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

Interesting, SpyTec is bundling Class 6 cards. Maybe I should buy/try a Class 6 card? I think someone already said their class 6 card fell over though.

RMjTiyB.jpg
 
This is really annoying :-(
I'll send a detailed message to Lia at Givoe but they are on the long holiday shut down. We might not get any new firmware's to try for a few weeks.

I'm gong to try the 4GB card again for awhile.

they'll be back to work Monday, they (the engineers) will be busy the first week though as they're prepping product for the Hong Kong show which starts the end of next week
 
Well this one appears to have died :-((( Came to switch it on earlier and it's doing nothing at all, all I'm getting is the red charging led, and thats it, it's just refusing to power up now even with a 1 amp 5v supply, and nothing when connected to PC's USB either. So unless I can come up with something it will be going back to China, either that or I write off the cost, and move on.

I have second one on the way to me, I hope I have more luck with that one... but my confidence in this camera is diminishing quite quickly . :-((((

EDIT:1
after trying for ages it's suddenly sprang back to life again, but the bad news is the up button ie. the one you hold down to get into the setting or to turn the mic on and off is no longer doing anything, the other 2 buttoms seem okay.

I've noticed since I received it that the up button was not as responsive as the other 2 buttons, I would need to press it 2 or 3 times sometimes before it worked, but I cant get into the settings at all now and the mic is muted permanently. :-((( It makes the same click sound as the other two buttons and it feels okay when you press it , but where the others make a slight beep when pressed this one's silent so the switch is obviously not making contact... ah well.. now for the hassle of sending it back. Though this one came from ePrance via a Portsmouth based company in the UK

EDIT:2
Well strangely a good 2 hrs later, that up button has started working again, probably works 4 out of 5 presses now, similar to what it was when I received it on Wednesday, so I managed to un-mute the mic so thats something, and I can get back in the setting again, but I've no idea what caused that UP button problem, it was almost like the firmware was not checking if the key was pressed, if not that, then it's got to be a issue with something inside not making contact properly.

Regarding the ealiier failure to boot up, with just the red charging led lit up, I think this happened when the battey runs out and it closes itself down, you would think however that if you connected it to a decent 2amp 5v supply it would fire up again, but from what I experienced it won't illuminate the blue led and boot backup until the battery is charged again. thats what appears to have occured although it doesn't make sense. just think how boring my days would be without these tiny hicups...lol it's worth £70 just to keep your mind occupied..lol
 
Last edited:
Interesting, SpyTec is bundling Class 6 cards. Maybe I should buy/try a Class 6 card? I think someone already said their class 6 card fell over though.

what's even more surprising is the bottom option is for a Class 10 32GB card... $34 is a little steep. You can get a Sandisk one from Amazon for $25 or less delievered. However, I'm willing to pay more, if Spy Tec guarantees that their Class 10 320GB card will work 100% of the time in the Mini 0801. :)

Since they put it there, I'm guess it works fine with their Class 10 32GB card? There's no mention of the brand.
 
Last edited:
Anyone ordered a mini 0801 from this China based Ebay seller ? cntime2013 ?

Unfortunately for me I ordered a second mini 0801 camera from him, and I've noticed that his listing is no longer on Ebay, in hindsight I may have dropped myself in it as I notice under my ebay summary of recent purchasees there was a message from Ebay concerning the seller where I had bought my second mini 0801 from.

This is the comment from Ebay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This listing was removed by eBay. If you've already paid for the item, we recommend that you wait 10 days from the expected delivery date to see if the item arrives. If you didn't pay, you're no longer obliged to pay for this item. If you have a problem with the purchase, you can resolve the problem by opening a case in our Resolution Centre
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just wondered if anyone else had ordered from this seller ?, as I have a feeling this item won't be arriving, this was the built-in 8gb GPS version they were listing, and EPrance were not listing them at he time, and sadly I was not aware at the time of JooVuu who are based in the UK, a few £ more but probably worth paying to get it from a UK supplier.
It may turn up.. I've no idea, but I am wondering why Ebay withdrew his listing, something smells a little fishy to me.
 
