Road video recording: tracker plus DashCam

In the Teltonika example the FMC125 is used: a tracker with 4G LTE Cat 1 and an RS232 serial port, which is where the camera connects. The FMC225 suits the same arrangement if a different specification is needed.

The DashCam is mounted on the windscreen. It films the road ahead and the other road users: vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights. Video is recorded at 720p with the H.265 (HEVC) codec, which gives a decent picture at a modest file size. That matters for sending over a mobile network: the clip goes out faster and uses less data.

The camera records the whole time the vehicle is working and holds up to 36 hours of video on a microSD card of up to 64 GB. It is not the whole stream that goes to the server, only the fragments that are wanted.

A clip is sent automatically in two cases: the tracker has recognised a collision from the accelerometer, or the driver has pressed the panic button. What goes to the server is 5 seconds before the event and 5 seconds after, 10 seconds in all. That is enough for a manager to grasp the picture, and no data is wasted.

If more is needed, video is requested with a command over SMS or GPRS. The request can be tied to events: speeding, harsh acceleration or braking, a sharp turn, towing, signal jamming. You set the length yourself, up to 30 seconds per clip. The camera can send stills as well, on request or at set intervals. A still every half hour suits delivery services: it shows that the vehicle really was at the right entrance and not in the yard next door.

How this looks in practice. A company lorry is stopped at a junction, a car runs into the back of it, and the car driver later claims the lorry reversed. The tracker records the impact, and a minute later the dispatcher has a clip on the server with the ten seconds before and after, and next to it the vehicle's speed at the moment of impact: 0 km/h. A conversation with the insurer does not get shorter than that, and the driver is not left carrying the blame for somebody else's mistake.

The solution is built on full-featured trackers, so everything else works too. EYE sensors for temperature, humidity and movement connect over Bluetooth LE, and BLE beacons are used to identify drivers or passengers, to keep track of trailers and as an immobiliser. The 1-Wire bus takes temperature sensors and RFID or iButton readers.

The FMC125 has two SIM cards. For vehicles that cross borders that is a direct saving: on leaving its home operator's area the tracker switches to the second SIM with a favourable tariff in the neighbouring country, and video, as everyone knows, needs more data than plain coordinates.

Put together, the fleet manager gains a single point of truth: the map with the track, the driver's events, and stills and video for the key moments. There is no need to match dashcam recordings against monitoring reports by hand.

Why not an ordinary dashcam off the shelf. It records the road as well, but the recording stays on the card in the vehicle. After a serious road traffic accident the card may be taken away, damaged or simply go missing, and a driver who is at fault is not always quick to hand it over. With the tracker and DashCam together, the key fragment reaches the server a minute after the impact, and the company sees it before the driver has had time to ring the office. A consumer dashcam also has no link to events: to find the right moment you have to scroll through hours of recording, whereas here the clip already sits at a point on the track flagged as a collision.

How it is rolled out across a fleet. First you decide which events will trigger a video: a collision and the panic button are almost always on, while harsh braking and speeding are added as required so as not to drown in clips. Then the length and quality of the fragments are set to suit the data tariff. At the first stage it is convenient to pick 10–15 vehicles on the most accident-prone routes, see how many clips arrive in a month and how useful they are, and only then roll the solution out to the whole fleet.

One more effect that gets mentioned less often: driver behaviour changes as soon as the kit is fitted. Once a person knows that harsh braking turns into a clip on the manager's screen, aggressive driving in heavy traffic drops noticeably within the first few weeks.