I’d like to get a dashcam, but unfortunately my phone isn’t one that has an SD card slot.

I’m going on a road trip soon and would like to pick up a dash cam for it as I’ve had issues in the past.

I’m looking to see if you guys have any cleaner (as in more automated, less fiddly post-setup) solutions than just using an SD Card reader on the phone to manually upload the data to a NAS via VPN

Thanks in advance! I’m definitely more of a tech person than a car person so any help would be appreciated.

Edit: you all seem to be making the same point, I’m coming at this from the wrong POV. I’m worried about vendor lock-in and being reliant on whatever service the vendor wants to use instead of just handling the data myself. But it seems like it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Thanks for all your answers!

  • Charlie FishAEnglish
    3·
    12 hours ago

    Most dash cameras that have an SD card slot just record over existing footage once it runs out of storage.

    So get a large-capacity SD card. Have it record everything. Then every so often, take that SD card, put it into your laptop, and offload it wherever you want (NAS, cloud storage, etc.).

  • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
    17·
    20 hours ago

    Do you need to keep all the footage? Usually it just records on a loop and you only save what you need.

    If you really need to keep footage for work or whatever, you’ll need to offload storage somehow, like swapping SD cards, or copying to an external device, or uploading to cloud storage.

  • brewery@feddit.ukEnglish
    6·
    18 hours ago

    Dash cams record on loops and you can usually change the video lengths. Mine has a button you can easily press to mark that video (and the one before/after if less than 1 minute in/to go) which moves that video to a different folder and prevents it being overwritten. It also does that automatically if it senses a crash. If you have a large enough SD card you won’t have to transfer it anywhere for quite a while depending on how much you want to save. I go a few months of saving the odd thing before moving them over to my laptop

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
    11·
    20 hours ago

    I don’t see much need to retain or upload dashcam video unless something happens. It’s so you can document what happened if you’re in a crash, get a ticket, or whatever. Otherwise just re-use the storage. You don’t need to permanently record every moment of your life.

  • myplacedk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    20 hours ago

    Just to be clear: Do you want a way to save anything interesting that might happen, or do you want to save everything as automatically as possible?