[Review]Vico-Opia 2 (VicoVation)

DPtLknJ.png

This driver was in such a hurry he almost kissed a Lorry.
 
What SD card are you using now?
 
What SD card are you using now?
I was using PNY 128GB card, but I left the camera on all day and over night in the sun (Almost 24 hours via the OBD-II to USB cord from a Shadow Camera) and the card failed so I am using a Samsung 32GB EVO Select until I can find a deal on a 128GB card again.
 
So I just got an Opia 2 just to complement the only thing my current ITB500HD lacks (even if I have a later version recording at 24fps): video quality. I'm kind of... I don't know, I have mixed feelings.
  1. the recording quality is absolutely amazing. It totally complements my old and still amazing and flawlessly Itronics. But things I'm amazed of stop here.
  2. it is very very sensitive to the power feed. I've cut the cigar lighter cable it came with to tap into an existing power feed with the Vico Power Plus. The Itronics ITB500HD was already on that power feed and continued to work fine after installing the Vico PowerPlus, and it worked well through the PP as well as in parallel with it. The camera doesn't want to start, even if the power is stable, the amps capacity is more than enough. I moved its cable to the actual cigar lighter power feed. No go! The only way it wants to work is to power it directly from the cigar lighter and this is how it's connected now, without the Vico Power Plus. So I have a horrendous setup with some cable sticking out from my central console and climbing up to the camera below the rear view mirror. It's temporary, yes, but after spending 3 days splicing wires and trying to find a power feed that it actually likes I'm kind of fed up and I just left it like that.
  3. It randomly records videos in the EMG folder. There is nothing touching the emergency recording button. Maybe some bumps in the road tickle the G sensor, I don't know... I'll try to disable it and see how it works.
  4. The video files sequence is sort of random. The first video it ever recorded was VICO0004.MP4. From 4 it went up to to like 31 and then it jumped to 40. And then it recorded a VICO0002.MP4 file. How hard was it for those programmers to use a timestamp, even an unix timestamp would have been better as the files were alphabetically ordered by name by default, or something like YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM or something? Oh man... the thing is that when you open these relatively large folders on a 128GB sd card it's hard to determine which is which, you need to look at the file timestamp on the disk which is not necessarily accurate (see below).
  5. I have the GPS module. the date and time do NOT synchronize over GPS. This is something I totally don't understand. Even my old Szest DVR MDR4 with 4 CCTV camera feeds could do that, and that was designed in like 2005.
  6. There is no way I can completely remove the Vico Tag from the video. I filled it up with spaces but now it says "Vico-Opia2:" in the middle of the screen. I don't want that. I only want the timestamp, speed and the GPS coordinates eventually.
  7. It is far from being discrete. It's actually very in-your-face when you look at the car from like 8-10 meters. But it is what it is I guess.
  8. When using the contact form from the vicovation.com site the text is forced to caps, the text input is very limited, the security check code seems to be the same. Luckily they had their email address posted in clear text on the web site.
 
So I just got an Opia 2 just to complement the only thing my current ITB500HD lacks (even if I have a later version recording at 24fps): video quality. I'm kind of... I don't know, I have mixed feelings.
  1. the recording quality is absolutely amazing. It totally complements my old and still amazing and flawlessly Itronics. But things I'm amazed of stop here.
  2. it is very very sensitive to the power feed. I've cut the cigar lighter cable it came with to tap into an existing power feed with the Vico Power Plus. The Itronics ITB500HD was already on that power feed and continued to work fine after installing the Vico PowerPlus, and it worked well through the PP as well as in parallel with it. The camera doesn't want to start, even if the power is stable, the amps capacity is more than enough. I moved its cable to the actual cigar lighter power feed. No go! The only way it wants to work is to power it directly from the cigar lighter and this is how it's connected now, without the Vico Power Plus. So I have a horrendous setup with some cable sticking out from my central console and climbing up to the camera below the rear view mirror. It's temporary, yes, but after spending 3 days splicing wires and trying to find a power feed that it actually likes I'm kind of fed up and I just left it like that.
  3. It randomly records videos in the EMG folder. There is nothing touching the emergency recording button. Maybe some bumps in the road tickle the G sensor, I don't know... I'll try to disable it and see how it works.
  4. The video files sequence is sort of random. The first video it ever recorded was VICO0004.MP4. From 4 it went up to to like 31 and then it jumped to 40. And then it recorded a VICO0002.MP4 file. How hard was it for those programmers to use a timestamp, even an unix timestamp would have been better as the files were alphabetically ordered by name by default, or something like YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM or something? Oh man... the thing is that when you open these relatively large folders on a 128GB sd card it's hard to determine which is which, you need to look at the file timestamp on the disk which is not necessarily accurate (see below).
  5. I have the GPS module. the date and time do NOT synchronize over GPS. This is something I totally don't understand. Even my old Szest DVR MDR4 with 4 CCTV camera feeds could do that, and that was designed in like 2005.
  6. There is no way I can completely remove the Vico Tag from the video. I filled it up with spaces but now it says "Vico-Opia2:" in the middle of the screen. I don't want that. I only want the timestamp, speed and the GPS coordinates eventually.
  7. It is far from being discrete. It's actually very in-your-face when you look at the car from like 8-10 meters. But it is what it is I guess.
  8. When using the contact form from the vicovation.com site the text is forced to caps, the text input is very limited, the security check code seems to be the same. Luckily they had their email address posted in clear text on the web site.
First thing I would try is updating to the latest firmware. http://www.vicovation.com/download.asp?keyid=31&lang=eng

