Here's a product that everybody needs
and not enough people are talking about.
It's a dash cam. And Vanru sponsored
this ShortCircuit of the unboxing of
their P2, which is the second in the
pilot series of dash cams. And the cool
thing about it is that this is the
world's first dash cam system with a
thermal camera. And you might be like,
"Brother, why do you need a thermal
camera nighttime?" And Vanrude told us
that the reason they were inspired to
make this product was actually there was
a really bad crash uh in China in 2023
where thick fog very unfortunately
claimed the lives of 19 people and
injured 20 others. Uh and one of the big
advantage of this system is that it's
not just recording the things that uh
have happened. It actually has a little
entertainment unit that can give you
advanced forewarning to help keep you
safe on the fly. First, let's finish
unboxing all this stuff. We have our
12vt adapter. We have our very long CO
to C number one. We have our slightly
less long C to C 2. And then we have a C
to proprietary connector that will plug
into our third camera. That's because
this is a quad camera system. There's
our thermal camera that's going to sit
on the hood. We have our front camera
that's in the front of our cabin that's
facing out, but then also driver side
in. And then we have our rear camera.
So, this has kind of got you covered all
around your car. Let's see what else we
got. Okay, we have uh little cable
management buddoo hickeyies. I think
that's the technical term. We have other
velcro style cable management. We have
uh what I is a panel lifter for your
car. We're going to talk a little bit
more about the installation when we get
there. The next thing we have, and this
is kind of the heart of the system, is
this 6.25 in touchscreen display. They
call it their HUD display. This just
like feels like a giant phone. This is
so weird, especially like an iPhone 8
with the freaking return button. And
most of the processing that's happening
with all the units is happening in the
screen. So that means that if you
actually have to replace a camera, you
only have to replace that camera and
cable, which is about $150, uh you don't
have to replace the whole system all at
once. So I think that's a smart
consideration for making this a pretty
decent value package. Oh, the back
actually comes off and that's really
cool. Venture is actually releasing the
3D printing schematics, so you could
either print theirs or you could
customize and make something that will
work better for your vehicle. So, we
have on the back our little mount. We
have a lot of cooling. We don't know a
ton about the processing, but it is a
dual core high performance chip. We also
have an ox port. We have a type-C, which
is our power in. On the top, we have our
primary physical button, as well as our
micro SD slot. That's good for up to a
terabyte of storage. I mean, the whole
point of a dash cam is to be able to
have a a good coverage of any accidents
that have happened. And especially if
someone dings your car and you need to
be able to go back through your footage,
it's nice to be able to have that 1
TBTE. On the other side, we have our
thermal cameras and then our front cabin
and rear port. One thing that's really
cool about this unit is that it's not
just designed to control the cameras.
You can actually connect it to your uh
entertainment system. It has Bluetooth.
It's a huge upgrade, especially if you
have an older car. You can do texts via
chat. So, while you're driving, you can
communicate safely, which is huge. Avoid
those really expensive distracted
driving tickets. Don't text and drive,
people. Be smart. Another thing to
mention is that it's not just Bluetooth
connectivity. It actually has Wi-Fi 6,
so you can get faster and more seamless
connection to your phone device that
you're offloading these videos to. Next
up, we have this little guy is actually
our thermal camera, and this is the
weatherproof housing for it. So, this
will actually mount to your hood. This
goes forward and this sees in the dark
of night, baby, just like a vampire. One
thing of note is that this has to be on
the outside of your vehicle because
thermal imaging doesn't really work
through glass and so it has to be on the
outside. You can mount it to your roof,
you can mount it to your hood, and
important to note because this is going
to be on the outside of your car. The
camera is IP67 rated, which means that
it's fully waterproof. Uh, and then you
also have weatherproof housing. What
else we got? We have our front and cabin
camera. We have our type-C out. We have
our two cameras. We have our one facing
forward so we can capture the accents.
