CACAGOO Dash Cam, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Full HD Car Video Recorder Camera ( ADAS, LDWS, Loop Recording,100° Wide Angle, Night Vision, 720p,Support App for iOS and Android )

I love my car gadgets so after being in a friends car that had a driver assit system, I realised I wanted one. I saw this and thought I'd give it a go since it could also replace my in car dash cam.On receiving it, it's nicely packaged which immediately told me it would be a quality product. In the box there was the box of tricks that attaches to your windscreen, a GPS antenna and power cable.Installation is a doddle, it just sticks to your windscreen with the supplied self-adhesive stickers. It's a good idea to download the app first and install it on your phone. That way, you can plug the camera in and check what it can see before you stick it to the screen as once it is on, it's on.I did this and found a place just under my rear view mirror, attached it and then routed the cables, putting the GPS antenna on the roof - this is magnetic so it can go anywhere. You don't need the GPS, it is optional. If you want a speed read out on your camera footage, you need it, otherwise you don't.Once it is attached, you need to calibrate the system by stopping on a straigh bit of road and using the app, you adjust where your bonnet ends (for collision warnings) and adjust where the centre white line is (for lane departure purposes). That's it, very simple.In use, you don't really do anything. When you start your car, this device turns on and starts recording automatically to the SD card. If you have your phone with you, it will automatically connect to the in-built wifi and display the picture on your phone too.As a dash cam, it's fine and is much easier to fit and less obtrusive than most. But it's real purpose is as a driver assist system. It warns you if you stray over the white lines. It warns you if you get too close to the car in front. It warns you if you don't pull away when the car in front has.If you are a car nut and you don't have a car with a driver assist feature, or you just want a fancy dash cam, this will do the trick for you.The only negative is that it should have the option to turn off the start up prompts. It has a mute button, but this has to be pressed each time it is turned on. It can be updated via your phone so I look forward to any new features. It's a great gadget!

I bought this on a whim after reading good things about factory fitted ADAS systems in various cars. This is a fairly new technology which caught my interest. I'm a bit of a gadget head so liked the idea of a cheap, stand-lone system that I could install myself and move from car to car if I wanted to. Just for reference, the brand leader for this is Mobileye, now owned by Intel which retails at about £600 a pop. For £59.99 I thought this was worth the punt just to see what driver assistance technology feels like. I liked the idea of a camera and sensors working tirelessly in the background, keeping an eye open for you and giving you a timely, non-intrusive warning if you get too close to another vehicle or start to change lanes suddenly etc......you get the idea. Here're my thoughts.....The installation and set up of both the unit and software were both straightforward and quick. The unit is designed to connect to your android phone by it's own WiFi (not Bluetooth). I have an up to date android touch screen head unit in my car, which has built in WiFi and works with a reverse/dash cam and will play DVDs etc, so i decided to connect the dash cam to this to see if it worked - and it did - to a point. I installed the unit itself on the windscreen, just to the passenger side of the rear view mirror; the GPS receiver is magnetic so I stuck that to the metal roof under the headlining and I ran the power cable for the device under the headlining, down inside a side pillar and into a concealed 12v socket under the dashboard. All good. I downloaded the Cacagoo software onto my head unit from the Android play store. The unit puts out it's own WiFi signal and the head unit picked it up and connected to it without problems but it takes about 30 seconds to connect and you get a reedy, electronic female Chinese-sounding voice telling you quite loudly to connect to it every time you start the car up thereafter - not just upon initial setup. This is annoying and can't be turned off as far as I could see. Alerts volumes can be muted or adjusted but not this start up voice. Calibration/setup is just measurement of the width of the car, height from ground to camera and distance from camera to front bumper. In fact the default settings matched my cars so didn't need changing. The image quality on my head unit was poor - very pixelated (looked like Minecraft was playing on my screen) although after a couple of minutes it became clearer and more stable. That's when stationary.When I drove the car the image went Minecraft again and was struggling to keep pace with the constant movement of the car. The different coloured lines drawn between my car and vehicles in front are constantly changing colour (green, amber, red) and the figures on screen for distance from vehicles and time to impact I actually found a bit unnecessary and distracting, drawing my eye to the head unit which is in the centre console below the level of the windscreen. I couldn't use my head unit satnav when this was in use, which was annoying. The unit can't actually sense when your're indicating to turn; it just knows the width of your vehicle (as per setup info you entered) so warns you when you cross a lane marking regardless of whether you indicate or not. Didn't seem that useful a feature really. The unit also warns you if you have stopped at a junction and the car in front of you pulls away. I get the point but again, how useful is that? All warnings and alerts given in that annoying voice again (which can be turned down or off though). A beep would be much better in my opinion.On my return I uninstalled the software from my head unit and installed it on my new android phone to see if that worked any better. My phone could identify but wouldn't connect to the unit's WiFi signal however, so no joy there. Then I did the same thing with an Android tablet, which did connect so I re-did the setup went for a drive again with that. Image clarity better, but picture was delayed by about 4 seconds which is very unnerving when you're driving. So it seems to me that whether the unit will actually work with your phone will be unclear until you actually try it. Overall, I came away thinking "do i really need this?" and can't say I was impressed with the end result. I still like the idea of electronic driver assistance but I don't think this is the way forward for me. I'm returning the unit and will keep my eye open for something simpler and more compatible in the future.

Can not get working once calibrated it lost sound on all warnings