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

Been using nothing but a Kingston Class 4 32Gig card in the Mobius recording at 1080p (with 18Mbps bit rate) for 2 months straight with no dropped fames or other issues. IMHO Class 10 cards are over rated and sometimes are the least compatible type in some dash cams.
 
I made some test with 20130924. I'm in a state of full instabilty. Slow card, io error and even frozen cam. I had to keep pushing the power button until it switched off.
I roll back to 20130903.
 
****, my cam is now dead. It was working great since this monrning but then it was behaving strange and suddendly black screen.
I have blue light and nothing else.
 
Last edited:
Continued bad news..........
I set my new Givoe 0801 to use the "inner" 8GB card, formatted it, and left record all night. (no card inserted external, gps NOT attached) I left it recording around midnight if I recall. (give or take an hour)

I woke up to the bing bing bing bing noise at 8:27 am (it shut down)

It looks like it stopped at AMBA0481.MOV 8:27AM
It can hold 1 hour max at 8GB on firmware 20130903 since the oldest file is AMBA0423.MOV 7:28AM

Well my camera is tripping up using the internal 8GB card, so that pretty much rules out the class 10 32gb problem. I'm going to try the 4GB class 4 card I have next just to provide more test results.

I'm confident we need a firmware fix for this instability. It makes sense why they used .TS for so long. I can't depend on this camera to record reliably unless I manually format the card every few days. (as a work around)

nuxator said:
efoo, i found an "easy" way to reencode audio.
I use avidemux (it seems you use a mac so i choosed a multi platform software)
I chose mp4 as output format, aac lav for audio and i choose in filter remix and mono.
I leave everything else to default.
It ouputs an mp4 file with real mono (center so both speakers) and video is untouched (no reencoding).
Click to expand...

Excellent!

nuxator said:
I managed to flash my 0801 with jokiin firmware. You have to rename it firmware-NO1-SPI-TB15.bin.
It's 20130924
It's in russian by default and i lost all my settings.
It has an gps (open/close) menu and outer/inner card ( Mine is without internal memory.)
The welcome screen is default (not procam one)
It has less options for time stamp : date/time/ Date time/ Car (with displays: Car number, speed,...)
it lacks the "driver number" option. it displays only date/time/Gps coordinates/Driver number.
I won't driver today, so my test will be at home without GPS.
I think i'll let this firmware and test is on road this week.
Click to expand...

Good find! (I remember reading that trick in the Russian forums several weeks ago)

nuxator said:
I made some test with 20130924. I'm in a state of full instabilty. Slow card, io error and even frozen cam. I had to keep pushing the power button until it switched off.
I roll back to 20130903.
Click to expand...

nuxator said:
****, my cam is now dead. It was behaving strange and then black screen.
I have blue light and nothing else.
Click to expand...

Oh $#!&! Bummer, I guess I won't try it :( I hope you find a way to recover, maybe try the USB firmware program linked in the FAQ page? (with elf file)

"elf file which can be used with the Ambarella Direct USB program."
 
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Not sure it's related, the cam was ok until multiple freeze, io error and no reboot. I didn't tried to flach back...Had no time.
To use the elf, we have to find out how to put the cam in usb noot mode.
My cam is black screen, blue led and no usb detected by pc.I can(t switch it off so i will have blue light untill the battery dies.
 
JazJon said:
Continued bad news..........
I set my new Givoe 0801 to use the "inner" 8GB card, formatted it, and left record all night. (no card inserted external, gps NOT attached) I left it recording around midnight if I recall. (give or take an hour)

I woke up to the bing bing bing bing noise at 8:27 am (it shut down)
Click to expand...


I assume the dash cam is designed to operate continuously for 8 or more hours? Surely a lot of people
drive much longer than that. :)

I recently made two roadtrips. Both were a little over 13 hours of nonstop driving from 6AM to 7PM.
(except for two fuels stops and one 5-minute bathroom stop)
 
twoscoops said:
I assume the dash cam is designed to operate continuously for 8 or more hours? Surely a lot of people
drive much longer than that. :)

I recently made two roadtrips. Both were a little over 13 hours of nonstop driving from 6AM to 7PM.
(except for two fuels stops and one 5-minute bathroom stop)
Click to expand...