What memory card are you using?

Have you soldered your splices? Solid ground?
 
Have you soldered your splices? Solid ground?

I'm using the latest firmware, some 2.5S or something.

I did not solder the wires because it's hard to do that in a car in a parking lot, but I spliced them and then connected them with some connectors which are very tight. For the last power feed I used from the cigarette lighter I only removed the wires insulator and then tapped in with some T-shaped connectors which protrude into the wire. the Vico Power Plus is happy with the input reports 12.5V on battery and 13.8 when starting the engine, the other DVR is also happy with the same power feed, Opia is not.

The ground is solid, this was the first thing I checked when I saw the voltage is as it should but the camera did not start. the second thing I thought about was about the voltage loss, but the same wire of the same length with the cigarette lighter connector worked just fine. I'll tear apart the whole interior again and re-do the connections...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mtz
I'm using the latest firmware, some 2.5S or something.

I did not solder the wires because it's hard to do that in a car in a parking lot, but I spliced them and then connected them with some connectors which are very tight. For the last power feed I used from the cigarette lighter I only removed the wires insulator and then tapped in with some T-shaped connectors which protrude into the wire. the Vico Power Plus is happy with the input reports 12.5V on battery and 13.8 when starting the engine, the other DVR is also happy with the same power feed, Opia is not.

The ground is solid, this was the first thing I checked when I saw the voltage is as it should but the camera did not start. the second thing I thought about was about the voltage loss, but the same wire of the same length with the cigarette lighter connector worked just fine. I'll tear apart the whole interior again and re-do the connections...
Have you added your own wire in some places? Maybe the gauge your using is too small? The Opia with the A12 is probably a little more power hungry then your other DVR (what kind is the other one). I have read others having issues with the wire gauge they were using. Just a thought.
 
Now the camera won't start at all, not even as an USB disk. The circuits I have in the car are sized for 10 amps max (I'm not saying they can provide 10A, but probably 7A is do-able). I have tested all 3 of them with a P21W light bulb which draws 1.77A (my fingers still hurt), all is absolutely perfect even if the light bulb was wired using the camera cable (yeah, eventually I've cut off the mini-USB connector as well, thinking that may be the problem). The camera needs a lot less than that, the Vico power Plus module is supposed to let through maximum 2Amps, but normally no more than 1A. I used my own wires for the 10A circuits, and from that one I connected the cable that came with the camera (I've cut off the cigarette adapter).
I already emailed the reseller and I hope I will get a replacement unit. I didn't even peel off the LCD screen protection from this camera... We'll see, so it seems like I was short on luck, but all will come out well in the end.
 
Now the camera won't start at all, not even as an USB disk. The circuits I have in the car are sized for 10 amps max (I'm not saying they can provide 10A, but probably 7A is do-able). I have tested all 3 of them with a P21W light bulb which draws 1.77A (my fingers still hurt), all is absolutely perfect even if the light bulb was wired using the camera cable (yeah, eventually I've cut off the mini-USB connector as well, thinking that may be the problem). The camera needs a lot less than that, the Vico power Plus module is supposed to let through maximum 2Amps, but normally no more than 1A. I used my own wires for the 10A circuits, and from that one I connected the cable that came with the camera (I've cut off the cigarette adapter).
I already emailed the reseller and I hope I will get a replacement unit. I didn't even peel off the LCD screen protection from this camera... We'll see, so it seems like I was short on luck, but all will come out well in the end.
So the camera no longer works even if you power it in your house with a USB cable and USB adapter?
 
So the camera no longer works even if you power it in your house with a USB cable and USB adapter?

No, it does not, and it's because I'm an idiot. I've cut the cigarette adapter from both the Vico Power Plus and from the power cable of the camera and connected them together directly because they were too big to put the whole stump under the carpets in the car, but in my eagerness to connect everything and see it working I didn't care that these days every such adapter has a power converter from 12 to 5V inside.
So the poor camera worked t 12V... for a while... and then it finally gave up. Therefore I bought another one which will come in tomorrow.

