My understanding is dash cams run off the car battery when the engine is running and most models don't have sufficient back-up battery power to run continuously when the car is parked. Many cars in Russia have them as a safeguard against false liability claims (i.e. a person will deliberately stumble into the path of a car and claim the driver ran a red light or something like that). I haven't heard of any dash cams that offer a 360-degree view of the car. You would probably need more than one camera for that sort of coverage - or you can get one of those street view cams that Google uses, but that would probably be very expensive (and you probably wouldn't want to drive around with one of those things conspicuously mounted on the roof of your car). Do you park in front of your house? A better solution may be to have a camera aimed from a front window or porch out towards the street.

I'm thinking of installing a dash cam in my car. Has anyone had experience doing this? Does it capture audio? Does it run continually - even if the car is parked?

I'm looking for a good model that I can keep in my car without having to uninstall it every night (can it endure heat and cold?).

I park on the street and would like the option of having it run continuously as I've suffered a major hit/run while parked that destroyed the front end of my car (plus broken mirrors, plus break ins, etc).

How do I capture activity on all sides of my car - parked or running?

Your input is appreciated!