After an infamous thread on RedFlagDeals regarding an insurance fraud scam foiled by a person’s dashcam, many people started installing them as their own insurance, or simply to point out and ridicule poor drivers. Sometimes people catch some crazy events. I ended up purchasing a BlackVue DRG400G-HD from a group buy. It was one of the better cameras at the time, 1080P recording, GPS, and a nice sleek build. There are more affordable ones out there now such as the G1W which I have installed for my family members.
Most recently I captured lightning striking a utility post and it took out power to a traffic intersection. When I went to check the footage, I found that the image quality was very poor. I knew it was getting worse but always attributed it to a degrading sensor due to summer heat.
My camera also had an issue shutting down — it would no longer say “BlackVue now shutting down” when the power was cut.
Instead of tossing it for a new one, I opened it up for a little bit of maintenance to get it running like new.
BEFORE CLEANING: