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Google will soon let Pixel phones double as dashcams
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago"a new feature called “Dashcam” that, as the name suggests, records video (and audio, optionally) while you are driving. If your phone is mounted in the right spot, the recording should provide helpful information in the event of an accident or other unexpected situation." A perfect way to collect information about your driving habits and vehicle. Insurance companies, auto sales and maintenance companies, and others would love to find new customers this way.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoThey already collect tracking data with Google Maps and already use car engine type to estimate gas usage on different routes.
- hackernewds 3y agoNow they can collect not just yours, but also other people's license plate movements and facial recognition. It's great producing eyes for Google everywhere - which is why the Ring was worth a billion $ for Amazon.
- hef19898 3y agoJust found out that my Pixel 7 has, so deeply hidden I don't find it again easily, a check box limiting / allowing access to car data. I didn't turn it on... Well, there is a long weekend coming up, maybe if I find time despite the huge home project backlog to install CalxyOS, I hate it that I cannot trust my phone to not spy on me and my activities despite everything being turned of. After all, some settings changed after various app updates.
- fsflover 3y agoIf you want a phone you can trust, you might like a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).
- mindslight 3y ago(I know this doesn't really help you now, but) If you install your self-representing operating system as part of setting up a new phone, then you don't end up in a situation where it's some huge disruptive undertaking. Also doing so within the purchase return period assures that your phone can definitely be unlocked, rather than finding out otherwise when it's too late.
- RunSet 3y agoSince the main reason not to use grapheneOS is that it only supports Pixels and you already have one, you might also consider it. Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod. https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/
- propogandist 3y ago>Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod. this is a great teaser statement I miss the days of having to open 9 xda threads to figure out how to install some ROM. That whole scene seems to have died off as Android puts up more walls to increase reliance on locked down services
- szszrk 3y agoThere is plenty navigation/maps<->insurance or police-detection<->insurance cooperation here in Poland. It analyzes your driving and offers discounts based on that. There is also plenty of dedicated dashcam apps and functions in map apps so I'm curious why this Pixel addon brings attention.
- nologic01 3y agoCar companies already advertise new models as fully Googlyfied (as if that is a good thing) so when informed people lament that a large part of the population are basically convenience seeking, gullible imbeciles its not far from the truth. That such an important aspect of our lives as privacy would come to be trampled so easily is just mind boggling. Wisdom of the crowds my a*. The only way you can prevent organized corporate abuse is to have very empowered and savvy regulators that somehow truly work for the interests of the many. A highly non-trivial catch-22 given that in a democracy they can only draw legitimacy for their actions by appealing to the same inane and manipulated multitudes.
- judge2020 3y agoDashcams should 100% be required in every car. Too many accidents are a he-said-she-said situation, sometimes without any impartial witnesses.
- mschuster91 3y agoEveryone should be free to choose if they have a car that automatically generates tons of evidence against themselves that the cops just have to seize. It's bad enough with eCall and the trend to insurances requiring recording blackboxes (or modern cars doing that all on their own), but dashcams? I can already see police demanding laws allowing them to force you to hand them over access to the footage at a roadside traffic stop and them running AI scans on it to see if you ran a stop sign or red light or if you were speeding. Where there's feeding troughs of data, the pigs will always come to demand being fed (a rough translation of the German saying "Wenn man den Trog hat, kommen die Schweine von ganz alleine").
- sacrosancty 3y ago[dead]
- leetcrew 3y agono thanks. pervasive surveillance is bad enough already without the requirement that the surveiled pay for the hardware themselves.
- judge2020 3y agoWhy is surveillance a requirement? Local recordings would have virtually no downsides unless the intention is to evade responsibility for traffic collisions.
- leetcrew 3y agoI do actually have a dashcam built into my personal vehicle. I have mixed feelings about it, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks. that said, the risks are not to be taken lightly. even if the recording is only stored locally, it can be seized by authorities or subpoenaed later. you can't guarantee it will only be used to settle minor traffic disputes. like I said, I'm (mostly) happy to make that decision for myself. but having the government require people to collect evidence against themselves is a hard no from me.
