Smallest Ambarella Car DVR a.k.a. Mini 0801

[Lunar]

don't know if it's mentioned in the manual and you stumbled across it anyway but the power switch doubles up as the reset switch on this model, just press and hold

Yes.... unusually for me..I read the manual..lol, and thankfully it worked eventually, but anything thats has to be held down for a length of time, (IOW a multi-function switch) means the reset is firmware coding controlled, which in the event of a solid firmware lockup, the reset would not normally work because the software is not checking if the buttons being pressed down, if you understand my meaning.

A proper cpu reset is where the user presses a switch (usually hidden) which simply grounds the reset line on the cpu. TBH I'm surprised there is no proper hardware reset hole in the case.. very strange.

 

[jokiin]

yeah it's an odd design, I can assure you, this model has been built to a price, it represents a decent performance/value ratio but they did make some compromises in the process, they are doing a new model and I expect they'll be addressing some of these oddities

 

[Lunar]

which 3M mini-USB cable did you order?

Thanks!

It was the one from here.
I've not tried it yet, but it looks okay, and importantly the angle goes the way I wanted of course UP towards the head lining when camera is on the windscreen, as I did notice a couple of short cables on ebay where the plug was turned round the other way so when plugged in the cable went down and not up...lol, I suppose they were left handed one's, most cables however were the same as this one, but were only 1 or 1.8 mtrs, this was one of the few places on ebay I could see one 3metres long. It maybe a bit too long, but as my wife says.. best too long than too short.. eh..lol I can always tuck it in somewhere. I would imagine by the time it's run across the top behind the head lining and down the side, then across to the centre console etc, I thought 2 mtrs might be short... but maybe not..lol

 

[jokiin]

the lead they come with is usually 4 mtrs and even then sometimes not enough

 

[scarey]

for those who have this dashcam, can i ask if it has a live av output so you can see whats being recorded live on another screen...

 

[russ331]

Where is the best place to buy one of these for delivery to the UK?

Am looking to get the GPS version without internal storage...

Ebay / Chinese importer
Amazon / Chinese importer
JooVuu / European importer

If you scroll through the comments under Techmoan's YouTube video (

), you'll find around 5 UK residents who've been hit with >£20 import duty bills as a result of importing the Mini 0801.

If your Mini 0801 develops a fault, you'll pay a hefty price to return it to China. Will they accept liability for the fault? How many weeks before you get it back?

I've bought a Mobius from UK-domiciled supplier, JooVuu. I could have imported it cheaper through Eletoponline365 but, if unlucky, I could have been hammered by the Customs & Excise boys.

If a fault arises, I have the protection of UK consumer law, local postage rates &, hopefully, a quick resolution to the problem.

Your money, your choice.

 

[Lunar]

the lead they come with is usually 4 mtrs and even then sometimes not enough

ah.. I did'nt realise it was that long, mines still in it's plastic bag...lol I agree with your comments about it being built down to a price, but thats typical of most things especially from China, I must admit though, if I can get my 2 to run reliably the video quality is actually very good, plenty of wideangle on it, though obviously your'll always get some bending on the verticals which is inevitable with these sort of lens... not bad though, and I do like the fact it can be tucked out of the way discretely. Outstanding quality, performance and reliablity comes in something like my Panasonic 3-ccd camcorder, but that cost £800, a lot more than £70 so one has to be fair when comparing video performance ect. for £70 I'm pleased with it's performance, as to how reliable it is, I shall probably know that in a few days..lol

In hindsight, I wonder whether it's actualy wise to go for the GPS versions unless one really wants the novelty factor, it maybe just complicates things a bit more, and it's perhaps something thats un-necessary. Might change my mind when I've had a good play with the software on PC. It can always be turned off anyway so it does'nt really matter..lol

 

[Lunar]

for those who have this dashcam, can i ask if it has a live av output so you can see whats being recorded live on another screen...

