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K7 installed on a Triumph Speed 400
The Triumph Speed 400 has a small empty space below the seat that is about the right size for the K7 main unit. There’s also a convenient power pickup right there, a connector that provides +12, switched ACC and GND; it’s a 8 Way AMP Econoseal J Series, female, with only three pins populated.
Photos of the before and after install are attached.
(the after is not quite done: I’ve temporarily hooked up the power while waiting for a proper connector to arrive)
Now, a brief review:
– biggest issue is stabilisation: the footage carries every shake and bump; I haven’t tried the stabilised video mode yet
– it runs warm: consumes about 7W when operating, this seems to mostly end up as heat in the main unit and cameras; I hope it’s ok under stuffed the seat in the middle of summer
– accessing the SD card when it’s buried under cables is painful; that’ll be a last resort for me
– fortunately the 5GHz wifi is pretty fast, takes ~30s to download a 300MB file
– the app is pretty clunky, however the unit has a web server running that makes it easier to download files
Things that could be improved:
– for some reason the camera puts some files in a “normal recording” directory and others in the “emergency” directory, even when there were no emergencies; I have the parking mode sensitivity set to highest, I presume that also sets the “emergency” threshold. Separate folders are annoying, they should all be in the same directory, the emergency files should just have an extra label or tag in the filename
– it would be good if the unit stayed powered on when there’s a device connected to its WiFi AP so you could start downloading files and finish with the bike turned off (the Triumph headlight is always on, so I’m at risk of flattening the battery whilst messing around with the K7); i.e. key/acc on, connect to wifi, start downloading, key/acc off and yellow power drops, K7 keeps running until either the battery voltage drops below 11V or the wifi client (phone) disconnects
– the camera should come with a screw plug to seal the remote control connector, if like me you decide not to use it (I used heatshrink to seal it up); ditto the microphone and GPS
– the GPS seems pretty useless: there’s no track log? At the very least there should be an option to show only position and not speed on the recording.
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3 Replies
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Hi Ben,
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Perhaps you could add photos of the rest of the installation for other Triumph Speed riders.Regarding your comments:
Image stabilization also depends on where you mount the cameras on the bike. Also use the rubber rings to dampen vibrations and ensure the cameracable isn’t too tight.
The housing of the DVR and the cameras do indeed get warm. This is normal as long as they don’t get hot. The DVR housing also functions as a heat sink, so airflow over it would be ideal.
The app takes some getting used to, but I find it more convenient than the web server. Finally, you can configure more settings with the app and download multiple video files simultaneously.
Parking mode can only be turned on or off. The sensitivity of the G-sensor only affects accident videos. You could therefore reduce the sensitivity of the G-sensor. To keep the K7 running continuously, you could connect the yellow wire to a constant power supply using a switch so you can choose whether it should have a switched or continuous power supply..
The videorecordings does have a track log. You can see this, for example, by downloading a video to your app. Then, connect your phone to the internet and play the video in the app. You should see a map view below the video, showing the track associated with the recording.
You can also view this clearly with DashcamViewer https://dashcamviewer.com/
The free version already offers plenty of features, so give it a try.
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Thanks for the reply Hans.
I switched the camera to EIS recording, this is a little better in terms of vibration, I’ll leave it there and see how it goes.
Re. app: the app can only download one video at a time, vs. up to 6 at a time from the web server (and the app makes you click a few times for each download vs. the web server is one-click). I certainly appreciate the web server function, for me it’s the difference between “usable” and “unusable” !
Re. “emergency” videos and g-sensor: thanks for that tip, you’re quite right that the reason for the heap of emergency videos was that I misunderstood the G sensor sensitivity as for parking mode only; I turned it down to a lower value and only have the occasional “emergency video” now (Sydney roads are not great, potholes/etc can be pretty bad).
Re. track log: I was hoping there’d be a separate GPX file, that would be a good feature.
Overall I’m happy with the K7, though I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for any new versions/models that have appreciably better nighttime image quality and stabilisation.
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This reply was modified 6 months ago by Ben.
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This reply was modified 6 months ago by
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Hi Ben,
With DashcamViewer, you can export GPS data as a separate GPX file.
In the app, you can select multiple files to download at once. Check the boxes in the top right corner of the video thumbnails to download multiple or all video files.
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