The rest of the observations still stand and this is what makes the camera a pretty rubbish product overall. On the other hand I bought this camera (actually two of them! :) ) for the video quality and that's the only thing that can decrease the significance of the rubbishness of the actual product.
I'm telling you, if an Itronics product, ITB100 or ITB500, can have a video quality close to this camera even in the 1080p resolution (at least for the front on the eventual ITB500 replacement, which would be awesome even with Konlung K1S video quality) and the same firmware quality they had when they came out they would be a lot better cameras in therms of functionality, discretion, error management and everything.
 
I have to say, I couldn't get anything like the sample video quality at night.

Here's a still from the Opia 2 vs a still from my Mobius 1 at almost the same point on the same road in similar conditions. The Opia 2 is maybe slightly sharper but the Mobius seems to cope better with the low light. Overall, it's difficult, but I actually think the Mobius 1 wins!

2z4ljx2.jpg
 
I have to say, I couldn't get anything like the sample video quality at night.

Here's a still from the Opia 2 vs a still from my Mobius 1 at almost the same point on the same road in similar conditions. The Opia 2 is maybe slightly sharper but the Mobius seems to cope better with the low light. Overall, it's difficult, but I actually think the Mobius 1 wins!

2z4ljx2.jpg
Your angles are very different.
 
They're both mounted in more or less the same place. The difference comes from the distance to the windscreen from the different brackets and admittedly a slightly more downward angle on the Mobius. It's also possible the bulbs in the headlights on the 1st shot, made almost a year apart, were whiter. However, I fail to see how the Opia's arguably lower night gain could be blamed on camera angle. The grey balance is not going to be affected by the amount of sky vs road at night, and the Mobius still seems to retrieve more shadow detail off the side of the road, bulb colour apart - a good example of the latter is the left lamp post. It's barely visible in the Opia picture and yet brightly lit and visible top to bottom in the Mobius picture, where it's also clear that the source of the light for the top 1/2 of the post is the LED street light itself as you can see the white out at the top and then the fade down in light as you look from top to bottom.

Either way I can only report my findings, and my findings were at night the Opia 2 has a slightly smoother and more detailed picture, although the Mobius 1 in my opinion trumps it because what the Mobius loses in detail and sharpness it gains back through greater low light gain.

It's also interesting to note, something I hadn't noticed before replying to this, but the Opia 2 has what appears to be lens flare - 2 spots of blue / green light in the centre of the picture near the centre lines on the road, probably caused by internal lens reflection in the Opia from the bright LED street lights above. Not a good lens performance in my opinion.

I don't have any daylight shots for comparison, although I would expect the Opia 2 to win by a long way, but seeing the night performance alone, combined with the size of the CPL bracket for daytime use, was enough to convince me that this camera wasn't for me.
 
I have to say, I couldn't get anything like the sample video quality at night.

Here's a still from the Opia 2 vs a still from my Mobius 1 at almost the same point on the same road in similar conditions. The Opia 2 is maybe slightly sharper but the Mobius seems to cope better with the low light. Overall, it's difficult, but I actually think the Mobius 1 wins!

2z4ljx2.jpg
Hi c4rc4m! Have you tried to upgrade to the latest firmware? If yes, please email us some of your night time videos at service.en@vicovation.com. We will be happy to take a look at your videos and give you a response.
 
Thanks for the offer Vico, great to see you pro-actively support customers. However, I returned the camera for a refund. It had the latest firmware when supplied. I wouldn't say the quality was bad by any means, especially in the headlights directly, although the blur at the side of the road at night seemed higher than with the Mobius camera. It just didn't seem to have the same dynamic range / gain as the Mobius M1 and so the night time picture was much darker, which whilst more realistic, didn't necessarily help with what the camera is designed for and that's easily seeing what's happening with any incident at night. Maybe the lower sensitivity is simply due to the higher pixel count? I have little doubt in the day it would have been superior, I never tried it, because I decided it didn't meet my needs for several reasons - the night performance, the large CPL and bracket which made the camera very noticeable instead of discrete (I would much have preferred a small cpl similar in diameter to the lens, that screwed directly on the lens surround), I'd have liked to have seen some lens protection from it being dropped / falling off the windscreen (maybe a lip on a CPL thread directly on the lens surround would have helped here to recess the lens), more stealth ie no colour lens rings or writing on the front of the camera, just plain black (maybe you should consider flipping it into a side on format such as seen on the Mobius with the screen on the bottom and lens on the short side), a tougher case, recessed Gorilla glass screen if you're having a large screen, again to make it more shock proof if dropped - many people take cameras out to prevent theft and so they're easily dropped when handling especially if you have multiple items in your hands. I've also had experience in the past of other (non Vico) cameras falling off the windscreen from suction cup failure (usually dry windscreen - air con tends to do that), and that includes GoPros and the Mobius. That's why I'd like to see it tougher in a thicker softer casing. I know some on here disagree with the necessity of toughness in a dashcam, however, I think by and large, they don't take their cameras in and out multiple times per day. Toughness never hurts either way. Also some people have reported on here through testing that a 90 degree lens produces a better view on a dashcam with more detail retrieved from number plates than a really wide angle lens.