- AHOHA 3y agoThe concept separation of concerns I apply every where, and I like my dashcam not connected to any cloud, if I ever needed a footage, I’ll just take it from the sdcard.
- h0l0cube 3y ago> I’ll just take it from the sdcard What about in the situation of a theft?
- AHOHA 3y agoI will check the garage CCTV cam.
- seized 3y agoExcept for malls, grocery stores, events, train station, movie theaters... Work...
- AHOHA 3y agoIf you live in an area with a high probability of getting your car stolen, you better protect your investment properly and install a gnss tracker, not just it is more reliable, accurate, and use way less data on your cellular plan, but also you can hide it and conceal it in a location (like near the engine) that you have a better chance to find your car before the tracker is found, unlike a dashcam, that will obviously consume more data, but also the first thing will be thrown out of the window after the successful robbery.
- jgerrish 3y agoYeah, you could work around this with anti-tamper APIs and trip-wires and tech solutions to secure your phone. But then you're playing an arms-race game against inventive thieves with jammers and portable Faraday cages. Another solution is legal. Make a dashcam phone a "Protected Insurance Entity" or some shit. Maybe have it always streaming as part of some Citizens on Patrol Star Watcher campaign. Bump the punishment to federal level insurance fraud. Jesus, this fucking future. Obviously, we will save lives, and that is great. It just takes one drunk driver and one teddy bear falling from the sky. I imagined a future hopping between cyber corps if you have that power. But this feels different.
- usernew 3y agoalternate title: google includes more crap most people won't use, making the OS interface have more crap to go through to find your thing. here in the real world, if you want your phone to be a dashcam, you've been able to do that with an app for over a decade. what we need is the phone to natively convert between british, us, and metric, specifically for paprika measurements during the cooking of various dishes. google should put those conversions in the first top-swipe. if you swipe again, then you see notifications. if you swipe a third time, it'll tell you that you've turned your data off, and give you an option to turn it back on. forth time swipe you'll be able to adjust brightness.
- vanous 3y agoNo need for a system one if there's an app... But... Is there a FLOSS dashcam for Android? Nothing that I could see on F-droid when I looked a few months back.
- maven29 3y agoA quick search brought up CosyDVR on f-droid. Might not play nice with new Android versions, though.
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y agoYeah, it crashes immediately on my Pixel 6 Pro.
- vanous 3y agoThat's a non working app. Any working suggestions? Cheers.
- throwaway81523 3y agoI thought there were already apps to do this with most phones. The phone itself has a poor form factor for a dashcam though, and it uses too much power.
- AHOHA 3y agoYep, I used to use Sygic for some time as I needed an offline maps in the middle of nowhere, and they have a dashcam addon that worked pretty well, except the heating issue others mentioned.
- PlunderBunny 3y agoDon't phones get really hot if you record video for long periods of time? Edit: Whoops - the article mentions that.
- photonbucket 3y agoI've been curious about why that is, surely it's just pumping data from the camera sensor, through a hardware-encode unit, then straight to flash?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- piyush_soni 3y agoNo, they now do a lot of processing for each individual frame (and imagine doing that for 60 frames per second).
- mrguyorama 3y agoThermally, mobile phones are not rated or designed for constant work. They want to do stuff only like 1 out of every 10 seconds and are designed to dissipate heat that way. At least the way I understand it. Even if there was nothing being done to the raw frames from the sensor, which hasn't been the case for a while, it's likely the processor would have to do other stuff to manage the resources.
- paranoidrobot 3y agoFTA: > We also wonder about how Personal Safety will be able to do this type of always-on recording without generating excess heat, especially if your phone needs to be mounted in a position that’s likely to see a lot of direct sunlight. That's what I immediately thought of. I can't see this working too well unless they solve the overheating issues. I had my Google Pixel 7 Pro shut down due to overheating, on a reasonably hot day (~35C) where I was walking around and taking a bunch of photos. I had to use my hands to absorb the heat, to cool it down enough to turn back on so I could call a Taxi and get somewhere cool.
- blackoil 3y agoA mount that moves AC air directly to phone should work.
