A119 Firmware

[Harsh]

I'm looking in to putting heat sinks on internal chips and memory card. I doubt there will be enough room. The other step I'm experimenting with is drilling more holes in the A119 to increase air flow. One other option is to raise the unit off the windscreen just enough to create an air gap which might reduce the transfer of temperature from the windscreen to the A119 GPS unit.

Save yourself the trouble. My A119S has endured 45°C + while parked and recording without air-conditioning, no heat related issues.

 

[Lola]

Save yourself the trouble. My A119S has endured 45°C + while parked and recording without air-conditioning, no heat related issues.

Even though you haven't had any problems, heat is one of the worst enemies of electronics. It is always better to run those items as cool as you can. Just a suggestion.

 

[Harsh]

Even though you haven't had any problems, heat is one of the worst enemies of electronics. It is always better to run those items as cool as you can. Just a suggestion.

A prudent suggestion if considering electronics in general. These on the other hand are built for higher tolerances, I'd wouldn't expect the same from a Television or an AVR.

 

[SawMaster]

@LateralNW
Close call is right- glad you made it through unscratched. I'm curious which recovery software you have? That info might be very useful to someone here someday

Phil

 

[LateralNW]

From the feedback I am getting it would seem I am the exception not the norm with the heat. I don't think it did this when I first got it about a year or two ago.
Appreciate the feedback from all.

39-40c is just an average summer day here in houston. my two a119 cameras with no modifications have already survived 2 texas summers. i don't think you'll have any issue either.
as for the GPS lag, there's not much you can do about that. all dashcams have lag showing the speed. watch a few dashcam crash videos on youtube and you'll see it in most any video that has gps speed showing - they hit whatever, and it still takes a few seconds for the speed display to change down to zero.

Thanks for the feedback.
I may have been misunderstood. My A119 gets extremely hot and does fail to the point I can't hold it. I'm talking from experience. Perhaps it was a friday built one . I do wonder how many cars have their air con to cool the unit almost immediately something my car struggles with. My car is also outside all the time and faces the afternoon sun when parked at home which is usually the hottest time of the day.

Re gps I agree but with a previous dash cam it created a separate gps file so I could sync the time to match exactly. With the way the A119 does it I have to extract the gps data to get it to match the real world timing. To much effort required. It only really matters when I'm posting to youtube or doing some club track type work.

Save yourself the trouble. My A119S has endured 45°C + while parked and recording without air-conditioning, no heat related issues.

Great to hear it may only be my A119. My A119 is version 1 so perhaps there is a slight change in the inside and also note you are using a different lens system which may also have some impact on the heat issue I'm experiencing.

Even though you haven't had any problems, heat is one of the worst enemies of electronics. It is always better to run those items as cool as you can. Just a suggestion.

I agree. Unless the A119 is built to Mil spec then I expect it to have problems in heat. I am not bagging the product just in case some think that.

A prudent suggestion if considering electronics in general. These on the other hand are built for higher tolerances, I'd wouldn't expect the same from a Television or an AVR.

As I mentioned above I doubt the electronics are at Mil spec. The casing must be above average to withstand the heat though. It has kept its shape. Using Mil spec chips and design I would expect would be to costly. The 105deg C correction it appears they are rated to 70 degrees C capacitors are an attempt at reducing the temperature problem. Lithium batteries tend to expand in repeatedly high temperatures and can potential explode just ask Samsung. This is the reason my old dash cam is not in service anymore. I replaced the battery a couple of times but had to expand the casing for it to fit because it would swell!

@LateralNW
Close call is right- glad you made it through unscratched. I'm curious which recovery software you have? That info might be very useful to someone here someday

Phil

Thanks for the concern. Sure it was too close and I am at a loss as to why a semi was on this small road and pumping it along. The only thing I think that saved me from crashing was he was going uphill so he could stop quicker.. he also looked like he was running empty or light load.
The recover software I use is called EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional. I also use the A119 to restore damaged video. I'm puzzled why some videos are corrupt even though the recovered video doesn't show any reason for the failure and was part of the drive not at the beginning or the end.

Apologies for taking the thread off topic.
edit - corrected temperature I thought the capacitors where rated at. They appear to be rated to 70 Degrees C not 105 Deg C as I had expected. On the upside they can also handle down to -40 Deg C!!!

