0805 did not record impact, but OK before & after

jbeale

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I've had an Mini 0805 on my rear window for several years. I suspected that the GPS connection may have caused the occasional turn-off-by-itself problem, so I turned off GPS and had the USB cable connected direct to the 0805 body.

So today, the car behind me didn't stop in time and I had a very minor rear impact, less than hitting a pothole but I pulled off the road and checked anyway. No mark. Shrug. Other car drove off. Came back to my car and found the car would not start (my battery had been weak, leaving the headlights on while I walked around apparently was the last straw.) Car gave a few weak cranks, dash meters fluttering, clearly battery dead. Got home after a jump start from roadside assistance truck. Went to check dashcam and found it had worked perfectly recording everything before & after collision but that one critical file was missing, and there was no missing file number.!

AMBA0089.MOV ends with me still tooling down the highway, and AMBA0090.MOV starts with me on the shoulder; the other car already gone. I assume there was some glitch due voltage fluctuations as the low battery tried to crank the engine , so the file was overwritten. Anyway, if you want to save the accident file, better unplug the camera before trying to restart the car!
 
I've had an Mini 0805 on my rear window for several years ... Went to check dashcam and found it had worked perfectly recording everything before & after collision but that one critical file was missing, and there was no missing file number.!

The 0805 internal battery is old, & probably too feeble to save the file being recorded when external power is cut.

It's time to dismantle the 0805 & solder-in a new battery, if you have the time, patience & skills. If not, think about a new dashcam.
 
As russ said: the cam's internal battery is probably worn out and not providing enough power to complete the cam's shutdown. It's a very common problem made worse because of heat degradation caused by the cam sitting in a hot car in summer.
Unless you regularly check to see if the last file is saving properly you won't know when your cam's battery has degraded too much. I've had some cam batteries fail after only three months.
 
What size recordings do you have it set to?
I set mine to 1 minute files. Avoiding situations like yours is one reason why. Losing up to one minute of video gives a much better chance of keeping what you need than if you lose up to five minutes.
 
What size recordings do you have it set to?
I set mine to 1 minute files. Avoiding situations like yours is one reason why. Losing up to one minute of video gives a much better chance of keeping what you need than if you lose up to five minutes.

Yes, I have most cams set to one-minute or two-minute clips which:
1. Ends the files sooner, so less chance of failing to save the important bit on shutdown.
2. Makes the whole of any important/interesting file smaller and quicker to upload while taking up less space on my hard drive.
3. Reveals less about my route and conversations in the lead-up to an event, which is my private business.
4. Can be particularly useful if the cam uses a difficult-to-edit-into-a-small-clip file type.

However, I set one front cam to record much longer clips, just in case an event happens during the overlap of two clips, to try to keep the event all within one file.
In fact, with two front cams, one set to two minutes and one to five minutes, it's only once every ten minutes that the two cams finish writing a file at the same time.
 
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