It has a mini usb socket so that videos or live camera can be viewed on a TV if you wish, but take a look at the techmoans utube video which 'russ331' kindly posted above.

 

[fieldofview]

... around 5 UK residents who've been hit with >£20 import duty bills as a result of importing the Mini 0801.

Any Canadians out there who have bought dash cams from eBay and been charged duty or GST ? Normally my eBay purchases are under $20 so don't attract duty or GST, but a $140 value on the customs tag will likely attract attention at the border. Some venders mark "gift", others don't.

 

[trancen]

Nope, got mine last week and no duty. I'm in Toronto.

Any Canadians out there who have bought dash cams from eBay and been charged duty or GST ? Normally my eBay purchases are under $20 so don't attract duty or GST, but a $140 value on the customs tag will likely attract attention at the border. Some venders mark "gift", others don't.

 

[fieldofview]

Mini 0801, how many button presses to activate Parking mode? I see in the manual it has the option for Motion Detection. My understanding this camera doesn't go into parking mode automatically. (I understand for parking mode the camera needs to be powered). I also understand you want motion detection to be off when driving. If all this takes multiple button presses, then it's not practical on a daily basis--maybe for long term parking for days.

 

[cranky]

Bloody thing fell over again, I have reverted to my 4gb, may try a cheap 16gb

 

[Gurkha9]

Any Canadians out there who have bought dash cams from eBay and been charged duty or GST ? Normally my eBay purchases are under $20 so don't attract duty or GST, but a $140 value on the customs tag will likely attract attention at the border. Some venders mark "gift", others don't.

Have ordered several cameras and other items from eBay/China/Hong Kong. Always used regular mail and have never had to pay any duties.

 

[irononreverse]

Mini 0801, how many button presses to activate Parking mode? I see in the manual it has the option for Motion Detection. My understanding this camera doesn't go into parking mode automatically. (I understand for parking mode the camera needs to be powered). I also understand you want motion detection to be off when driving. If all this takes multiple button presses, then it's not practical on a daily basis--maybe for long term parking for days.

It takes a long press of the top button, then you have to scroll down a bunch, then select motion sensing then turn it on/off. Probably around 10+ button presses.

 

[fieldofview]

Nope, got mine last week and no duty. I'm in Toronto.

Trancen and Gurhka9,
Great, good to hear! I'm almost ready to push the Buy button. Mini 0801, 8GB internal, GPS, 32 GB card. The only optional for me is the 8GB and for the price difference, it might be handy to have 8GB as secondary memory as I've driven off having left the SD card in the PC at home.

 

[fieldofview]

It takes a long press of the top button, then you have to scroll down a bunch, then select motion sensing then turn it on/off. Probably around 10+ button presses.

OK, thanks. I'd only use parking then only if I left the car parked say at the airport for days at a time. It's too much of a hassle to use daily. To protect the car battery I'd use an external 144,000 or 20,000 mAh lithium battery pack or a battery discharge limiter.

 

[scarey]

It has a mini usb socket so that videos or live camera can be viewed on a TV if you wish, but take a look at the techmoans utube video which 'russ331' kindly posted above.

thanks , i've read all the posts and seen all the videos but it doesnt answer my question....

basically i want to attach the cam to the windscreen set off on my journey and have a live feed going to my RSE..

 

[Lunar]

Bad news.... Storage error on the 32gb class 4 card slightly annoyed now!!!! Think I may put my 4gb back in it for now until this can be resolved.

TBH I am suspecting that some of these type of issues are in fact the card itself, the reason I say that is because 2 new 32gb class 10 micro sd cards I've tested with H2TESTW.EXE 1.4 has thrown up errors in one sector about halfway through the check. I did a full reformat on them, in the hope it would map out the bad sector, one now passes the integrity check okay, but the other still fails it so I'm returning it to Amazon. So I'm thinking there's an issue with some of these cards especially the larger 32gb sizes even before we put them in the camera. I do note that your error was on a class 4 card, the trouble is how do we decide whether the card had issues before, or whether it's camera related.?