 

[Gibson99]

Not to brag but my a119 is one of the oldest ones in existence - it's a pre-production demo unit I received from viofo to help test their then-new product. That's how it's been through 2 summers already. My car doesn't get parked in a garage either, so it's outside all day every day. My driveway faces East and there are no trees since the neighborhood is all new construction and the builders clear cut everything first so my car doesn't get any shade till around 6-7pm. I work from home so it gets to bake every day. Most of my driving is either really morning or evening/night, just running errands, kids to/from school, etc. During the day it gets cooked. Sure, the car is white, but the dash is black, and it gets plenty hot inside. Yes I have ac but I don't use the defrost setting to cool down the camera - I'm more concerned with cooling down the wheel so I can drive!

The other a119 I have is also a v1 like yours - one of the first off the production line. I even power it through the GPS mount, which some people have issues with, but I haven't. Sure I could upgrade it to the v2 mount, but as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

[Mozzie]

I am glad to say that my A119 v1 is still running well after many hot days in the sun. Although I do like to remove it from the windscreen if it is parked all day in 30+ days. Unlike my earlier experience with the Mini 0826 that melted in the Aussie heat.

 

[Agie]

I have had my A119 for over a year in the front of my car, and I have a black car at that. Never had any issues with mine - it does get to 40/42 Celsius here in summer. That being said , i do find parking spots that have shade etc and take some common sense precautions.

I remember watching CarCamCentral on YouTube and him testing dash cams that most have limits of 70-80 degrees Celsius. Which would probably reach on a hot day internally inside the car.

 

[jokiin]

I remember watching CarCamCentral on YouTube and him testing dash cams that most have limits of 70-80 degrees Celsius. Which would probably reach on a hot day internally inside the car.

a 30°c degree day will see temps of over 70°c in the car when parked

 

[Siley]

Dont worry about temperature. Operating Temp is -10 to 65°C, nonoperating is more

 

[slayer]

I heard that DOD has to introduce lowbitrate parking mode to dashcams with Novatek. Apparently the new Novatek sdk allows it. Does Viofo also work on a similar solution?

 

[Gibson99]

I heard that DOD has to introduce lowbitrate parking mode to dashcams with Novatek. Apparently the new Novatek sdk allows it. Does Viofo also work on a similar solution?

No - It has a low frame rate for parking mode. Low bit rate doesn't make sense to me. You want details like faces or plate numbers for when something happens, otherwise you might as well not have a dashcam at all.

 

[Jamesonmtl]

Dont worry about temperature. Operating Temp is -10 to 65°C, nonoperating is more

Use it at -30°C, can confirm it's working with low temperatures.

 

[ember1205]

Was driving today and narrowly avoided an accident because of what someone else did on the highway. Drove the remaining 4-5 minutes to where I was going, drove 15 minutes to the next stop, 5 minutes to the next stop, 10-12 minutes home. I wanted to review what the camera captured to see if I actually saw what happened as it was happening or if I missed it and could have reacted more quickly.

I was PI$$ED to see that, for whatever reason, the camera deleted EVERYTHING on the SD-CARD as I was driving up to the garage. So, when I attempted to access the data on the card, all that was there was six seconds of when I parked.

Why in the world does it completely erase the card when it fills up instead of simply deleting the oldest x number of files? 1, 2, 5.. whatever. There's no reason that it needs to completely erase the card when it near full.

 

[jokiin]

there's no reason why it would delete everything on the card, it's not how they work, must be something else going on

 

[ember1205]

I've taken the cards out of the camera bunches of times and always had at least 6-10 files present. But, now that I think about it, I've -NEVER- seen a mostly full card even after driving for hours and hours. So, it apparently wipes the card when it's near full.

 

[jokiin]

So, it apparently wipes the card when it's near full.

recycling is on a first in, first out basis

 

[Mtz]

I think you have some fake card. Test it with h2testw

 

[LateralNW]

Was driving today and narrowly avoided an accident... see if I actually saw what happened as it was happening or if I missed it and could have reacted more quickly.

If your card is working correctly/oem remove it before any more data is written to it and try using a file recovery program via a computer.

At least you may get the footage you hoped for.

 

[ember1205]

I think you have some fake card. Test it with h2testw

Based on what? I've never had an issue with these cards.



So, I ran a recovery program and it recovered a LOT of data (which was great). However, it seems that all of the MP4 files it was able to retrieve were from June of last year. I do swap cards in the camera periodically, so it doesn't alarm me that it found so many files from so long ago. However, this card has been in the camera for maybe a month or so. And it didn't seem to recover ANYTHING from any other window of time. Very odd.

And I've now basically completely lost faith in the camera's ability to be recording. I'll have to format the card and then check it periodically to see if the camera is functioning properly or not.