Bummer, yeah that's why DashCamTalk is great, so you can buy from trusted sellers by word of mouth. (wealth of knowledge here)
If it doesn't arrive you'll get a refund via ebay/paypal. You might as well support your local JooVuu UK re-seller the next time.
 
Bummer, yeah that's why DashCamTalk is great, so you can buy from trusted sellers by word of mouth. (wealth of knowledge here)
If it doesn't arrive you'll get a refund via ebay/paypal. You might as well support your local JooVuu UK re-seller the next time.


I fully agree, but was not aware of JooVoo at the time, I think he has only recently started the business up, I suppose I could have ordered from EPrance which is where my current 0801 is from, I thought it might be prudant not to put all my eggs in one basket, but it looks like I might lose one of my baskets of eggs after all. I can't really do anything but wait and see, His ebay market store is still being listed on Ebay and his feedback is 100% so all may not be lost yet. He did inform me via ebay he had dispatched it,.

TBH I wasn't that worried initially when his listing was no longer on ebay, I thought perhaps he has no further stock and of course it's their national holiday in China this week.
Can't do anything except wait and see what the next 2 weeks bring. I've been on Ebay since 2001 and never had any issues, and of course there may not be any issue this time... no idea, but I would like to know why Amazon removed his listing, :-( I don't seem to be having much luck with car camera's at the moment...lol
 
Last edited:
Yes I did.. always pay by Paypal whenever I can for that protection, but it can take a while to get refunded. It was Amazons message which was attached to that item under my Ebay summary list which sort got me worried a bit.

If it doesn't turn up it'll give me an excuse to buy a 2nd different camera maybe...lol depends how this one goes over next few days, at the moment I'm frightened to touch it in case it decides to self destruct..lol
 
Just to be thorough, I tested all three of my cards (32GB Class 10, 32GB Class 4, 4GB Class 4) on my newest 0801 on firmware 20130905.
They all fell over once the card was full. :-(

I put 20130903 back on, but it doesn't seem to have the card select. I must of had a different build of the 0903 firmware since it for sure had the card select before. I was hoping to test the internal card a bit more but oh well.

Are we able to extract the firmware off the card using the USB Windows program? I was thinking maybe someone with the even newer 20130911 firmware (or newer) could extract their firmware to a bin file and share it. (assuming it's possible, Jokiin do you know?)

I guess I can wait for the official bin. For now I'll format my camera daily every other day'ish to make sure the card is empty and never goes into recycle mode.
 
Just to be thorough, I tested all three of my cards (32GB Class 10, 32GB Class 4, 4GB Class 4) on my newest 0801 on firmware 20130905.
They all fell over once the card was full. :-(

I put 20130903 back on, but it doesn't seem to have the card select. I must of had a different build of the 0903 firmware since it for sure had the card select before. I was hoping to test the internal card a bit more but oh well.

Are we able to extract the firmware off the card using the USB Windows program? I was thinking maybe someone with the even newer 20130911 firmware (or newer) could extract their firmware to a bin file and share it. (assuming it's possible, Jokiin do you know?)

I guess I can wait for the official bin. For now I'll format my camera daily every other day'ish to make sure the card is empty and never goes into recycle mode.

It would indeed be useful if we could extract the firmware, but getting something that will let us do it is another matter, and probably unlikely to happen.. nice thought though.

Im going to let this one cycle all the way through a few times just to see what happens. To speed the process up I've inserted a C4 4gb Sandisk card, I'll let it run through 2 or 3 times and then I'll try a 8gb C4 card and do the same thing, I've done quite a few recordings inside the home on the Samsung C6 32gb the longest session was about 3hrs, so my camera hasn't actually cycled right through and started to overwrite the old stuff, so thought I would do that now, I must admit I didn't see any errors when it did that 3 hr test, but AIS it has not be cycled right through the card, is there any way to tell when it starts to recyccle when the cards full ? other than checking the card on the PC. This firmware is 20130913 I'll report back when it's gone through the card a couple times.

