MBAdon

After my 2 month old (to me) c63 had its rear bumper hit in a parking lot I decided I needed some video surveillance. In a fixed location like your home a DVR camera system would be best but when on the move a dash cam can do the job.

I chose the FineVu Pro Full-HD:


And I mounted it like so:


As you can see I mounted it further to the right than necessary for typical dash cam applications. This is so that when parking I can rotate the camera backwards without the rear view mirror getting in the way. With the wide angle of view that the lense has this provides a pretty good view of the rear and sides of the car. Depending on where you park you can tilt the camera to get a great view of the rear and just one side of the car.

The FineVu Pro Full-HD is the second best FineVu camera and I chose it over the most expensive camera, the CR-500HD, because it was about $100 cheaper, I liked the form factor and it was good enough.


Major differences between the Pro and the CR-500HD:

• The Pro's highest setting is 1080p at 15fps versus 30fps. The 15fps looks pretty good to me and you can go down to 900p at 30fps if you really want higher frame rates. There are plenty of youtube comparisons already so I'm not going to make another.
• The CR-500HD has a built in battery so you can unplug and video outside of car in the event of an accident.
• The CR-500HD has a battery monitor in parking mode, though I read mixed reviews saying it is set too low to save the battery from dying.
• The CR-500HD has a button on the back to enable parking mode whereas the Pro does it automatically after 10 minutes of parking. I don't really see a use for the button unless you really care about saving the 10 minutes of full time recording space.
• Both the Pro and the CR-500HD have the high quality SONY sensor so image quality is top notch.

A word on functionality:
While driving, the camera is constantly recording in 3 minute files and self overwriting the oldest files as the memory card fills up. When parked, recording continues for 10 minutes after which the camera goes into parking mode. In parking mode the camera records in 1 minute chunks whenever motion or shock is detected. These events are stored in a separate folder on the memory card and also overwrite the oldest files when full. Resolution, space for recording types, sensitivity levels and more are all configurable when the camera is connected to a computer.

More on parking mode and the optional Power Magic Pro battery protection module:
Parking mode requires that power be hard wired to your electrical system. This is really really easy to do in the C63. There is a fairly inexpensive little box called the Power Magic Pro that is a box with a series of switches, 3 power wires, and a cigarette lighter recepticle where the camera power cable plugs into. You stick the box to the side of the fuse box in the trunk and you connect one wire to ground, one to an always on 12V source, and one to a fuse that only activates when the car is turned on. This is the install and the little black box with green light is the Power Magic Pro:


Connections:
Connect the red wire to one of the two blue fuses on the right side of the fuse box. Connect the yellow wire directly to the battery. Connect the black wire to a chassis bolt (near the tail light was the only loose one). Run the power cable from the camera on the windshield to the trunk by pushing it into the edge of the roof material (takes minutes and is easier to do than explain), and finally plug the power cable into the Power Magic Pro's 12V cig lighter style receptacle. The dip switches on teh Power Magic Pro set a voltage cuttoff point or a voltage and a time cuttoff point so your battery doesn't go dead. This is a precaution really as the camera will probably not drain your battery even after days of sitting there.

NOTE: You cannot attatch the yellow wire to an always on fuse on the fuse box. For some reason after about an hour the Mercedes cuts all power to the fuse box. This is why I went direct to the battery. Took me a couple days to figure out why my camera was powered down after a few hours when I checked it.

Group Buy:
Several days after I purchased the camera on Amazon I noticed the price drop by $29. I emailed the seller through Amazon and the guy turned out to be really cool. He sent me the $35 GPS add on module for free to make up for it. Also, he told me about his web site and started asking if I wanted more or a higher quantity. I mentioned group buy and he was really stoked on the idea. His web direct price for all the FineVu cameras are cheaper than the best prices on Amazon and he offered to take an additional 10% off if we had a group buy of 4 units. I doubt he would care if people wanted a mix of the Pro or the CR-500HD. Im hoping he will just take orders from people indivuduallly here and I dont have to actually do anything. We'll see. If there is interest let me know.

His site:
http://www.finedashcam.com/

bluejae

nice

fyi, the cr500 also switches to parking mode after 10 minutes automatically. the button is just an option to activate it or deactivate it.

CoolBDPhenom03

I was told that using a fuse with a high enough number of volts, it should work fine. When my camera is on standby, it begins to blink purple on the controls when it detects motion, then goes back to standby again.

MBAdon

I don't know about that. All the fuses are at the battery 12.xx volts but after an hour or two the voltage would dissapear. I troubleshot this with my voltmeter but only looked at the rear fuse compartment. Maybe it's just the trunk fuse box that is disconnected after an hour.

CoolBDPhenom03

Hmm. Well, I had similar thoughts myself, wondering if it was really on when I needed it to be. I checked the feed and saw all of the recordings in parking mode for a few days...until the card ran out of space.

MBAdon

Nobody wants a dash cam? Darn, I was hoping to get a second one at this lower price.