CaptnEric
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2018
- Messages
- 160
- Reaction score
- 89
- Location
- Melbourne
- Country
- Australia
- Dash Cam
- VIOFO A129 DUO, Thinkware F770 1CH & 2CH
EDIT: April 7th, 2021
Just want to update on my issue for anyone else who might have the same problem in future.
Thank you to everyone who responded with suggestions, I really appreciate it! I ended up contacting the business who I bought the A129 from, Linelink. Although I was out of warranty they contacted Viofo Australia on my behalf. Viofo Australia replied back stating that there was no known issue with Australian stock freezing up. They also did not recommend I continue with the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 microSD card because "Sandisk are renowned for causing issues with dash cams and are not recommended and void warranty". That is odd because Viofo Australia actually recommend and sell the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 cards on their website. Which is why I bought it and also for the recommendations for them to use with an A129 Duo in some threads in this forum.
Viofo Australia recommended I either use Samsung, Blackvue or their own Viofo cards first before I send it off for them to check the dash cam. So I put my old Samsung Evo Plus 128GB card back in and what do you know, it started working like a charm again. I left the card in there all last week to be sure the freeze ups didn't return and they didn't. So I bought a 256GB Samsung Evo Plus and it is still going strong.
Out of curiosity I updated to firmware v2.1 again with the Samsung Evo Plus and suffice to say I was disappointed again with the performance of the firmware. For some reason it would not switch to parking mode for at least 45 minutes. I'm using my old DOD DP4 hardwire kit and the A129 would normally go into parking mode within 3 mins. So after a couple of days testing with v2.1 with no improvements I switched back to v1.9 and have been happy with it again since. I think I will just stick with v1.9 as it's quite stable and gives me the footage I need. I also don't need any of the fancy new features in v2.1.
So consiidering my experience with the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 cards, seems they are no good in an A129 Duo after all (although I did use it trouble free for about 10 months till I updated the firmware to v2.1 and that's when all my troubles started). Stick with Samsung Evo Plus, even though it's not recommended to use with dash cams, they do actually work with the A129 Duo. When Samsung comes out with the 256GB version of their High Endurance card, I will buy that as I get at least 4 days worth of footage with a 256GB card compared to only a day and a half with a 128GB.
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Hi Dashcam community, been awhile since I posted!
My A129 Duo started freezing up 6 weeks ago, after nearly 2 years of faultless operation. I have no idea what is causing it after spending a lot of time troubleshooting. I will give some background info first...
It's a bit of a long read so only dive in if you have the time.
The next day I went for another drive to test it again. Sure enough, after having parked the car for about half an hour, the same thing happened. So when I got back home, I downgraded back to v1.9. All was good for a day and while I was driving, the camera just restarted. I looked at the footage when I got home. During my drive, about 2 minutes of footage was missing leading up to the restart. The next day, I had the same issue of freezing again after driving off from parking mode. So I decided to check the SD card on my PC with H2testw. The test passed with no issues. I then unplugged the rear camera and just used the front camera for the next 2 days. I had no freezing issues so I plugged the rear camera back in again, then turned the power back on. All was good the next day with no freezing. The next day after that the freezing started again. I had suspicions that it could be the rear camera cable or the rear camera itself. I checked the connections and it was securely connected. I have the cable at the rear secured with cable clips to minimise movement. I also checked the cable for any damage and it was still in good condition.
I have no idea why the freezing all of a sudden started with firmware v2.1. Was it a coincidence or did the update break something? As I had no freezing issues before I updated from v1.9 to v2.1, I wanted to check one more thing and do another test to eliminate any doubt that it could be a firmware issue. I downgraded to v1.5, which I have read on these forums is the most stable firmware. For the next 5 weeks the camera was operating perfectly again, no freezing. Just when I concluded the issue had been fixed....the freezing started again yesterday! After doing some errands, I came home and parked in the garage. When I tried to turn the screen on the camera, it wasn't responding again. So I shut it down and restarted it. So now, I'm back to square one!