Good to know, what firmware are you on? What kind of card do you have? (make/model/class)

Yes the price of buying something rock bottom direct from China is painful return shipping.

And yes this camera should record for more than 8 hours. When it trips up in my car, it only lasts a few minutes. It seems to last longer outside the car for some reason.

I'm currently letting my 0801 record non stop again using an old 4GB class 4 card to see what happens.
 
Gearhead82 said:
So basically if my camera makes it past the 1st minute without crashing, then it will record reliably until the end of that recording, even if it's 12 hours or more.

I'm thinking about changing the options to 3 or 5 minute loops and see if it either fixes it or starts crashing at the corresponding 3 or 5 minute mark. I also might try recording in 720p to see if that changes anything.
Click to expand...

could be something in that as shorter recycle times are more difficult to process than longer ones
 
JazJon said:
I'm confident we need a firmware fix for this instability. It makes sense why they used .TS for so long.
Click to expand...

I thought from your reports maybe they'd finally fixed the recycle issues with the mov version, perhaps not after all
 
nuxator said:
Not sure it's related, the cam was ok until multiple freeze, io error and no reboot. I didn't tried to flach back...Had no time.
To use the elf, we have to find out how to put the cam in usb noot mode.
My cam is black screen, blue led and no usb detected by pc.I can(t switch it off so i will have blue light untill the battery dies.
Click to expand...

do you have the elf version?

pres and hold the power button for about 5 seconds to reset and see if you can power on again
 
jokiin said:
could be something in that as shorter recycle times are more difficult to process than longer ones
Click to expand...

I've been using 1 minute loop mood as well. I'll see if picking 5 minute loops changes the results.

Things are going well so far on the class 4, 4GB card. I won't call it good for another 8 hours or so. (might as well let it record all night too)

jokiin said:
I thought from your reports maybe they'd finally fixed the recycle issues with the mov version, perhaps not after all
Click to expand...

Yeah I did too! I think I just got lucky, and or I was formatting often and not having a full card while in the car. (did most full card recording tests outside of the car)
 
I already tried to hold power button. It switch it off but if i release it the blue light is back.
No usb detected by my pc.
 
JazJon said:
I've been using 1 minute loop mood as well. I'll see if picking 5 minute loops changes the results.

Things are going well so far on the class 4, 4GB card. I won't call it good for another 8 hours or so. (might as well let it record all night too)
Click to expand...

I found an old Kingston 2GB that I bought for my blackberry back in 2008. Not even sure what class it is but I've been recording successfully on it for a few hours so far today. It only holds about 15 min worth of files but it's good for testing. Hopefully we can find something that works. I'm not super confident that they will ever release a stable firmware for this model if they're already working on a new version of the camera.
 
nuxator said:
I already tried to hold power button. It switch it off but if i release it the blue light is back.
No usb detected by my pc.
Click to expand...
wait until the battery goes dead flat and then see how you go I guess

did you have an elf version of the firmware?
 
Yes i have the elf that jazjon give me.
But battery died and no usb either.
 
nuxator said:
Yes i have the elf that jazjon give me.
But battery died and no usb either.
Click to expand...

I'll see if I can find out the USB boot mode for this model, even when dead they can be revived normally using this method

do you have access to a computer running Windows XP? The Ambarella USB software for this model only runs under XP
 
If there is an usb recovery mode on this cam, i'll reintall an xp on one of my computers.
But i tried all button combo i can think of and no luck so far.
Thanks for your help.
 
nuxator said:
If there is an usb recovery mode on this cam, i'll reintall an xp on one of my computers.
But i tried all button combo i can think of and no luck so far.
Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

You could also install XP in VMware or Virtual Box and give XP direct USB port access.
 
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