Hands on the Livue LB100. $100 korean 720p dashcam

[Mtz]

As you can see in my previous post a new firmware was released. You still have the one from 2012.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[Sutitan]

As you can see in my previous post a new firmware was released. You still have the one from 2012.

enjoy,
Mtz

You're up early. its like you live on these forums! Ill test out the new firmware tomorrow. You mentioned that the english voice says "Recording will be end". This is the same thing my camera has always said.

Also, since ive always done the configurations through my phone, Im not sure if im recording high quality, or super high quality. Do you have any idea what size your files are? A typical 60 second clip for me is around 45-50mb on average.

 

[Mtz]

I am using the best quality. The 1 min file size is about 45MB too.

An old joke of me regarding my sleeping hours was because I want to move to Miami beach and I am training the sleeping time for the USA hours.
And I am still training for more than 10 years... :lol: and I am still here... :lol:

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[PKNY]

I received the camera on Monday. After playing with it for a few days, I found that:

-I got a ball mount, too. The seller is lightnspace.
-It has a good day time quality.
-The G-senor is way too sensitive even though when it set to low. I got event video from hitting a lane reflector when I was changing lanes.
-The camera is picking up the alternator noise. May need to add a noise filter if I really care the sound quality.
-License plate is hard to see at night. The white is blooming. Set the contrast to 0, and the white doesn’t clip as hard. Just set the contrast to 0 and brightness to 5. I will do some test tomorrow night.
-Power consumption is estimated at about 3 watt. I measured with a Kill-A-Watt and AC power supply. This figure does not account for AC-DC power loss, so the actual power consumption may be less.
-Current consumption is about 300mA to 260mA (@12V) depends on different mode. That means it will take 15 hrs to consume 10% of my battery (46Ah).
-The English firmware has an extra line (0xA0) comparing to Korean firmware (may be that’s why the English firmware is not compatible with the new viewer.
-The original viewer has a better zoom feature than the new viewer. In the original viewer, it has full zoom and block zoom, but the new viewer only has block zoom. Also, the video can apply forward step while in block zoom in the original viewer but not the new viewer.
-The new viewer has reverse skip but not the original viewer.
-The new viewer has the G-sensor setting reversed, which means high setting is low sensitive and low setting is high sensitive. The setting is correct in the original viewer.

 

[kps]

Please look in the attachment. Each cfg file was created by different viewers according to their name. You will see two different values and also one file is longer (bigger) than another.

Ah, I see. The ‘new’ viewer version does not have the time zone, summer time, or PAL/NTSC. Since these are all together at the end, and all things that are not needed if the camera is sold only in one small country, I wonder if we have ‘new’ = Korean and ‘current’ = Export version, and maybe there will be an export version of the new viewer later.

After creating the cfg file with the new viewer, inserting in the camera and powering it on, the setup cfg file will return to its default values which are for the current viewer. So creating setup.cfg with New Viewer is useless.

I will probably write a script to convert between ‘current’ and ‘new’ setup.cfg.

 

[Nightmare]

No solution for your questions. Only a firmware update can fix this.

Thanks for the firmware upgrade alert.
I upgraded to the latest EN version, but I'm facing the same issue of abrupt shutdown when power is removed.
It looks like the internal battery in my LB100 has gone bad. Because of this, the last file always end up corrupted. :x

I've contacted the seller (LightNSpace) to explore what the next steps are.

 

[Mtz]

Also I think the problem is the battery. Maybe is just not connected. If you are planning to open the livue take care and use a very good screwdriver to not damage the screws because are soft metal.

kps, I am interested just to have the time and not only the Yes and No for power save. If I will not the drive the car for more than 36 or 48h to not have a dead battery if the 11.8V Livue protection is not working OK.
The New Viewer is for the Livue korean version of the camera, not the WinyCam.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[TealShark]

I upgraded to the latest EN version, but I'm facing the same issue of abrupt shutdown when power is removed.
It looks like the internal battery in my LB100 has gone bad. Because of this, the last file always end up corrupted.

Are you disconnecting the cable from the device itself or from the car outlet? I need to do more checks on my theory, but I've noticed that if I unplug it from the car it will properly finish the recording and give me the audio cue, but if I unplug the cable directly from the the device, it just shuts down immediately and corrupts the last recording.

Hey teal shark, are you on OptimaForums?

I am not, must be a doppelgänger.

 

[Brungle]

I've had my camera about a week now and must say I'm really impressed with it. My car is parked facing my front door so the parking mode is great as extra house CCTV when someone knocks on the door.

I've purchased a class 10 32gb micro-SD card so I can keep more footage.