In general use this iffy Transend card I have appears to work okay giving 29.4gb of space, but I'm a bit sceptical in using any class 10 cards in the camera anyway, I have a few class 4 and 6 cards and they pass the memory integrity tests with no problems at all, and whether its co-incidence, but I've had the camera running a few hours now fitted with a Samsung class 6 which also passed that H2TESTW integrity check and I've had no further problems, but time will tell, you may have seen in my earlier post today that the camera seemed to lock up shortly after trying it for the first time while using this iffy class 10 32gb transend card. Lockup happened at the point when inserting the PC usb cable. Co-incidence?, so maybe a bit early to form an opinion.

The problem is... a few things maybe causing these hiccups when testing the cards.. such as the quality of the reader the card is plugged into, and things like that, but if it passes those integrity checks then in theory it should rule out the card.

BTW if you ever use H2TESTW.EXE 1.4 you may notice especially on some 32gb cards it may mention 1 sector is corrupted, but has not affected the result, this is quite normal, what it's seeing is one faulty sector thats been mapped out by the manufacturer, similar to a low level format, in effect your've just lost a few bytes of storage and is nothing to worry about as it does'nt get written on. This seems to happen on microSD cards occasionally, but can happen on all hard-drives too, they certainly don't scrap the things for the sake of just one or a couple of faulty sectors, so no need to panic and return it as faulty, as I know the use of H2TESTW.EXE as resulted in a increase of users returning memory cards as being faulty to retailors.

 

[Lunar]

thanks , i've read all the posts and seen all the videos but it doesnt answer my question....

basically i want to attach the cam to the windscreen set off on my journey and have a live feed going to my RSE..

It does have a 3.5mm AV socket too, hope that helps.. sorry for not mentioning it, you should be able to connect to that, but there are no cables supplied for that socket, so you may need to get more info from the sellers, it does however look like a standard 3.5mm video out socket I've seen on some Sony camcorders in the past.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

The new 0922 fw has very good audio.
Still 1 speaker though, but loud enough to hear without cranking up the volume.
Audible from the device's speaker as well.
And a reintroduced GPS menu with "open" and "close" options.

Did you buy a camera that already came with the 0922 fw or did you get the update from one of the sellers/manufacturers?

Same question, did yours come with firmware 20130922 or did you get a copy of it? I'd like to try the latest official firmware. What bitrate is it recording in?

Bad news.... Storage error on the 32gb class 4 card slightly annoyed now!!!! Think I may put my 4gb back in it for now until this can be resolved.

Your 32GB might have bad sectors. I'd use the H2TESTW.EXE program to check it out.
http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/download-h2testw-free-and-test-flash-memory/
My new Sandisk 32gb class 4 card arrives later today. I'm still going strong on my generic 4GB class 4 test card. (no hang ups or fall overs as people are calling it here, is that what it's really called? Fall over?)

Looks like it stopped recording at exactly the 1 minute mark which is the same problem I've had consistently with mine (with a full 16gb class 10 card).

Since the GPS takes 1-3 minutes to Aquire lock, maybe this is where picking 5 minute loop mode is better since the CPU won't be tasked with anything extra until well past the 3 minute mark. I'm going to change mine from 1 to 5 minute loop mode as well.

This is one of the raw 1080p video samples from the Mio 356, which was just reviewed
by TechMoan:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9jzwxdpru1h1e0e/2J4McyEDCI/DAY 1080P.mov
Can anyone tell me if the Mini 0801's video quality looks like that?(or better?)

I just placed an order for my first dash cam, the 0801.... form factor is very important
to me... but I'm just wondering if it's can produce video quality like the one above?

Thanks!

Here is a raw sample of my 0801. I think I can read the small letters of signs a bit easier one the 0801
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dc9fmoq0zgkp6s7/AMBA0026.MOV
(pretty close though)

Where is the best place to buy one of these for delivery to the UK?

