeaway from that video was?

I'm not watching it because I know the clickbait title is wrong from multiple personal real world experience is why I ask. I'm wondering if the content of the video is as incorrect as the title

 

I'm a fan of Viofo A119 mini. It doesn't have a rear option but I like the features. There are a ton of YouTube videos out there for it.

 

I've had good experience with Viofo, for years, across multiple cams. I currently have two Viofos in the front of my F150, one is the A119 Mini. It's been good

 

I didnt post it but everyone seems to post it every time they see the word dashcam. The nerd in the video complains that a lot of the dashcams on the market dont have great video quality and its hard to read a license plate. So the takeaway i got from it is, if you want to be able to read the registration sticker on the vehicle, get a go pro or do your homework to find the best.

I have a dash cam not to read license plates but to show that I had a green light, or that i didnt run a stop sign, show i wasnt driving over the line, to show i wasnt being reckless, or to show that i was sitting still and someone hit me (thats happened to my wife 2 times).

 

This exactly. ^

I had another car hit me as I was going through a green light, in the left lane, and they turned right across two lanes (turned into the left of the two lanes). Dash cam proved everything definitively.

I had contact with another car when I was driving the speed limit down a rural 2 lane highway, the other car was at a stop sign on an angled side road, and just as I got there (no other vehicles in play) they left the stop sign and merged right into me. The other driver's insurance literally admitted fault/liability and started paying before they were even able to contact their own driver (and no police report, just by video).

In another incident I was rear ended. The forward facing dash camera (I have rear now too) proved I was stationary at the stop sign, following all of the rules of the road, in the correct part of the road, no abrupt movements to get there even, all the things, for several seconds before I got impacted.

I've also captured other accidents on my dash camera and shared them with police.

In 0 of these cases did I need the camera to read a license plate. However, in some of these cases, the camera did read a perps license plate.