Perhaps the answer for someone like me who wants the ultimate quality, and features such as the above, might even be a new 4K flagship model based on the specification of eg the new Yi 4K+ but in a side on format and with a lens focused slightly further away. I guess the issue here might be cost as even the Opia 2 is quite expensive compared to some of the competition.

Just my thoughts and thanks for replying.
 
Thanks for the offer Vico, great to see you pro-actively support customers. However, I returned the camera for a refund. It had the latest firmware when supplied. I wouldn't say the quality was bad by any means, especially in the headlights directly, although the blur at the side of the road at night seemed higher than with the Mobius camera. It just didn't seem to have the same dynamic range / gain as the Mobius M1 and so the night time picture was much darker, which whilst more realistic, didn't necessarily help with what the camera is designed for and that's easily seeing what's happening with any incident at night. Maybe the lower sensitivity is simply due to the higher pixel count? I have little doubt in the day it would have been superior, I never tried it, because I decided it didn't meet my needs for several reasons - the night performance, the large CPL and bracket which made the camera very noticeable instead of discrete (I would much have preferred a small cpl similar in diameter to the lens, that screwed directly on the lens surround), I'd have liked to have seen some lens protection from it being dropped / falling off the windscreen (maybe a lip on a CPL thread directly on the lens surround would have helped here to recess the lens), more stealth ie no colour lens rings or writing on the front of the camera, just plain black (maybe you should consider flipping it into a side on format such as seen on the Mobius with the screen on the bottom and lens on the short side), a tougher case, recessed Gorilla glass screen if you're having a large screen, again to make it more shock proof if dropped - many people take cameras out to prevent theft and so they're easily dropped when handling especially if you have multiple items in your hands. I've also had experience in the past of other (non Vico) cameras falling off the windscreen from suction cup failure (usually dry windscreen - air con tends to do that), and that includes GoPros and the Mobius. That's why I'd like to see it tougher in a thicker softer casing. I know some on here disagree with the necessity of toughness in a dashcam, however, I think by and large, they don't take their cameras in and out multiple times per day. Toughness never hurts either way. Also some people have reported on here through testing that a 90 degree lens produces a better view on a dashcam with more detail retrieved from number plates than a really wide angle lens.

Perhaps the answer for someone like me who wants the ultimate quality, and features such as the above, might even be a new 4K flagship model based on the specification of eg the new Yi 4K+ but in a side on format and with a lens focused slightly further away. I guess the issue here might be cost as even the Opia 2 is quite expensive compared to some of the competition.

Just my thoughts and thanks for replying.
Thank you very much for your detailed suggestions and feedback. We will be sure to have our team take your thoughts into considerations for our future models.

It's too bad that we hadn't seen your messages before and offered our help, we apologize for it. We hope with our future updates and products, we will be able to offer our service to you again.
 
Is it possible to use a smaller CPL filter instead of the VERY large 52mm?
CRS
 
Is it possible to use a smaller CPL filter instead of the VERY large 52mm?
CRS

You'd need to customise the standard body so far as I'm aware.

Vico use a large clip on accessory bracket that holds the CPL and it's this that is threaded. The camera body is just plain on the front, with a moulded lens holder and no metal surfaces I'm aware of so even a magnetic cpl couldn't be fitted without somehow adding a metal ring 1st. You could probably glue something on but then you'd void the warranty.

If it helps, Vico CPL Bracket:

Vico_201512121021.jpg


Standard body front:

t440x300.jpg


The entire camera fits into the CPL holder.
 
You'd need to customise the standard body so far as I'm aware.

Vico use a large clip on accessory bracket that holds the CPL and it's this that is threaded. The camera body is just plain on the front, with a moulded lens holder and no metal surfaces I'm aware of so even a magnetic cpl couldn't be fitted without somehow adding a metal ring 1st. You could probably glue something on but then you'd void the warranty.

.
Thanks.. It's just a beast though. Not at all esthetically pleasing, at least to my eye :)
CRS
 
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
S Vico-Opia2 2
M Vico-Opia2 11
N Vico-Opia2 2
hyperm3 Vico-Opia2 3
Milamber Vico-Opia2 5
Back
Top