- gbil 3y agoyou can have direct sunlight heating up the phone on a day that AC is not needed this issue needs to be handled by the device and not with external resources
- borissk 3y agoBuy a white phone and don't put a case on it.
- FormFollowsFunc 3y agoOr buy a white case. That’s what I did and it seemed to work, as a Sat Nav device at least. Not sure about recording video which will produce more heat.
- senectus1 3y agoha! not in Australia you cant. That sun is murder on hot phones.
- agnosticmantis 3y ago
- janalsncm 3y agoI have an old iPhone 8 lying around and might try out some dash cam apps for it. Remember seeing a Linus Tech Tips video about how bad most dashcam cameras are, so even though the iPhone 8 camera isn’t stellar the bar is pretty low.
- beebmam 3y agoMy Pixel 6 Pro gets too hot on my dash that it stops working when it's in the sun. There's even a notification from the device that tells me it's too hot to operate normally! So I doubt this will work too well unless Pixel >=7 phones perform better under high temperature than mine does.
- borissk 3y agoWhat color is your Pixel?
- borissk 3y agoIdeally it should record video from the main, ultrawide and the front cameras. The ultrawide in case something happens out of the view of the main camera and the front cam in case something hits you from the back (if the phone is mounted so it has visibility through the back window).
- michaelt 3y agoYou can get dashcams with both forward- and rearward-facing cameras. But they're mostly used by trucking companies who want to confirm who was driving, tell them off for distracted driving or if they weren't wearing a seatbelt, and so on. I think this feature would be unpopular if it recorded the camera facing the driver, once a few bad drivers got punished based on evidence from their own camera.
- usrusr 3y agoPhones have multiple lenses and sensors, but they don't have multiple sets of sensor readout capacity. Even when the theoretical maximum pixel througput (as in biggest sensor the SoC can be paired with) is big enough on paper to do all sensors in a time division multiplex, I wouldn't be surprised if the switch wasn't fast enough. (personally I'd love to have a camera app that did all-lens release for stills, I'm of the "beyond point-and-shoot" school of photography, shoot without much pointing, sort them out later)
- trishmapow2 3y agoSamsung has directors view which records front and back simultaneously. Would be surprised if flagship devices can't do this due to hardware limitations.
- michaelolt 3y ago> they don't have multiple sets of sensor readout capacity. That's wrong, Android has multi-camera API since Android 9 (API level 28). Modern phones can record 2 or sometimes 3 camera streams simultaneously.
- curiousgal 3y agoThey couldn't even build a phone that makes phone calls. So I am not holding my breath.
- PeterStuer 3y agoWonder if they'll use the footage for streetview or AV training data.
- netsharc 3y agoThat would be cool, but it seems like Google nowadays don't have departments collaborating with each other, how many chat apps do they have still? Maybe Google Maps will next come with "Record your journey!" mode...
- piperswe 3y agoAFAIK, they have two text chat systems: - The Android SMS/RCS client - Google Chat, accessible through both Gmail and a dedicated app and one video chat system (Google Meet). In the past few years, they've consolidated their communications products.
- ridgered4 3y agoSeems like it would be pretty heavy data usage pushing all that video up over the mobile network.
- mrguyorama 3y agoPixels have built in "AI" engines or whatever. Maybe they do preprocessing, only store relevant stuff, and then upload when you get back on wifi.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoHm, let's see: Do I want to wear out the flash memory in an $800 phone, or get a $150 dash cam? This comment applies to Android phones that wouldn't let this thing write to a micro-SD card, of course.
- disillusioned 3y agoYeah, all I could think of was "that's an insane amount of thrashing on the storage on this very expensive phone" alongside my second thought which was: "My Pixel 7 Pro can't record video for more than a couple minutes before it microwaves itself into oblivion, there's absolutely no chance it survives for even a couple seconds as a dashcam."
- hammyhavoc 3y agoI mean, if you've got to put in a dock/holder anyway, why not use external storage?