Am looking to get the GPS version without internal storage...

Ebay / Chinese importer
Amazon / Chinese importer
JooVuu/ European importer

JooVuu posted about the 0801 in the Vendor section
http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index.php?threads/joovuu-mobius-mini-0801-camone-infinity.2611/

I think quite a few of us purchased class 10 cards so we had them ready for when our camera ariived, thinking they would be better.. I ordered 2 32gb class10 cards myself, ah well..now we know better..lol

Well I'm pleased to report that one of my camera's arrived this morning, together with a 3m right angled mini usb cable I'd ordered for it.

It's still early days yet, but first impressions are fairly good, picture quality looks very good considering it's small size, much better than I thought it would be, sound too seems fine to me.
I have however spotted 5 tiny dust spot on the ccd, which gives a white dot in some scenes indoors, but it's not something I've paid big money for, but if it had been say my 3-ccd Panasonic camcorder I certainly would'nt have been happy. ;-) tho even expensive camera's suffer from dust on the ccd occasionally, as I've bought both Canon and Nikon DSLR's in the past which had minor dust on their ccd sensors.

Firmware on this first one from ePrance is version 20130913, BTW it looks like ePrance may have someone in Portsmouth, UK who dispatch the items for them in the UK.

It seems to take about 2 to 3 mins for the GPS icon to go off the screen indicating it's got a signal, so considering it's inside that is not too bad IMO, sometimes however it can take a while, but bear in mind I am inside.
I did have one worrying moment when it seemed to lockup when I plugged in a USB cable to my PC, and nothing seemed to fix it, as I could not see a reset hole and thought I would have to wait until the battery exhausted itself, but after holding down the power on button for some time it then reset, and it's been okay since.. I'm not sure what caused it... but I'll switch to my class 6 card and see how it goes.
So I'me not sure whether it may be the firmware version or that Transend class 10 card, also in hindsight I'm also wondering whether one may be better off not having the GPS as other than the novelty factor it just complicates things further.... time will tell.

In hindsight, I wonder whether it's actualy wise to go for the GPS versions unless one really wants the novelty factor, it maybe just complicates things a bit more, and it's perhaps something thats un-necessary. Might change my mind when I've had a good play with the software on PC. It can always be turned off anyway so it does'nt really matter..lol

Congrats, looks like we need to get ahold of the 20130913 firmware now as well. What bit rate are the recordings? (day light with movement should be the highest) Right Click properties, I'm hoping you see >15Mbps again like 0905 had.

And yes my original eprance 0801 had stuck/dead cmos pixels as well. (only seen in still/dark recordings) My new Givoe 0801 arrived with 100% clean cmos pixels.

You know you can order the GPS base directly from Givoe? Just message them and they will send you a special link to buy it for $15 USD.

for those who have this dashcam, can i ask if it has a live av output so you can see whats being recorded live on another screen...

Yes it has a mini HDMI port, and one of those mini jack A/V ports on old school cameras.(composite)

Any Canadians out there who have bought dash cams from eBay and been charged duty or GST ? Normally my eBay purchases are under $20 so don't attract duty or GST, but a $140 value on the customs tag will likely attract attention at the border. Some venders mark "gift", others don't.

The closest reseller I've heard about is NYC SpyTech will be selling the Mini 0801 soon.
http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index....llers-that-ship-from-the-usa.2610/#post-27440

OK, thanks. I'd only use parking then only if I left the car parked say at the airport for days at a time. It's too much of a hassle to use daily. To protect the car battery I'd use an external 144,000 or 20,000 mAh lithium battery pack or a battery discharge limiter.

There has been a lot of talk about people wanting to try using the 0801 in parking mode, but I've yet to read anyone that's actually tried doing it for real yet. Check out some of the DYI threads for more ideas.
http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index....rior-lights-live-feed-longer-recordings.2363/