BTW have you ever opened one of these camera's up ? I've seen the pics of the inside, but whats involved getting into it.
 
What do you mean extract the firmware, you want to decompile it?

Opening the camera is strait forward, has been covered here before how to open it up
 
To clarify, the problem is not recycling during long recording but the first recycling after power on.
So to test the bug, you should have a full sd card and plug usb power to auto power on let i go at least the time you set for loops and the remove the plug.

It should be possible to extract firmware with direct usb, but you'll need a custom usb cable with pin 4 and 5 shortcuted.

The document is for flashing .elf firmware to save the cam, but there is an upload and an download button so maybe we could extract the firmware out of the cam.
USB software : http://www.givoe.com/upload/file/soft/0801-244-2212-Burning-Software.zip
Cable : http://www.givoe.com/upload/file/soft/int/Strong-Burning-Mini-USB-Making-Method.jpg
 
What do you mean extract the firmware, you want to decompile it?

Opening the camera is strait forward, has been covered here before how to open it up

Extract as in Read and copy it to .bin file.

Does the USB program have any read option?
"elf file which can be used with the Ambarella Direct USB program."

I'd love to try 20130913 (That's my birthday!)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mtz
To clarify, the problem is not recycling during long recording but the first recycling after power on.
So to test the bug, you should have a full sd card and plug usb power to auto power on let i go at least the time you set for loops and the remove the plug.

It should be possible to extract firmware with direct usb, but you'll need a custom usb cable with pin 4 and 5 shortcuted.

The document is for flashing .elf firmware to save the cam, but there is an upload and an download button so maybe we could extract the firmware out of the cam.
USB software : http://www.givoe.com/upload/file/soft/0801-244-2212-Burning-Software.zip
Cable : http://www.givoe.com/upload/file/soft/int/Strong-Burning-Mini-USB-Making-Method.jpg

Excellent! Now we just need to convince someone with any firmware newer than 0905 (such as the 0913) to give it a try.
 
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.


I didn't see any comments on the video, but I'm browsing using tapatalk on my phone, so that might have something to do with it :)

It's that kind if information I was after - it is pointless paying £10 less to import if you get hit with customs!

I hadn't realised Joovuu was UK based; thought I read elsewhere that they were in Europe (so no customs issue) but I took that to mean mainland! So they would be my supplier of choice... Except with all the issues people are having, I'm going to hold off on the purchase until things are resolved one way or another!
 
nuxater:
see if you can make sense out of this.

Firstly I filled this 4gb C4 card using the camera, on checking the card I noticed it still was not full, so I copied a couple of .mov clips downloaded from the forum just to completely fill it, on connecting power it booted and instantly gave a card full message, this baffled me for a few seconds as it's supposed to overwrite the older files. I tried it a couple times, same result.

So I thought maybe it's because of the 2 .mov files I copied onto it from my PC, thinking that maybe it has to be done completely by the camera, after deleting those 2 files there was about 300 mb free.
I connected the power again and this time it started recording okay, I left it recording for about 25mins which is obviously well over the 300mb free space it had, I then switched the power off at the socket (it's 2amp apple charger) and powered it on again after 1 min, and again it started up okay and started recording (no messages) I did this several times and it worked fine each time.

I then checked the card expecting it to be full, and was surprised to find it had 531mb free space. So I can only conclude that the camera always keeps around 512mb free all the time .

But no issues at all when cycling it on and off from a independant 5v supply... it started recording every time. It obviously needs to maintain a reasonable amount of free space all the time, as a buffer for the recordings, so in effect the card never actually gets filled completely, because every time I checked the card there was always approx 512mb free, give or take 30mb.
I assume it would need to maintain a larger block of free work space when you set the loop time to 3 mins or more.
 
Last edited:
There should always be some free space, this is needed for file management, put a full card in and it should error straight away
 
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
Pavlov Mini 0801 16
Back
Top