How Connected Cameras Can Be Restricted Which Can Lessen Your User Experience

With so many providers on the market offering what appear to be similar services and hardware but at different prices, the question is often asked, what is the difference?  

Functionality on connected cameras can be restricted in different ways to lower data usage so the provider can use a cheaper data package to run the system. However, this comes at the expense of your ability to use the system effectively.  

Here are the examples of the most common ways connected cameras are restricted making them difficult to live with.  

 Restriction 1- SIM Coverage 

Many systems use a sim that can only use one network provider like O2 for example. Restricted network sims are cheaper but result in reduced stability and coverage. This can impact your access to footage on the cameras due to gaps in coverage or slow downloads when the network is weak.  

 Restriction 2 – Auto uploads only  

A provider may only offer a short 10-30 second clip that is uploaded when a G-force event is detected e.g. hard braking or steering. Whilst this can be very useful if the video is required of an incident that didn’t trigger a g-force event you can’t access it: 

• Accusation of damage to a vehicle or property 
• Complaint about speeding  
• Prove a vehicle was where it should have been  
• Incidents of road rage or driver assault  

Being limited to an upload of 10-30 seconds may also not provide you with enough footage to fully determine what happened. If you need a longer clip you have to download it from the memory system manually.  

 Restriction 3- Reviewing and downloading footage  

When investigating an incident, you may only have a rough time estimate of when it took place e.g between 13:05 – 13:45.  

Some systems only allow you to enter a start & end time without being able to review the footage first to find the exact time of the incident. It may also restrict the amount of footage you can download at a time e.g 1 min.  

This results in a lot of time being taken up waiting for multi downloads and trying to find the exact time an incident took place.  

 Restriction 4 – Data allowances 

Providers may use a capped data allowance at around 2GB. This means once all the data is used up for a vehicle in a month then you can’t access or download any more footage.  

Serious incidents that required multiple cameras to be downloaded and potentially longer clips can easily exceed this limit in one download, so you don’t have enough allowance to access the footage.