Viofo A129 Duo double beep in parking mode, sometimes

Philipgonzales3

New Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2020
Messages
6
Reaction score
3
Location
San Antonio, Texas
Country
United States
Hi I have the A129 Duo Dashcam running firmware version V2.1, the cam is hardwired with a 3 wire HK3 hardwire kit to my 2020 Silverado.

The parking mode on the dashcam is not working consistently. I tested it earlier before I posted and all was working well for a bit. The cam will correctly power up and record while driving, never really had any issues while driving. It also goes correctly into parking mode, but after some time passes I will find the cam is doing the double beep over and over until I hit the record button while in parking mode. I can see that the cam is powered on and the parking mode symbol is in the top left corner.

I am running a SanDisk Ultra 256GB A1 microSDXC UHS-I class 10 card sold and shipped by Amazon. For ACC+ power I am using the heated steering fuse wheel fuse and for Batt+ I am using the garage door opener fuse (Has always on power, I verified by the fact that the dash cam is on with ignition off and the garage door buttons light up when pressed). This was the recommended setup on the forum for my truck.

Any ideas? Not sure exactly when the issue started but I don't think I had this issue when I first installed it. It seems like the issue sometimes happens after I go into the truck and then close the door again, but I couldn't replicate this issue earlier today so not really sure if that's just coincidence on the other times that this seemed to trigger the issue. MicroSD card was purchased in January. Should I just buy another one (or perhaps a different brand and model) and see if the issue goes away or would the double beep be caused by something else?

Any help is appreciated.
 
Try using the official SD Card Formatter on the memory card, it may have developed some slow spots and this may speed it back up.
You should reformat it again in the camera before use.
 
Try using the official SD Card Formatter on the memory card, it may have developed some slow spots and this may speed it back up.
You should reformat it again in the camera before use.
Ok, thank you. I am going through the Overwrite format now in SD Card Formatter. After that I'll format it in the camera again and I'll watch it over the next few days and see how it does.
 
Let us know the result, we can only give good advice if we know what does and doesn't work...
 
Should take a while on a 256GB card, but thats just the name of the game, luckily you can do other stuff meanwhile.
 
@Nigel @kamkar1

So I ran the SD Card Formatter over night and just put it back in the camera and formatted it again inside of the camera. Interestingly I had a 32GB Samsung Pro Endurance card handy and decided to put that in while I was waiting.

The cam worked flawlessly over night with this card in it. Only got to fill up 30/32GB, I have the cam setup to record on motion while in parking mode, not the recommended low bitrate 24x7. The truck mostly sits in my driveway and I have other security cams that record 24X7. I opened and closed the door several times and checked on it several times throughout the night and no annoying double beep.

I'll keep an eye on my 256GB microsd card and see if the double beep comes back once the card starts to loop. I will report back my findings either way just in case it helps anyone else. I'm thinking if the issue occurs again I may try a new/different card. Even if it isn't 256GB that's OK. Thinking if I have issues I'll try a card marketed for endurance next time.
 
Thinking if I have issues I'll try a card marketed for endurance next time.
I've given up recommending cards, people who have card issues seem to have them on
almost all cards, and people who don't have card problems seem to be able to use almost anything!

I've just been testing my Viofo A139 with all three channels and Maximum bitrate, with an ancient Samsung Class 6 32GB card, no U1, no A1, nothing but Class 6, which should give 6 MBytes per second, less than the A139 writes with Maximum bitrate 3 channels, but it worked perfectly! I'm not recommending it, and you can't buy cards that slow these days, but it worked.
 
Well *scratches head* the double beeping is back. So what happened was my dog's face swelled up and we believe he was bit by something. My truck faces my back yard so I pulled out the SanDisk Ultra 256GB card to review the footage. I was able to see the footage I wanted of my dog but was unable to tell what bit him or exactly when he got bit.

Anyway, when I pulled to card out I put the Samsung Pro endurance card back in, so that I could still be recording while I reviewed the footage and planned to swap the cards back this morning. Link below to the exact card purchased on October 2nd of this year, so a few weeks ago tops.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B07B98GXQT
Well this morning I noticed the double beep again. I manually hit record and the cam acted like it was recording for a minute or so and then double beep came back. Hit record again and then it started double beeping less than a minute later. Shut down the cam and pulled the card and I can see it is full. It has 4 clips 0 KB in size from this morning in the parking folder. It has two clips from around 12:30 AM that are corrupted (front and rear), and then the clips before that are playable (nothing in between 12:30 and now, so it stopped a little after midnight). In windows it shows 0bytes free of 29.8GB (FAT32) and it does not show the progress bar, as far as the bar it usually shows of how full a drive is.

I decided to check the SanDisk Ultra 256GB card more closely and I am missing about 30 hours of parking mode footage (card was less than 10% full). Oddly enough I went to go vote in that time frame and parking mode never kicked on while I was voting (took about 30 minutes), but I did accidentally leave my keys in the truck because I was in a rush so maybe this prevented it from kicking into parking mode? (Guess I will have to test that). It's weird because I have about 15 minutes of parking mode footage and then a 30 hour gap. Then I have about 4.5 Hours worth of parking mode footage until I pulled the card out to check the doggo out.

Not too sure where I should go from here. I'm thinking this may be a firmware issue but not sure. The only thing I can think of is to try the recommended low bitrate parking mode. I'd prefer not to do that but can't think of anything else to try at this point.
 
At this point in time the low-bitrate mode seems to be the only reliable one for parking with every cam. I'd say just use it until the bug is fixed ;)

In the reports I've seen with this issue, there does seem to be a relationship to when overwriting begins, and some cards seem to be more prone to the problem than others. It does not seem to be related to build date or production batches, ruling out a component or hardware problem. But it doesn't always happen the same way for everyone, and doesn't happen at all for some people which is the real puzzle here :cautious: And that is what makes for a tough time finding a fix. Reliable sources say that Viofo is working on this still, and a solution might appear soon. Till then use low-bitrate and keep an eye on things.

Phil
 
At this point in time the low-bitrate mode seems to be the only reliable one for parking with every cam. I'd say just use it until the bug is fixed ;)

In the reports I've seen with this issue, there does seem to be a relationship to when overwriting begins, and some cards seem to be more prone to the problem than others. It does not seem to be related to build date or production batches, ruling out a component or hardware problem. But it doesn't always happen the same way for everyone, and doesn't happen at all for some people which is the real puzzle here :cautious: And that is what makes for a tough time finding a fix. Reliable sources say that Viofo is working on this still, and a solution might appear soon. Till then use low-bitrate and keep an eye on things.

Phil

Hmm OK, I have switched over to low bitrate parking mode now. We'll see what happens. Fingers crossed . If this resolves the double beep issue for now, then I'll be happy. I can live with that. I know motion detection and what not is never 100% reliable no matter how well it's implemented so maybe this is for the best. I'll be sure to post an update either way.
 
I've had the same problem with huge gap in MotionDetect parking mode - with both 256Gb Samsung Evo+ and then SanDisk High Endurance, FW 1.9, 2.1.
So MotionDetect park mode in fact does'nt work anywhere (suppose due to demaged by Viofo coders SDK based functions ). But LowBitrate works stable during 48hrs parking time with v1.5, 1.9.
 
Last edited:
So a couple of days ago I verified that the sdcard was full and was overwriting correctly. It seems that Low Bandwidth 24x7 recording has resolved my issue. I need to pull the card and verify no missing footage, but from what I saw a few days ago all looked well. I guess motion detection just isn't an option right now, and that's OK. An easy fix and perhaps a more reliable method anyway.
 
Back
Top