And then we have the one facing the
cabin. This might be something that you
want, especially if you're like an Uber
driver. You can record for your safety
or in a lawsuit, someone's claiming you
were on your phone or you didn't have
your seatelt on. You can prove them
right and defend yourself in the court
of law. Lastly, we have our backup
camera, which looks a fair bit like the
front and cabin one, but is smaller with
one single camera and it faces the rear
and it captures your butt. Uh, that's
everything that's in the box. I say that
as as if there wasn't a freaking
buttload of things in the box. We're
outside if you haven't noticed. We're
going to install this in a real goodness
to gracious car. So, let's start with
our HUD. There's four mounting holes, so
you could potentially screw it to
something. This is someone's real car. I
don't want to do that. So, we're just
going to VHB the stuff here. We are not
going to worry about cable management
because this is just a temporary
install. That's actually nice that I can
take this off the stand so I can more
easily plug things in. And then we got
power. Step one
complete. Next, we're going to install
our front and cabin camera. We're going
to get it high so it's kind of hidden by
the visor thingy maboober. It's called a
rear view mirror for those who don't
know. Double side tape's the greatest
invention. Step aside, bread. Next is
the part of this installation process
that has probably been the reason I
haven't actually installed the dash cam,
which is running all the wires. Next up,
rear camera. Same process. VHB pointed
backwards, baby. And then of note, the
rear camera actually plugs into the
front camera. The idea being that you
only have to run a wire through the top.
And finally, we have our thermal camera.
And then that leaves our ox port empty,
which is designed so that we can connect
our phone to the Bluetooth of this
device and then ox out from this to the
car. Um, depending on the kind of car
you have. Uh, we can change the refresh
rate, so 50 or 60 Hz. We can change our
speed unit. Uh, I'm not a crazy person,
so I'm going to do kilometers. 5 GHz or
2.4 GHz. We're going to stick to five.
Wa. All right. We have our front camera,
our thermal camera, our rear camera that
is upside down. I'm hoping we can clip
that. Okay, we we can manage to flip it
back. We're going to have to tilt it
down a little bit because I don't really
need to see the clouds uh when I'm
filing an insurance claim, although it
is quite peaceful. Uh and then we have
our cabin one is actually doing a really
good job catching everything. I put it
really close to the mirror, so we were
worried we wouldn't see enough of what's
happening in the cabin, but this looks
great. I think it's time for us to take
this out for a little drive and uh see
how we do. The thing I'm really curious
about is how good the latency on the
thermal camera is because this is what
I'd actually want to use if I was
driving on dark streets at night to see
animals. So that one thing that's cool
is that uh this can act as an sort of AR
heads up and identify people uh on your
screen with like a little square so that
it's a little bit easier to spot them
even in the dark. Uh if you're going for
runs at night though, wear reflective
assets. Pretty important to stay alive.
You know what I'm saying? Another thing
to note is that the thermal camera is
not really meant for day use. It
actually has a protection feature that
it'll turn off the sensor if it's too
bright or if it senses 3 seconds of
bright lights coming at it so it doesn't
damage that sensor, but it's working for
us. We live in an overcast uh eternal uh
purgatory. One thing of that's important
is not to get distracted by looking at
yourself. I mean, you with one button
press, you can turn it off. You don't
have to worry about it. Uh, and in my
case, I probably would keep it off
because I do find myself constantly
looking at the screen and I wouldn't be
using the entertaining features,
although you might want to. So, let's
take a look at those. We connected our
phone via CarPlay. It took almost no
time at all. Really fast, actually. The
way that this car is set up, we are not
going to connect to the entertainment
system. You do need to connect via ox
cable is a great option, but you still
do have other CarPlay features like
Siri. Hey Siri, direct me to the Linus
Media Group offices.
>> Easy peasy, baby. We want to make sure
that our footage was actually recording.
So, we're going to check. Oh, yeah. It's
there. And one thing that's cool is that
it's actually sorted from like normal
video, so just the continuous camera. We
have event video, so if it knows that
something happened, that'll be saved
there. And then we have stuff from
parking, which we don't have cuz we
haven't been running a little parking
and photo. So, it's kind of nice that
it's organized a little bit for you. I
think now it's time to uh hand the keys
back to Brad, let him drive around for
the weekend and convene on Monday and
take a look at our footage. We're back.
It's Monday. Brad had the camera over
the weekend, so we're going to review
some footage. I'm going to need some
help. We're going to play a fun game of
how bad of a driver is Brad. I didn't
want to play this. He wanted to play
this.
>> Wife had different ideas. I have to play
this to fill everyone in. I moved out
here and crashed my car immediately.
>> Nice.
>> And so we are now learning if I was in a
bad situation or if I'm a bad driver.
>> Did you have a dash cam at the time?
>> No.
>> Did you wish you had a dash cam at the
time?
>> Maybe.
>> Yeah.
>> It depends on if you were at full turn.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I was trying my best. All
right. Sometimes things just go wrong
for people. So, first footage or first
clip, I guess we should say, is this was
me not being led out of a merge lane. I
felt like this guy was being a huge
David's going to determine if
he was an or if I am a poor
driver.
>> This is way more fun than I thought. I
thought we were just going to like open
up a folder with all the footage and
kind of scrub through.
