How an upload starts

You never enable Wi-Fi yourself. When DashKeep decides it’s time to upload, it turns on the camera’s Wi-Fi radio and connects to one of the networks you saved during setup. It turns the radio off again once the upload finishes.

Upload triggers

An upload needs three things at once, all checked on the camera:

1. The camera stopped moving long enough ago to count as parked.
2. It’s inside one of your home zones, so a known Wi-Fi network is in range.
3. There’s footage to send that the cloud hasn’t confirmed yet.

When all three are true, the camera shows its upload screen, connects, and sends everything pending. Protected clips, like footage of an incident, go first in the queue.

The camera tries your saved networks in the order you gave them in setup. You can reorder them on the device settings page. If the first one is out of range, the camera moves down the list. If the camera can’t find any network, it waits and tries again later, with a growing pause between attempts so a dead zone never drains the car battery.

What you never need to do

• Don’t enable the camera’s Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi button opens DashKeep’s advanced menu when you press it twice. It doesn’t start uploads.
• Don’t format the memory card, even if the camera asks. Formatting deletes the DashKeep configuration and the upload record.
• Don’t delete files from the card to “free space.” The camera keeps every file on the card until the cloud confirms the upload. That way it always has the original.

Interruptions and resuming

Uploads resume from where they stopped. If you drive off mid-upload, the Wi-Fi drops, or the power cuts out, the camera goes back to recording. It continues from the exact byte it stopped at on the next attempt. Your footage keeps recording to the card the whole time, so you lose nothing while the camera is offline.

If the camera is outside all your home zones, it doesn’t use Wi-Fi at all, and the corner logo shows yellow so you can see why. See The status logo colours.

The camera’s screen during an upload

While it works, a small Wi-Fi symbol appears next to the corner logo. The symbol is orange while the camera enables Wi-Fi and connects to your network, and green while footage moves. It blinks once a second while footage uploads. When the session finishes, the symbol disappears and the normal screen returns. The transfer’s progress lives on the dashboard: the sidebar under the device’s name and the bar along the bottom of the trips page track every upload, wherever the camera is.

A failed session shows a blinking red symbol instead. The next attempt is automatic. Cloud storage full. Footage kept on card. means your 12-hour cloud quota was full when the camera called in. Protect the clips you want to keep, and make room. See Subscription and storage.

Always-on Wi-Fi: uploads away from home

With always-on Wi-Fi enabled, the parked-and-in-a-zone rule changes. The camera stays connected to your in-vehicle network wherever the vehicle goes, the dashboard tracks it live, and if you opted into footage uploads the same upload sessions run on the road. Locked-only mode sends incident clips as they happen, and each one that reaches the cloud shows a QR code on the camera’s screen linking straight to the clip on your dashboard.

Protected footage while you are away

If the camera records an impact while parked outside your home zones and always-on Wi-Fi is not backing up footage, it can’t upload right away. Instead, it shows a QR code on its own screen. Anyone standing at the car can scan it with a phone, join the camera’s temporary dashkeep_ hotspot, and watch the protected clip immediately. The hotspot closes itself after a few idle minutes.

With always-on Wi-Fi backing up footage, the same clip uploads to the cloud immediately and the QR code on the camera’s screen links to the clip on your dashboard instead. Either way, the same footage uploads normally the next time the camera stops inside one of your zones, and protected clips always jump the upload queue.