A tale of two dashcams on a hot day

[reverend]

OK so we had an unusually hot day here today in the UK and it reached 34C / 93.2F - this meant a great day to test how a couple of dashcams would stand up to the heat.

One was the SG9665GC camera using a Novatek 96655 CPU, a Sony Exmor IMX322 sensor and a super capacitor.
The other was the G5WA using an Ambarella A7LA70 CPU, a Sony Exmor IMX322 sensor and a battery.

The SG9665GC fired up and worked instantly with no problems.

The G5WA had protection circuitry that kicked in and turned the camera off due to the excessive heat in the car and wouldn't let it turn on until the temperature had dropped thanks to the aircon blasting straight on it.

As you can see there's always a good arguement for running capacitors even in the not so warm climates - it's possible the A7LA70 was out of spec too as it had been sat in the car all day but the 96655 worked fine and it was sat at the side of the other camera all day.

 

[Mandami]

protection circuitry

...protection circuit for the battery or for the SoC ? or, in other words, if the battery had been removed, do you think the camera would have started ? Maybe the A7 is running hotter than Novatek and the battery increased even more the heat.

 

[reverend]

Only the manufacturer could answer that - bearing in mind it failed to start up after it had been powered down for several hours it shouldn't make any difference which ones runs hotter at that point as the SoC was only active for a couple of seconds at that point.

 

[USDashCamera]

ugh 80 degrees Fahrenheit is more than enough heat for me.

 

[jokiin]

on paper the A7 has a higher heat rating, how that translates into real world results though I'm not sure