I really like this camera and it has been working great till now. I'm really frustrated with it, especially after spending so much time trying to troubleshoot this issue. I'm quite busy to waste anymore time on it. I've never had so much trouble with electronic devices as much as a dash cam! My first dash cam, a DOD RC500S died after 2 years and now the A129 Duo is causing me grief after nearly 2 years as well. Would it be the rear camera cable causing the freezing or the camera connections or both? I don't want to go out and spend good money on a new cable or a new rear camera if it's not going to fix the issue. I rather buy another dash cam tbh.
Have I done something wrong or missed something? Has the update to v2.1 caused something? It's really bizarre to me that all this started after updating the firmware to v2.1. I expected these dash cams to last more than 2 years. I bought both my mum and my partner a Thinkware F770 4 years ago and both of their dash cams are still operating flawlessly with no issues what-so-ever! The only thing I don't like about Thinkware dash cams is the amount of space their software allocates to different recordings. There is not much space for parking incidents and they don't take more than 64GB SD cards...well this model doesn't. My partner and mum don't do much driving so those cameras are perfect for them. I drive a lot and need a reliable dash cam that takes large capacity SD cards with no restrictions on space and doesn't require me to be a technician to troubleshoot every issue.
Has anyone else faced this same freezing problem? Any advice or solution is welcomed right now as I'm at a loss. If worse comes to worst I am prepared to ditch Viofo and go for another, more reliable dash cam. I'm currently looking at the Street Guardian SG9663DCPRO, Thinkware Q800 Pro / U1000 or even a BlackVue. If nobody can shed some light on this issue but has had good experience with other brands/models, I'd like to hear it!
Thanks in advance for anybody who is willing to help!
Just want to update on my issue for anyone else who might have the same problem in future.
Thank you to everyone who responded with suggestions, I really appreciate it! I ended up contacting the business who I bought the A129 from, Linelink. Although I was out of warranty they contacted Viofo Australia on my behalf. Viofo Australia replied back stating that there was no known issue with Australian stock freezing up. They also did not recommend I continue with the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 microSD card because "Sandisk are renowned for causing issues with dash cams and are not recommended and void warranty". That is odd because Viofo Australia actually recommend and sell the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 cards on their website. Which is why I bought it and also for the recommendations for them to use with an A129 Duo in some threads in this forum.
Viofo Australia recommended I either use Samsung, Blackvue or their own Viofo cards first before I send it off for them to check the dash cam. So I put my old Samsung Evo Plus 128GB card back in and what do you know, it started working like a charm again. I left the card in there all last week to be sure the freeze ups didn't return and they didn't. So I bought a 256GB Samsung Evo Plus and it is still going strong.
Out of curiosity I updated to firmware v2.1 again with the Samsung Evo Plus and suffice to say I was disappointed again with the performance of the firmware. For some reason it would not switch to parking mode for at least 45 minutes. I'm using my old DOD DP4 hardwire kit and the A129 would normally go into parking mode within 3 mins. So after a couple of days testing with v2.1 with no improvements I switched back to v1.9 and have been happy with it again since. I think I will just stick with v1.9 as it's quite stable and gives me the footage I need. I also don't need any of the fancy new features in v2.1.
So consiidering my experience with the Sandisk High Endurance V30 A1 cards, seems they are no good in an A129 Duo after all (although I did use it trouble free for about 10 months till I updated the firmware to v2.1 and that's when all my troubles started). Stick with Samsung Evo Plus, even though it's not recommended to use with dash cams, they do actually work with the A129 Duo. When Samsung comes out with the 256GB version of their High Endurance card, I will buy that as I get at least 4 days worth of footage with a 256GB card compared to only a day and a half with a 128GB.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hi Dashcam community, been awhile since I posted!
My A129 Duo started freezing up 6 weeks ago, after nearly 2 years of faultless operation. I have no idea what is causing it after spending a lot of time troubleshooting. I will give some background info first...
It's a bit of a long read so only dive in if you have the time.
- I live in Melbourne, Australia.
- I bought my A129 Duo in June 2019, hardwired it myself with my old DOD DP4 hardwire kit (that I had used with my DOD RC500S).
