Daisy chaining dash cams

A computerized method, performed by a media controller having one or more hardware computer processors and one or more non-transitory computer readable storage device storing software instructions executable by the media controller to perform the computerized method comprising:

• connecting to only a first of a plurality of camera devices coupled in a wired serial configuration, wherein the plurality of camera devices are positioned on a vehicle;
• detecting sequential powering-on of individual camera devices of the plurality of camera devices in response to communications from respective individual camera devices via the wired serial configuration;
• in response to detecting a newly powered on camera device, dynamically assigning a virtual channel identifier to the newly powered on camera device, wherein each of the plurality of camera devices is assigned a unique virtual channel identifier by the media controller based on the power-on sequence;
• receiving, via the wired serial configuration, a combined serial data stream including a sequence of virtual channel identifiers each immediately followed by video data from respective camera devices;
• and
• extracting video data streams of respective camera devices based on associations between the virtual channel identifiers and the video data in the combined serial data stream.