I hard wired it in on a permanent feed using one of these fuse tap/piggy back devices so I can easily unplug it etc:

Then grounded the connection using a ring terminal bolted to the car in the footwell. It was stood for about 3 days and the car battery survived so I think the power save settings are working.

at first I was dissapointed that I didn't get the ball joint mount but actually the other mount is fine since you don't really need to turn the camera side to side anyway.

my only annoyances with the camera is the software the old viewer crashes on my pc and the new viewer doesn't save the config files (I'm going to install a virtual machine with windows XP so I can use the software I think). So at the moment I have to use an android device to change settings, luckily I don't intend on changing the settings much from now on. I did raise the software issue with winycam support but they just said use the new viewer instead... I can't really complain at them too much as the camera is actually branded Livue.

I have decided not to update the firmware yet as it seems some of you are having problems.

 

[Mtz]

I have decided not to update the firmware yet as it seems some of you are having problems.

I don't know if is a coincidence but my Viewer started working again after installing the new firmware.
About connecting the camera here is a thread.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[Nightmare]

Also I think the problem is the battery. Maybe is just not connected. If you are planning to open the livue take care and use a very good screwdriver to not damage the screws because are soft metal.

True...It's the battery which has gone bad or not connected at all. I contacted the seller and he mentioned to leave the cam powered for 3 hrs to allow the battery to charge fully. I did that but after 6 minutes or so, the camera shuts down itself gracefully. Not sure whether the battery is still getting charged when it is powered but shutdown.

Anyways I left it powered in the car for some 4 hrs and the battery still does not seem to hold any charge.

I'm awaiting further response from the seller before I open the device.

Thanks again for the note on soft metal screws!

Are you disconnecting the cable from the device itself or from the car outlet? I need to do more checks on my theory, but I've noticed that if I unplug it from the car it will properly finish the recording and give me the audio cue, but if I unplug the cable directly from the the device, it just shuts down immediately and corrupts the last recording.

Whether you unplug the power plug directly from the camera or from the CL socket, the behavior should not be any different since the plug does not contain any power storage element. It's just a straight through cable. I have checked it.

 

[bunget]

It's definitely something wrong with your battery. My cam initially would just shut down without saying anything. After driving for about 2 hours, the battery got charged and now it's always saying "The recording were end"...or something like that.

 

[Mtz]

Using this way the battery, the question is, how much the battery will survive?

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[timebandit]

Hi

I have been thinking of buying a dashcam for a few weeks now due to an incident I had. If I had a dashcam I could prove the other vehicle had very high speed. Now I'm going to loose the Insurance part.

First I was about to buy the SmartCam HD 2 and then I found this forum/site. I can't find much information about the SmartCam HD 2 here. Anyone know if LB100 is better than the SmartCam HD 2?

Also I wonder if the LB100 with GPS records the speed into the Movie file or is it saved on a seperate file and needs the special player to se the speed etc?


Regards,
Kensy

 

[Mtz]

I don't know what to say about the GPS because in the PC Viewer configuration settings I don't see any option about GPS speed to be displayed on the video or not and I assume the GPS speed is not printed on the video. But on the PC you will see the speed based on some external GPS file.
A forum member ordered the version with GPS which costs $30 more and I am waiting for his feedback.

About SmartCam HD 2 I don't know what to say but I don't like cameras with IR LEDs because they are advertising a function which is not working. Also on their official channel I don't see a night recording sample. Why?

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[timebandit]

Thanks for Quick answer

If the GPS data is saved into external file rather than printed into the video then the Insurance Company needs the PC Viewer program to actually see the vehicle speed etc.
Then the non GPS device is enough.

Thats a good question about not having a night time video.. Too bad they don't.

If I buy the LB100 I will need to pay taxes and other fees. SmartCam HD 2 will cost the same price and I don't need to pay additional tax when ordering from a EU country.

Will try to re-read the whole thread again Before choosing the LB100. Remembering that there were something with the holder thing...

Thanks.


Edit:

Saw in the Vendor part of the forum and noticed the DOD V680L
http://dvreurope.com/details.aspx?prod_id=20

What do you Think about this Product compared to the LB100? It's the same price as the LB100 due to the tax etc.

 

[jokiin]

Edit:

Saw in the Vendor part of the forum and noticed the DOD V680L
http://dvreurope.com/details.aspx?prod_id=20

What do you Think about this Product compared to the LB100? It's the same price as the LB100 due to the tax etc.

still feel the LB100 is the superior product

 

[DashCamMan]

The SmartCam HD 2 is a Novatek based camera likely quite similar to the K2000. Not worth $150.

 

[TealShark]

Do all the files work fine with macs ?

I've been able to play the videos in Quicktime on my MacBook Pro without issues. They seem to be your standard H.264-encoded MPEG-4 video.

 

[jokiin]

Do all the files work fine with macs ?

I've been able to play the videos in Quicktime on my MacBook Pro without issues. They seem to be your standard H.264-encoded MPEG-4 video.

The video files from most cams are fine on Macs, just the included playback software that offers mapping etc is generally Windows only