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoTime to put that 5G hype to the test, stream it directly to google servers like Nest cam cvr
- guilhas 3y agoAnd their flash is known to brick a lot I had a pixel 3xl bricking after an update. They get a lot of updates and wear the ?cheap flash https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rt6tn9/my_pixel_6_bricked_suddenly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/rt6tn9/my_pixe... https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/mmcn93/my_pixel_3_xl_bricked_overnight/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/mmcn93/my_pixe... https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/xtwgap/pixel_5a_bricked/ https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/xtwgap/pixel_5...
- delfinom 3y agoBad flash in phones isn't that uncommon or specific to Google. There's at least a few Samsung phones whose flash dies after two years due to a firmware bug in the emmc. Samsung of course never fixed it since they just ran the clock on the warranty. There was at least once individual once refurbishing said failed phones by using a exploit to update said emmc.
- silisili 3y agoThere's really no reason for this. Everyone should have a dashcam, that much I agree on. But dashcams are cheap(ish), reliable, and you don't have to think much about them. The whole point, to me at least, is that it's always there, like a silent guardian. We shouldn't have to remember, or fiddle with our phones, or block our field of vision for this. I spent about $100 on a dual front and rear facing cam. It tucks out of the way, turns on with the vehicle, has shock protection when parked, night vision, etc.
- mellosouls 3y agoThere are already apps for this, its not obvious what the big deal is here unless there is some hardware change providing improvements wrt eg. overheating etc. I guess a simple mode change built in is a nice idea, but I agree with others who suggest a dedicated wired-in device is always preferable; the phone useful as a backup for rare occasions when the dashcam isn't available or as an interface.
- leokennis 3y agoTwo replies to this: 1 - Auto-record when connecting to car bluetooth seems very handy, and possibly only available for a system level feature as opposed to a third party app 2 - Dedicated device is best, but personally my car dash is already overcrowded then with dashcam + navigation + phone.
- SargeDebian 3y agoFlitsmeister is an app that warns you of speed checks. They have an accessory that auto-starts the app when connected over Bluetooth, so I suspect that's not exclusive to first party apps.
- lofaszvanitt 3y agoWhere should we go next? Well, I have an idea for a market segment we could plunder. Just for the kicks.
- deafpolygon 3y ago"Let us wait until we figure out how to monetize the data we'll collect from giving away this 'feature'."
- astrange 3y agoGoogle doesn't give away Pixel phones, they sell them.
- wjd2030 3y agoof fucking course they will, its so generous of them, totally selfless, nothing else motivating them other than providing a service to the public :eyeroll:
- eternityforest 3y agoSounds like an excellent way to wear out the flash memory. Getting rid of SD cards is the worst thing to happen to phones in a while.
- awestroke 3y agoIt'll probably be an in-memory circular buffer of the last n minutes, and then you get to save it if anything happens
- jeffbee 3y agoIt would be unlawful in the state of California to mount a mobile phone in a position that would make it suitable for this purpose, in the way that most people would do it. Technically you can mount a Pixel-sized device in the furthest corner from the driver but nobody is going to bother doing it that way. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH§ionNum=26708 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoEdit: I’m removing this comment. It’s not productive and doesn’t contribute to the discussion. My apologies.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amluto 3y agoIf the phone isn’t too big, and Google added the relevant capabilities, maybe exception 11(A) could work.
- jefftk 3y ago
- dahart 3y agoCould this potentially be used for self-driving or other AI training, now or in the future? I can imagine ways one might use data like that, even without access to the car’s driving inputs and even without having to upload the video anywhere.
- bagacrap 3y agoWhy don't cars come with these by default yet? I have two backup cameras on a 7 year old entry level Honda but no integrated dashcam.
- waboremo 3y agoLegal issues. Dash cams aren't allowed universally, and even when they are they tend to have restrictions (how it's mounted, how footage is handled, etc). They've just decided dealing with this pain point is not worth the purchase conversions since users can just add one themselves. There are some brands that have them, usually as an additional package depending on where you are. Like Toyota's Genuine Dash in Canada, Tesla Dashcam, BMW Car Eye, etc.
- franga2000 3y agoAll you need is a toggle in the settings that is off by default. They also already deal with regional law differences regarding speed camera warnings, so it isn't an insane idea for them to maintain a list of countries where the feature is blocked (although that's not the solution I would prefer)
- oh_sigh 3y agoThe simple answer is that backup cameras are required by regulation for safety, whereas dashcams don't increase safety.
