USAFSSK
New Member
<rant>
I've really tried to like these little cameras. The reviews were great. The reviews for it's predecessor (118) was excellent. The pricepoint was... on point. Even opted for GPS mounts and polarized filters. I liked that they were adhesive mount, inconspicuous, and relatively basic. They came on with the ignition, they did their thing, and went off with the ignition. No corrupted files. Saved videos in their own folder. I even chose a trusty retailer on Amazon who was also a listed retailer here, that could bundle these together for me (I'm a sucker for package deals). What's not to love?
Well...
From April until May, they worked great. No complaints. June rolled around, and the one in my wife's jeep started power cycling. Just randomly restarting. No biggie. Check the connections, move the power cable from the GPS mount to the Camera, problem seemed to subside. For a week or so.
The one in my truck started to do the same thing, just not as frequently. I got this, I know what to do! Unplugged power cable from GPS and plugged directly into camera. Fixed!-ish. Now the cables that were run around the windshield inside the trim and out of sight are now dangling down in view in order to plug into the side of the camera, as opposed to the top of the GPS. Eh, whatever, right?
Well, I could have kept on keepin' on like this, except both cameras would randomly lose user settings. Drop the GPS. Be "January 01 2009" or some nonsense. Sitting in my driveway for 5 minutes every few mornings resetting the settings to the settings that I set a few days ago... and then the power cycling starts back up again.
I contact my chosen retailer @BlackboxMyCar and relay my tale of woe... got a nice, quick response! He provided a link in the reply with instructions on how to change from my inherent version (v1.4maybe?) to v1.6. After updating both cameras, all problems seemed to disappear, and they were back to doing the thing I bought them to do! Yeah! Do that thing! No user input, just do your thing little camera! Yay! For a little while...
Now the power cycling has returned on one camera (still using factory supplied usb adapter and cable) though not as frequent as before. My camera gets the superfantastic black X's across the bottom of the screen requiring user input at every power-up to trick the camera into letting you into the menu to clear the already-clear "car number" page. That gets you 1, that is ONE, normal operation. Remember, reset the other settings, too, while you're in there, because the g-sensor, gps, speed units, date, time, etc, yeah, those settings are back to default again. When the camera powers down, it's back to the black X boxes when it comes back up. I've already missed a few noteworthy events on the road.
Should I try updating to v1.7? Or should I be sending these little cameras back home so their updated hardware sibling can come back?
</rant>
I've really tried to like these little cameras. The reviews were great. The reviews for it's predecessor (118) was excellent. The pricepoint was... on point. Even opted for GPS mounts and polarized filters. I liked that they were adhesive mount, inconspicuous, and relatively basic. They came on with the ignition, they did their thing, and went off with the ignition. No corrupted files. Saved videos in their own folder. I even chose a trusty retailer on Amazon who was also a listed retailer here, that could bundle these together for me (I'm a sucker for package deals). What's not to love?
Well...
From April until May, they worked great. No complaints. June rolled around, and the one in my wife's jeep started power cycling. Just randomly restarting. No biggie. Check the connections, move the power cable from the GPS mount to the Camera, problem seemed to subside. For a week or so.
The one in my truck started to do the same thing, just not as frequently. I got this, I know what to do! Unplugged power cable from GPS and plugged directly into camera. Fixed!-ish. Now the cables that were run around the windshield inside the trim and out of sight are now dangling down in view in order to plug into the side of the camera, as opposed to the top of the GPS. Eh, whatever, right?
Well, I could have kept on keepin' on like this, except both cameras would randomly lose user settings. Drop the GPS. Be "January 01 2009" or some nonsense. Sitting in my driveway for 5 minutes every few mornings resetting the settings to the settings that I set a few days ago... and then the power cycling starts back up again.
I contact my chosen retailer @BlackboxMyCar and relay my tale of woe... got a nice, quick response! He provided a link in the reply with instructions on how to change from my inherent version (v1.4maybe?) to v1.6. After updating both cameras, all problems seemed to disappear, and they were back to doing the thing I bought them to do! Yeah! Do that thing! No user input, just do your thing little camera! Yay! For a little while...
Now the power cycling has returned on one camera (still using factory supplied usb adapter and cable) though not as frequent as before. My camera gets the superfantastic black X's across the bottom of the screen requiring user input at every power-up to trick the camera into letting you into the menu to clear the already-clear "car number" page. That gets you 1, that is ONE, normal operation. Remember, reset the other settings, too, while you're in there, because the g-sensor, gps, speed units, date, time, etc, yeah, those settings are back to default again. When the camera powers down, it's back to the black X boxes when it comes back up. I've already missed a few noteworthy events on the road.
Should I try updating to v1.7? Or should I be sending these little cameras back home so their updated hardware sibling can come back?
</rant>