(I like the DP4 as it has an on/off switch to cut power off when my car is parked in my garage.) - Car is a 2016 Toyota Corolla Hatch (non-hybrid)
- SD card is a 256GB Sandisk High Endurance V30 U3 (Used for a year so far)
- Current firmware is v1.5 (reverted back after updating to v2.1)
- Original Viofo power and rear camera cable
- Power cable connected to the front camera (not the GPS unit)
- Current settings are:
Bitrate: High
Loop Recording: 1 min
WDR: Off
Parking Mode: Low bit rate
Time-Lapse Recording: Off
Motion detection: Off
GPS: On
G-Sensor: Low
WIFI: Off
Record Audio: Yes
Screen Saver: 1 mins
Boot Delay: 5 secs
Time Zone: +11
Frequency: 50Hz
- Formatted the SD card with Fat32 Formatter on my pc.
- Downloaded v2.1 firmware from Viofo website, support page and renamed file to FWA129.bin
- Copied file to root directory of SD card
- Restarted the camera and waited till the update completed
- Formatted the SD card with the camera
- Then reset to default settings
- Then changed settings to my choices as above
The next day I went for another drive to test it again. Sure enough, after having parked the car for about half an hour, the same thing happened. So when I got back home, I downgraded back to v1.9. All was good for a day and while I was driving, the camera just restarted. I looked at the footage when I got home. During my drive, about 2 minutes of footage was missing leading up to the restart. The next day, I had the same issue of freezing again after driving off from parking mode. So I decided to check the SD card on my PC with H2testw. The test passed with no issues. I then unplugged the rear camera and just used the front camera for the next 2 days. I had no freezing issues so I plugged the rear camera back in again, then turned the power back on. All was good the next day with no freezing. The next day after that the freezing started again. I had suspicions that it could be the rear camera cable or the rear camera itself. I checked the connections and it was securely connected. I have the cable at the rear secured with cable clips to minimise movement. I also checked the cable for any damage and it was still in good condition.
I have no idea why the freezing all of a sudden started with firmware v2.1. Was it a coincidence or did the update break something? As I had no freezing issues before I updated from v1.9 to v2.1, I wanted to check one more thing and do another test to eliminate any doubt that it could be a firmware issue. I downgraded to v1.5, which I have read on these forums is the most stable firmware. For the next 5 weeks the camera was operating perfectly again, no freezing. Just when I concluded the issue had been fixed....the freezing started again yesterday! After doing some errands, I came home and parked in the garage. When I tried to turn the screen on the camera, it wasn't responding again. So I shut it down and restarted it. So now, I'm back to square one!
I really like this camera and it has been working great till now. I'm really frustrated with it, especially after spending so much time trying to troubleshoot this issue. I'm quite busy to waste anymore time on it. I've never had so much trouble with electronic devices as much as a dash cam! My first dash cam, a DOD RC500S died after 2 years and now the A129 Duo is causing me grief after nearly 2 years as well. Would it be the rear camera cable causing the freezing or the camera connections or both? I don't want to go out and spend good money on a new cable or a new rear camera if it's not going to fix the issue. I rather buy another dash cam tbh.
Have I done something wrong or missed something? Has the update to v2.1 caused something? It's really bizarre to me that all this started after updating the firmware to v2.1. I expected these dash cams to last more than 2 years. I bought both my mum and my partner a Thinkware F770 4 years ago and both of their dash cams are still operating flawlessly with no issues what-so-ever! The only thing I don't like about Thinkware dash cams is the amount of space their software allocates to different recordings. There is not much space for parking incidents and they don't take more than 64GB SD cards...well this model doesn't. My partner and mum don't do much driving so those cameras are perfect for them. I drive a lot and need a reliable dash cam that takes large capacity SD cards with no restrictions on space and doesn't require me to be a technician to troubleshoot every issue.
Has anyone else faced this same freezing problem? Any advice or solution is welcomed right now as I'm at a loss. If worse comes to worst I am prepared to ditch Viofo and go for another, more reliable dash cam. I'm currently looking at the Street Guardian SG9663DCPRO, Thinkware Q800 Pro / U1000 or even a BlackVue. If nobody can shed some light on this issue but has had good experience with other brands/models, I'd like to hear it!
Thanks in advance for anybody who is willing to help!
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