Dash Cam for Idiots. (aka me)

[LandCruiserJ]

My LC LC came with the dealer installed (factory installed) dash cam. 10K miles in, and I still have no idea how it works or what to do with it. Is it always recording? Do you have to turn it on? If you want to use it to, say, record some beach or trail driving, how easy is it to get the footage off the dash cam and onto your iPad or phone is clean? Or is that best left to a GoPro? Thanks for helping a non-dash cam brother out.

 

[JordanJ]

From what I understand, and what I was told at the dealer, it only records when it senses an “incident”. I’ve had it turn on a few times crossing train tracks and in a couple easy trails, OR you can press the red action button and it will record until you push it again. It’s actually very annoying on trail because it goes off constantly and you have to push the red button again to stop it recording. As far as downloading, it had a SD card in the top slot part that says pull and had a picture of a SD card.

 

[icurnmedic]

Same problem here, don’t understand how to use it. Why in the world does the manual not address this ?

 

[JordanJ]

I’m sure there’s more to that system that I’m missing, but I’m sure that it turns on when the truck thinks something might have happened, push the action button to turn it off… it will beep a bunch to let you know and you’ll see a light on the action button. Otherwise just push it to record and push again to stop. And it apparently has an SD card installed, I would pull that compartment and see though, and just a heads up, mine was very hard to open at first.

 

[SadWheatFox]

There should be a separate manual for it. I had to download one because it wasn't provided with the cam. Hopefully this helps

 

[ferrari1898]

So the Toyota Camera will record while driving, while parked it will record if it notices activity. Additionally you can click the "Action Button" to record something noteworthy.

There is an app you can use to download the videos to your phone. The camera gets confused with CarPlay and has some connectivity issues (this is not limited to the Toyota camera). You need to disconnect CarPlay before connecting to the camera to avoid the camera from constantly having its connection lost to the infotainment system.

I personally, keep a small card reader in the glove box for a couple of reasons:
1 - The app is slow and "glitchy" in part as the camera and infotainment fight with which is connected to the phone.
2 - In the event of a wreck, if my wife, or parents were driving (and I was at home) the video footage is able to be accessed.
3 - Files are kept in 1 minute-ish segments, so there are a LOT of files. Even more if you install a larger memory card. navigating through the files is slow.

The camera in my wife's Chevrolet paid for itself 100X over when she was pulling into a parking space as another driver was opening his door. When I pulled the video footage it was discovered the driver was opening the door while talking to the passenger with his head clearly looking away from the door he was opening.

 

[laughnpup]

@ferrari1898 has a good description of the features.

I posted my own perspective last year on my first impressions thread and got a lot of feedback.

Impressions After 6000 Miles

You need to downloAd the Toyota Dashcam app, and before connecting it via wifi by pushing the Dashcam button, you should turn off AutoJoin for the regular Toyota carplay wifi connection to ensure the Dashcam stays connected. The software user experience is a little convoluted, but you basically select the video files and then download them direct to the Toyota Dashcam app. From there, you can select the files one-by-one to preview (argghhh!) and then download them. using the share button, the little If you want to do more than a few at a time, i recommend taking the card out and pulling them direct to your Mac or Pc.

Yes, it is always recording with a folder where it stores "Parked" videos, another where it stored "Adventure" videos when you push the red button, and another for "Emergency" where it will store and lock incidents or crashes.

I was in Philly last weekend watching the NCAA D1 Wrestling Championships and I found out exactly where the valets were putting my Land Cruiser using the Park feature - not only visual but the dashcam provides a readout of geo-coordinates since they drove the vehicle several blocks away and I wanted to make sure they weren't leaving it on the street.

Keep in mind the regular recordings taken during normal driving are 2 minutes in length. The files will eventually get written over depending on how big your memory card is and also how big you configure the folder for regular driving versus Adventure versus Emergency which you can do in the Dashcam app.

If the Dashcam is not recording or is showing an error, then use the Dashcam app to perform a format to reconfigure the card.

I have attached a dashcam video of an encounter we had with some bison in North Dakota. Gemi is Meteor Shower and I have read that bison may see a reflection and charge a vehicle. As Shakespeare said, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

----
Here is the dashcam video link since I do not think I can post video to this forum directly: