A129 Pro firmware

[remati]

Ok so I want to give the latest firmware a try. How do I go about upgrading the firmware?

My A129 Pro came with V1.3, aside from parking mode turning off after an hour or so, it has been working well. No beeps. Where can I download the 1.3 firmware just in case I want to revert back?

 

[CaptureYourAction]

Ok so I want to give the latest firmware a try. How do I go about upgrading the firmware?

My A129 Pro came with V1.3, aside from parking mode turning off after an hour or so, it has been working well. No beeps. Where can I download the 1.3 firmware just in case I want to revert back?

Viofo A129 Pro Firmware

Firmware updates for Viofo A129 PRO dash camera. This includes the A129 Pro DUO. Caution! Incorrectly installing firmware can cause your camera to become inoperable. Sometimes permanently. Firmware listed on this site comes directly from the manufacturer. Install at your own risk and only...

www.captureyouraction.com

 

[Nath]

Ok, this is a small reminder for me that i should care more for my car than for troubleshooting a camera... (whole card overwritten by normal mode footage - about 9 hours of the parked car)

Thankfully it's not on my new car (the rage would be immeasurable) but i'll probably not choose A129Pro again (just a waste of time by installation).

 

[Arese]

Hey guys,

I've updated my firmware to the latest on the VIOFO site from the v1.1.
Just to quickly recap my experience with mine, first 6 months I didn't experience the double beeps many experienced on this forum. Then suddenly I started to hear double beeps randomly but not really frequently. After formatting my SD (WD Purple 256GB) it noticeably improved and I then rarely heard double beeps, maybe once every 2 weeks so it was acceptable and never cared to update seeing that most previous fw had a lot of negative feedback.

After seeing less complains about the new v.2.1 I decided to go for it. After updating the fw I factory reset the cam and formatted my SD card.

So far so good I didn't hear any double beeps, thought I'd need to go through a full recording cycle of the SD to draw any conclusion, the cam also switch to parking mode and back to drive mode automatically as it should (hard wire with the VIOFO kit).

The only thing that annoys me a bit is the image quality in dark. With the v1.1 I was able to read licence plates of vehicles stopped or travelling at low speed.
However now licence are unreadable even when both myself and the car in front of me are stopped, see below screenshot of a footage.

I think this has to do with exposure and image quality settings but I'm not familiar enough with what I should change based on this issue. Does anyone would have any recommendation?

 

[Nath]

You can turn exposure down a bit (overall for day/night -1/3 seems good for a front, -2/3 for a back) but the plates probably won't be readable anyway. (until you overshoot it all the way down, at least that's my case, but then the image is quite dark) The headlights are the issue.

WDR/HDR should improve this but Viofo's implementation doesn't seem right (but you can give it a shot).

 

[Arese]

Thanks Nath I will try with your settings.
They must have changed something with the fw because like I said with the v1.1 with image settings to default I was able to read licence plates when me and the other car were travelling at the same speed or when both my car and the other car were stopped at a red light for example. Oncoming moving cars I couldn't read the licence plate or sometimes I could guess because it would be blurry. But with the v2.1 it's not blurry it's just overexposed.
In the above example when both car stopped I'm positive I could read the licence plate of the car in front of me when stopped at a red light with the v1.1
Hopefully by lowering the exposure I'll be able to get back the same level of licence plate readability than with the v1.1

Also, I read that the new fw added the possibility to set the resolution for parking mode recording. I couldn't find it in the options earlier. Under what options can I find that those settings?

 

[LeoeL]

@ Arese
probably you didn't hear any double beeps under 2.1 because Viofo eliminated this warning.

 

[Arese]

@ Arese
probably you didn't hear any double beeps under 2.1 because Viofo eliminated this warning.

That's interesting. Did they fix the problem or did they just hide the problem by removing the double beeps?
I mean I would like to know if the cam is having recording issues and corrupting videos.

 

[JoePGM]

That's interesting. Did they fix the problem or did they just hide the problem by removing the double beeps?
I mean I would like to know if the cam is having recording issues and corrupting videos.

