Dashcams and DAB radio

[StuartO]

I mentioned the problem I had with dashcams interfering with DAB radio in an earlier thread and I have now solved the problem, so here is the solution, for reference.

When I installed two cheap dashcams in our MH and car they worked well enough but in both vehicles with DAB radio we got very irritating interference with the DAB radio reception.  The DAB signal would keep  disappearing and the radio would switch automatically to FM reception, repeating a bar of music or a spoken word, which after a while could get really disruptive and irritating.  It took a while to realise that it was the dashcams which were causing the problem; they were emitting conflicting radio frequency noise jamming the signal.

The solution was to fit ferrite core suppressors to the dashcam power leads, to prevent them from acting as aerials, transmitting the jamming signal.  These clamp-on devices are available from Maplins or on line and they cost very little.  In my case they worked reasonably well but not perfectly and the DAB signal still occasionally dropped out.

On Black Friday I replaced the cheap EBay dashcams with better ones by Nextbase, which had been tested and recommended by Which?  These cost a doscounted £80 each compared with the EBay specials which had cost less than £20.  The Nextbase versions look and feel like a better job and the menu system works as advertised in instructions which make sense.  I was able to reuse the micro SD cards which you have to install in them.

I haven't had to use the dashcam evidence to prove an accident wasn't my fault yet but I comfort that I have them working all the time.  They record video clips of 3 minutes (adjustable) and over-write the oldest files automatically when the SD card is full.

They operate automatically and the better ones update ther date and time automatically and apply a GPS location to each video file.