I was trying to get Viofo A119, but had to realize that none of the A119 or even the A118 models were available in my part of the world. I did find a dash cam that is obviously a clone of the A118-C: the Apeman C550.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01F5BC6BE
I was quite surprised that this forum doesn't contain a single thread or even a comment that mentions this clone, so I want to remedy this by introducing the camera. May be it helps others who are also unable to get an "original" A118.
Some of the C550's features:
- capacitor based
- includes rear cam
- picture in picture on display
- motion detection by both cameras
- cigarette lighter adapter with extra USB-port
- supposed support of up to 128GB cards
- existing manufacturer support
The one feature that made me stop thinking about importing the Viofo was the included rear cam. It hooks directly into the AV-jack that the A118 uses to send an analog picture to a TV. The camera's menu still allows to choose between an NTSC and PAL video signal, even though this isn't applicable any more. The rear cam only has a resolution of 720x480 (=NTSC DVD resolution) and while that isn't too shabby for a free extra cam, the video quality is. Even though the rear cam footage uses a bitrate of around 4 MBit/s, the footage looks blocky and rather reminds me of old 240p Youtube videos than a properly encoded DVD-quality video. Both the codec (H.264) and the bitrate would be enough to deliver excellent quality, so I guess the camera itself is at fault.
The front camera's quality seems to be on par with the other A118C's. Each camera records to its own file. The dash cam display can be set up to either display a picture in picture composition of both camera inputs or either of them.
The camera's design does show some differences when compared to the Viofo model. The SD-card slot is hidden behind a rubber plug and the input labels look different as well. The biggest difference is in the AV-input. The C550 uses the middle jack for the rear cam while the A118C uses that one for the GPS mouse.
The manual uses pretty horrible English and covers the most essential functions. The implementation of the firmware and thus menu controls is lacking, though. For example, the "auto shut off" mode doesn't turn off the camera at all as it implies, but it causes the device to disable the G-sensor and motion detection so that recordings can only be made manually while the camera stays on, suggesting that it is still fully functional.
Setting up the screensaver has a similar effect: it disables motion detection, leading me to think that motion detection was broken entirely until I figured out what was causing this issue. I even contacted support thanks to this. They answered quickly and put quite some effort into helping me, but didn't have any in-depth knowledge about the technical side of things.
The current firmware my model has is 3.1.0.1. No firmware is available for download from the manufacturer's homepage. In fact, there's not even a special support section for this model on the website. I wouldn't be surprised if the Viofo firmware worked on this model, but it would probably kill the rear camera support. Since I have no original firmware to fall back on, I won't be testing this. The help desk evaded my requests to supply a copy.
The manual claims that the supported SD-card-size is limited to 32GB. I had no problems using a Sandisk 64GB card. The cam complained about the sector size when I plugged it in first, but allowed me to format it without problems, offering me 10.5h of 1080p front cam recordings, or 6.5h of 1080p front cam + 480p rear cam recordings. According to feedback on Amazon, 128GB cards should work as well, but I don't have one to test that.
A quick search online brought up another rear cam-enabled clone, called SmarTure A-128C:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/B01N6LSW13
The seller calles it "second generation A-118C". I have yet to check whether this camera comes with more capable firmware. I sure hope it does.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01F5BC6BE
I was quite surprised that this forum doesn't contain a single thread or even a comment that mentions this clone, so I want to remedy this by introducing the camera. May be it helps others who are also unable to get an "original" A118.
Some of the C550's features:
- capacitor based
- includes rear cam
- picture in picture on display
- motion detection by both cameras
- cigarette lighter adapter with extra USB-port
- supposed support of up to 128GB cards
- existing manufacturer support
The one feature that made me stop thinking about importing the Viofo was the included rear cam. It hooks directly into the AV-jack that the A118 uses to send an analog picture to a TV. The camera's menu still allows to choose between an NTSC and PAL video signal, even though this isn't applicable any more. The rear cam only has a resolution of 720x480 (=NTSC DVD resolution) and while that isn't too shabby for a free extra cam, the video quality is. Even though the rear cam footage uses a bitrate of around 4 MBit/s, the footage looks blocky and rather reminds me of old 240p Youtube videos than a properly encoded DVD-quality video. Both the codec (H.264) and the bitrate would be enough to deliver excellent quality, so I guess the camera itself is at fault.
The front camera's quality seems to be on par with the other A118C's. Each camera records to its own file. The dash cam display can be set up to either display a picture in picture composition of both camera inputs or either of them.
The camera's design does show some differences when compared to the Viofo model. The SD-card slot is hidden behind a rubber plug and the input labels look different as well. The biggest difference is in the AV-input. The C550 uses the middle jack for the rear cam while the A118C uses that one for the GPS mouse.
The manual uses pretty horrible English and covers the most essential functions. The implementation of the firmware and thus menu controls is lacking, though. For example, the "auto shut off" mode doesn't turn off the camera at all as it implies, but it causes the device to disable the G-sensor and motion detection so that recordings can only be made manually while the camera stays on, suggesting that it is still fully functional.
Setting up the screensaver has a similar effect: it disables motion detection, leading me to think that motion detection was broken entirely until I figured out what was causing this issue. I even contacted support thanks to this. They answered quickly and put quite some effort into helping me, but didn't have any in-depth knowledge about the technical side of things.
The current firmware my model has is 3.1.0.1. No firmware is available for download from the manufacturer's homepage. In fact, there's not even a special support section for this model on the website. I wouldn't be surprised if the Viofo firmware worked on this model, but it would probably kill the rear camera support. Since I have no original firmware to fall back on, I won't be testing this. The help desk evaded my requests to supply a copy.
The manual claims that the supported SD-card-size is limited to 32GB. I had no problems using a Sandisk 64GB card. The cam complained about the sector size when I plugged it in first, but allowed me to format it without problems, offering me 10.5h of 1080p front cam recordings, or 6.5h of 1080p front cam + 480p rear cam recordings. According to feedback on Amazon, 128GB cards should work as well, but I don't have one to test that.
A quick search online brought up another rear cam-enabled clone, called SmarTure A-128C:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/B01N6LSW13
The seller calles it "second generation A-118C". I have yet to check whether this camera comes with more capable firmware. I sure hope it does.