- JustSomeNobody 3y agoNeat trick, buy I really don't see this as something I'd use unless I'm in a pinch. Phones (pretty much every phone) will heat up too much in this scenario.
- crazygringo 3y agoI don't quite understand how this would work physically. You'll want to be simultaneously using your phone for directions/music/etc., which means that instead of mounting your phone against an air vent or similar just below the windshield... ...you'd need to be mounting this much higher, yet still within arm's reach, so it could see out the windshield but where it would be significantly obstructing your view of the road. I don't see how that would be safe at all.
- q1w2 3y agoI guess it would depend on the shape of the dash. In my Jeep, with the windshield so close and the seat already high, this would work fine.
- WrtCdEvrydy 3y agoThis has been possible with CamOnRoad for years (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camonroadapp.pro&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camonroada...). I used an old iPhone 5S for demoing this app to some friends... just attach it and keep it powered using USB.
- Bhilai 3y agoNot sure about negative comments here. You dont like it, dont use the feature! Its not like Google is forcing you to use this. I bet people will celebrate this feature when Apple rolls around implementing it two years from now. I for one, look forward to using this feature on my Pixel as I live in a city where drivers are very aggressive and in general have a disregard for following the rules. I have been in an accident where the other driver outright refused to accept their mistake and made up a completely false story and a dashcam would have proved their fault without a doubt. I did mount a dashcam in my car since then but using the phone would be a much better proposition.
- wnevets 3y ago> I bet people will celebrate this feature when Apple rolls around implementing it two years from now. Not only will it be celebrated but people will claim its revolutionary
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BoorishBears 3y agoApple would never put iPhones up to something this low-brow. This is the company that put a charging port under a mouse so you wouldn't leave it hooked up all day: they're not going to encourage you to stick your phone in a creaky phone mount in hot sunlight all day so you can do a bad dashcam impression.
- mrguyorama 3y agoIn Apple world you don't need your phone to be a dashcam because you can afford stupid accidents and other expenses that mostly screw over the poors
- ralfcheung 3y agoNo need to wait for another two years, I already made an exact app you're talking about. it's not only a dash cam, but it's integrated with turn by turn navigation as well. maybe I can claim it to be revolutionary :) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dashmap/id1638360259 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dashmap/id1638360259
- lom 3y agoThis is pretty interesting. I currently use a pixel 4a which will no longer get updates this summer. If I could turn it into a full time dashcam I could reuse my still-working old phone, I wouldn’t have to dispose of it and save money.
- arein3 3y agoYou can switch to grapheneos, it should still receive the latest updates.
- at_a_remove 3y agoThis is apparently the only way you could get a 4k recording running at 60 fps. No other dashcams on the market do this.
- imwillofficial 3y agoOh I bet they will
- psychomugs 3y agoI wonder what captcha-like mechanism they'll use for annotating this new dataset for their self-driving cars. Gamifying the videos post-drive with AR?
- astrange 3y agoIt's useless for this. Interesting things don't happen often enough and it's too blurry on bumpy roads.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ttt334 3y agoWithout a doubt, they are using this to collect data for a self driving car algorithm.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoThere is this android app called background video recorder that records in background, with screen off and screen on. Just mount the phone high enough on the dashboard. It can go for hours without any heating, if you select a little lower resolution.
- r2vcap 3y agoDashcam (called a black box in Korea) is very common in Korea. According to 2021 statistics, it is installed in more than 80% of vehicles. There are plenty of products on the market for less than $200, and some people are already using their phones as DashCams, so Google's response probably won't resonate much. I also looked up the statistics of other countries, and European countries showed a penetration rate of around 10%, and the United States showed a penetration rate of around 30%. So I can understand why many people at HN question the value of Dashcam.
- johnea 3y agoThe operative word here is "let", since any linux OS computer could do this. It's only been goggle's abomination on top of linux that has prevented it... Isn't it nice of the mulit-trillion dollar corporation to "let" you do things? Let's all just worship the mega-wealthy a little more...