Looking for dashcam in parking mode for Kia Niro 2020

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xenon2070

New Member
I have Kia Niro 2020 and I am looking for the best way to install a dashcam. I prefer to have cloud alert in parking mode feature (to receive real time notification in case of accident).


I see that the car does not have wifi hot-spot. Since it has sim card, is it feasible to add this feature by any method (adding some manual hardware to car)?


Can a dashcam use the sim card from mobile, instead of wifi, and send real time cloud alert?


Transferring the file from dashcam without wifi should be difficult. Anyway, if no real time is needed, the wifi hot-spot can get created by mobile but it needs the driver to get inside the car.
 
The car would need a wifi antenna and and IEEE 802.11 protocol (wifi) chipset to provide wifi capability. Unless these are included in the hardware, a SIM card change won't matter. Since KIA does not advertise this capability, I doubt they went to the extra cost to make these components part of the car. This speculation so I could be wrong.

Since KIA is likely paying for the cellular data the car uses, I bet they would want to charge extra for using the car as an internet hub.
 
My last car was just totalled in an accident with a hit and run...

There are a few cellular options I think (there's a blackvue for ~$600). What's unclear to me would be which plan I could use. (I have some extra unused lines on tmobile, for example... but don't know if they'd "work" normally on the devices).

I went more midrange, no cellular.... just got a viofo A129 Pro Duo, ran $285 with a remote and with the wiring for parking mode. So far, I have only installed it and have not hooked up the parking mode. I have the power cable just hanging to the USB right now, and the other cable (from front to rear camera) mostly tucked into trim or weather-stripping around the door. I mounted the front camera to the right of the rearview mirror, and the rear camera near the top in the center of the window. I'm not sure the best vertical angle for the front camera (get the hood of the car or not).

It has wifi, but it's pretty sluggish. Writes to a uSD card, from the front camera it's around 500mB per minute. Takes a couple minutes to download one of those files over wifi to the cam. On the 64gb card I have, that makes probably 45 minutes of front+rear cam.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RXQJ148/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GF9CF2X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JQ1JYPJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here's front and rear images and front video. I'll probably update the album tomorrow with better pictures and more of how I routed the cables. The front to rear cable barely fit the way I routed it...
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Amylpglo08Rb2EDLxvYLPU0h0TMj?e=lBfI0X

You have to download the videos for full quality (and maybe hit "view original" on the photos)
 
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For a non EV I own I have been playing with this type of thing with a tablet I use for a rear view cam. I had good luck with freedompop but the just canned the whole free service model, well it exists but they have made it less useful. There are also some sim cards for IOT purposes that have no monthly fee but very high per MB usage rates. Be careful of the background usage of devices. If you have available free lines this might be a solution, and old phones can be setup to be dashcams and there are apps for this purpose. Phone batteries dislike the heat of being in the windshield so be careful . They sell rear view camera mirrors with sim cards but they all appear to be pretty dicey, IOW, they are too cheap to be real
 
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