A119 fails to record/stops recording

[Chimpanzee]

Edit: Just noticed a new firmware was released yesterday. Haven't installed this one yet. Will update and see if that fixed my problems.

Hi. I bought a A119 and am finding it to be very unreliable.

I've pressed the emergency button a few times over the last week and last night I took the camera out to have a look at the recordings. I was surprised to find only one file in the EMR folder! That means there were about four occasions where I'd pressed the button and it hadn't logged the file. On each occasion I heard the beeps as expected and glanced at the screen and saw the yellow ! icon, indicating that the file had been locked.

I also had a look through the non-locked recordings and the files there are very sporadic - I haven't quite figured out a pattern to which ones were still there, but it looks like I don't have more than (approx) the first 15 minutes of any given trip (from when the camera was turned on). There are still recordings there from the day that I last formatted the camera a couple of weeks ago, but only the first half of my commute home last night.

I am on the latest firmware and recording at 1080p/60, but that doesn't seem to affect the problem I'm having.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Harsh]

Are you using the supplied power supply/charger?
Which micro SD card are you using?
Firmware version on camera?

 

[Chimpanzee]

Are you using the supplied power supply/charger?
Which micro SD card are you using?
Firmware version on camera?

Hi harsh.

I am using the power supply that came with the camera
I'm using this card
I'm on the version before the one released yesterday. Noticed the new update just after I posted this thread. I'm going to install that when I get home this evening. Hopefully it will fix my problems.

 

[Harsh]

Not the best choice of card for dash cams, try changing the card and see if the erratic behaviour remains.

 

[Chimpanzee]

Not the best choice of card for dash cams, try changing the card and see if the erratic behaviour remains.

Hi Harsh

What's wrong with the card? I don't have another one so can't swap it out.

 

[CaptureYourAction]

Hi Harsh

What's wrong with the card? I don't have another one so can't swap it out.

Sandisk ultra cards don't play nicely with dash cameras.
Your emergency button issue should be resolved with the latest firmware.
Also, do you have the loop function disabled? Could the Ultra card, but also sounds like you may have loop turned off.

 

[Harsh]

The Sandisk Ultra red & grey cards have been reported by several members here to be problematic when used with some dash cams. They can also go into read-only mode and die on encountering errors.

If you have a different card in any of your other gadgets or devices, just swap them temporarily and check.

 

[borik]

updating the firmware won't solve your problem. solve the problem first, then (optional) update the firmware.
1. reset the settings on the camera to a "default".
2. set the correct time.
3. record the video and see what you get.
I would set the resolution to "1440P" and keep the 3 minutes "loop recording".

 

[CaptureYourAction]

The latest firmware corrects a bug in which the ! emergency button does not function correctly if the g-sensor is off. So, if you prefer to have the g-sensor off, but still use the ! button, then you need the new firmware. The new firmware corrects 4 currently known bugs. I would update regardless.

 

[Gibson99]

1080p60 doesn't have any issues that i'm aware of (it's what i use on both of mine), though there IS a bug in the 1.1 firmware that if the G-sensor is off, it can affect locking files. so make sure the g-sensor is on any of the other options besides OFF.

the intermittent recording sounds like what some lesser dashcams do when you have motion detect turned on, but plenty of people here are reporting that motion detect works great on the a119. i haven't tried it on mine since i don't have it hard-wired to be always on. i do plan to hardwire it, just haven't had time yet. that said, it can't hurt to turn off motion detection just for a test run in your case.

also can't hurt to format the card in your computer and then run h2testw (link in my signature) to make sure it's not defective or counterfeit. in theory that card should work OK (i have used a 16gb version of that card for a couple hours in my a119 just to test), but it won't last long. I had that same 64gb card die in my wife's dashcam after only a month and a half of normal use. when the card failed, instead of throwing an error like most SD cards would, the card went into a sort of "soft-fail" mode, where the dashcam didn't realize it had a problem, so the dashcam never complained. it was only by chance that i found it was bad - my wife came home and said "you gotta pull my memory card and see if you can get the plates on the guy who tried to hit me on the way home..." so i grabbed the card. turned out there were no recordings at all from the past 3 days, and the recordings that WERE on the card were about 50% corrupt and unreadable. i couldn't delete any files from the card, couldn't copy anything to the card, and couldn't even format it.

 

[Chimpanzee]

Just wanted to call back in to thank you for your help. Turned out the SanDisk card was the culprit. Bought a Lexar 633x and now the cam seems to be working flawlessly.

So, for any Googlers stumbling across this, avoid SanDisk cards with the A119 and get a Lexar or something else instead.

 

[borik]

I had 128gb Lexar and 128gb Samsung Evo+ dead within 2 days. I used the cards every other day and each one didn't last even a month.

 

[RCPilot]

I recently replaced 5 or 6 SanDisk Ultra cards (64 and 32 GB) because they have had a very high failure rate in my dash cams. I went with the Transcend 64GB High Endurance microSD Card from Amazon. When my SanDisk cards failed the cams they were in gave the appearance they were recording when in fact they were not. Avoid SanDisk like the plague in dash cams.

 

[operator207]

I had 128gb Lexar and 128gb Samsung Evo+ dead within 2 days. I used the cards every other day and each one didn't last even a month.

What type of Lexar? Were they fake by chance? That happened to me on Amazon (sold by amazon) with a couple different brands of SD cards. Mine failed when they stated they were 64gb cards and formatted as such but were really 16gb cards.

I have 5 Lexar 633X running right now, 2 are right at 2 years old, 1 is a year and some change, the last 2 I have running for a couple months. None have given me any errors or faults.
Panorama X2 (2x 64gb), BlackVue DR500GW-HD (1x 64gb), 2x A119 (2x 64gb)

 

[borik]

I hope they were not fakes, but... I did a lot of testing for the first 2 months and may be a little over abused them. yesterday I got from lexar support (sent a failed SD card to them) a replacement. plus a refund from Amazon. the Lexar SD cards were 633x class 10 128gb. I sent a failed SD card to Samsung as well, but no response (like from Lexar) from them yet. and yes, I was getting some errors in video recording (like first or last video file corrupted) but those were related to my testing and different brands / SD cards from 64gb to 128gb and not to normal recording mode.

 

[operator207]

I hope they were not fakes, but... I did a lot of testing for the first 2 months and may be a little over abused them. yesterday I got from lexar support (sent a failed SD card to them) a replacement. plus a refund from Amazon. the Lexar SD cards were 633x class 10 128gb. I sent a failed SD card to Samsung as well, but no response (like from Lexar) from them yet. and yes, I was getting some errors in video recording (like first or last video file corrupted) but those were related to my testing and different brands / SD cards from 64gb to 128gb and not to normal recording mode.

Mine were dead much sooner than that, and you noticed it after a day at most. I could get 16gb of data on it from driving (40 miles 1 way to work) and sitting in the garage at work recording. I ended up trying an application that tested the bad cards and they failed. If you shipped them in, you can't test them now, but I would be curious to see if they were fake. From what I understand, the fake ones are really just smaller with some firmware or whatever that tells the computer when it formats the drive that it is bigger than it really is.

 

[borik]

after 2 SD cards failed I tested my remaining SD cards with "h2testw" utility and so far they are all good.

 

[Gibson99]

after 2 SD cards failed I tested my remaining SD cards with "h2testw" utility and so far they are all good.

Yep because of the fraud I test every card i buy the moment I take it out of the package. So far I haven't had a fake card but h2testw has helped me identify older cards that are dying so I can take them out of service before they actually die and make me lose important footage.