>> Actually, on that note, before we get
into this, what we should mention is um
we accidentally forgot to turn the car
off when we installed it. So, it ran
from about 12:30 in the afternoon to
about 6:45 7ish when I got home.
>> Okay.
>> Um and that was I think over 50 gigs of
footage. Obviously, we had that running
for an extremely long period of time,
but that's just kind of an estimate on
how much footage you're getting because
there's four cameras in here.
>> Yeah. And one of the features of this
camera is that you actually don't need
to record all the time. It'll sense when
there's events and give you 10 seconds
of pre-recorded footage. So, it's it is
always recording, but it's not saving to
the the drive. So,
>> yeah, we can actually pull that open and
you can see like normal and event in the
the folder and photos if we took any
photos. But
>> I would just take selfies all day.
>> Yeah. All right. So, here is Oh, this
looks good. It's really clear.
>> Yeah, there's pretty good lighting.
Although I will say on this drive, I
didn't have a B-roll cam set up, so we
don't have any footage of it. Um, but
this is the type of drive where the sun
is kind of directly at us. The infrared
camera would turn off sometimes, but all
other drives all over the weekend coming
to work today, everything was no
problem. All right, so here he is.
>> He's coming over.
>> And I'm just, you know, I'm just trying
to drive this lane. I guess what we saw
in the earlier clip was that it ends.
Like there is no way for me to stay in
this lane. I have to come out.
>> Oh, that license plate's really clear.
>> Yeah.
>> Nice job, Vandrew. I see there he
finally backs out. Look how much space I
had there.
>> And then he's like right on my ass. What
is this guy doing?
>> So legally I think he is right. I think
you're supposed to yield when you're
merging.
>> Damn.
>> This is not how I wanted.
>> But I feel like as a social contract on
the road, the smart move for him is not
to box you out. Like that's a basic
school like driving school thing of
like, hey, you see someone coming into
that merge lane, give them room or get
ahead of them. Don't do this. This is
just bad driving. It's not necessarily
illegal, but this guy, thumbs down.
>> Yeah, I'll take that. So, this is kind
of like what you see when you're
driving. You see these like four things.
I've got like an iPhone attached to the
roof here. So, like when we pull this
footage off, you don't get these green
boxes, but this is what you see when
you're on the road is like there's
somebody. Personally, I think it would
be nice if it was like a little bit of a
wider angle. Uh it makes sense that it's
not the widest. Uh and they kind of make
up for it for depth sensing. There's 500
ft thermal detection range and then a
200T AI detection range. Uh, and so it
it goes pretty far, which is useful. And
for the price that this comes in at, I'm
actually pretty impressed at how clear
the thermal camera footage is. All
right, here's another one where it's
like, am I a bad driver or was it a bad
situation? Before David says anything
watching this back, I will say the wide
angle makes it look like there's more
space. Maybe this is where I want less
of a wide angle.
>> So, when you're merging or when you're
changing lanes, it's your responsibility
to yield to the the traffic that's
already there. So any if she doesn't
leave you enough room where you have to
slow down, that is on her. Yeah.
>> Uh so you did okay on this one.
>> All right.
>> This rear camera is surprisingly sharp.
Like it's really easy to see things and
all the details.
>> Here's one where at night you can see
the license plates pretty good.
>> Oh, that's super clear.
>> Mhm.
>> This has convinced me that I think it's
time for me to get a dash cam.
>> Okay, so here is a front rear clip
driving through gas town. So there
should be lots of people, lots of
things.
>> Maybe a little too bright. There we go.
It actually does pretty okay on the
contrast. Like the fact that there's so
much light and dark and everything is
still visible is pretty impressive.
>> Boom. Did you clock those guys?
>> Oh yeah, those are right. Predator.
There they are.
>> Oh, and I shouldn't forget if you're
worried about hitting animals in the
dark at night, worry no more. Van, that
thermal camera will identify the animal
and uh help you avoid hitting that deer.
They sent over B-roll of what it looks
like.
>> All right, I'll leave you guys to um you
know, found out a lot about myself here.
I am going to sit quietly and think
about things that I've done
just like I'm going to be thinking about
the value of this product. The Vantrew
Pilot 2 starts at $500 right now on
pre-order. That gets you the full camera
system and a micro SD. You can order
more, get slightly bigger discounts. Um,
but that's that's it for ShortCircuit.
That's our unboxing. If you want more
dash cam content, why don't you check
out the time that LTT compared a bunch
of dash cams all at once? It's a very
different vibe, but it's a good