Many other said "issue gone or issue never exists" in their dashcam. But I will say mine still have the same - no beep with video drop. I have escalate the issue to Viofo tech team and they are looking at the issue, I have done many test on behalf for them to assist the debugging.

So far I can conclude video drop happens (certainly - no beep, they removed it since 1.7 late version) in whatever high or low bitrate, h264 or h265 at resolution 2560x1440 60fps.

Just follow my another post in this forum, I will update over there as many user in this thread concern the parking mode mainly.

Hope this help.

 

[Arese]

I lowered the EV to -1/3 as recommended by @Nath and it's much better! And it doesn't look darker or if it is it's barely noticeable. Overall it looks much better I also noticed less blur on moving cars.


I also drove 5h hours yesterday and reviewed the files and didn't find any videos with frame drops.
So no more double beeps, no frame drops, after a few tweaks acceptable video quality in dark, I also had to bump up the parking mode motion sensitivity to high as it seems "medium" on the v2.1 was less sensitive than the "medium" on the V1.1.
I enjoyed driving this weekend and barely noticing the dashcam as it didn't make any noise double beep and is out of my vision field when driving. This is exactly how it should be so I'm really satisfied with the v2.1.

 

[Gordohat]

This is exactly how it should be so I'm really satisfied with the v2.1

I strongly disagree - I want to here double beeps if there are frame drops. I don't want a false sense of security.

 

[Arese]

I strongly disagree - I want to here double beeps if there are frame drops. I don't want a false sense of security.

Thats why I also mentionned "no frame drops" if you had read my message correctly.

If you want a detailed account of my tests please refer to JoeMPG dedicated thread about frame drops where I posted my results but to sum up after driving 5h I've inspected my footage to see if frame drops was occurring. (it's easy to spot video files with frame drops as explained by JoeMPG)

In my case I couldn't find any anomalie or frame drop like the ones reported by JoeMPG.

This is my experience and I'm not sure what you're disagreeing about but again for ME this v2. 1 runs great and all issues have been fixed.

I understand that other users are still experiencing some issues, I'm just reporting my own experience.

 

[programatix]

Since I bought the A129 Pro half a year back, I never actually drove my car at noon. A few days back, I made some long distance journeys and also did a few hours of drives at noon.

At around noon, with external temperature ranging from 32°C to 40°C, the dashcam keeps restarting from time to time at interval of 1 to 5 minutes.

During the long distance journeys, once it starts rebooting, it will keep on doing so until I exits the car. For example, it started rebooting at intervals at around 12pm, then will keep doing so until I reached my destination at 2pm. External temperature at mentioned above ranged from 32°C to 40°C, going up and down depending on whether there are clouds or not.

Weirdly, say if I made short distance drive (less than 20 minutes) where on entry, the external temperature was already above 35°C, the dashcam behaved nicely (no reboot). I have parking mode turned on.

I wonder if other 4K dashcams have this issue?

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

 

[Gordohat]

Thats why I also mentionned "no frame drops" if you had read my message correctly.

I did read your message correctly - no cheekiness please.

I am disagreeing with your satisfaction with v2.1 where double beeps have been removed to warn about dropped frames. It is all fine that you did not experience drop frames in your tests, but if the warning function has been removed, as others have reported so since about v1.3, then I don't find this acceptable for me. As I said it gives a false sense of security to remove warning beeps. I don't want to have to remove the SD card all the time to review the files to see if there are any missing frames where I could have been warned about it with double beeps.


I am not sure why you are happy with the removal of the double beep warning when it was you yourself made the below comment:

That's interesting. Did they fix the problem or did they just hide the problem by removing the double beeps?
I mean I would like to know if the cam is having recording issues and corrupting videos.

 

[LeoeL]

I strongly disagree - I want to here double beeps if there are frame drops. I don't want a false sense of security.

+1

 

[minc3]

Since I bought the A129 Pro half a year back, I never actually drove my car at noon. A few days back, I made some long distance journeys and also did a few hours of drives at noon.

At around noon, with external temperature ranging from 32°C to 40°C, the dashcam keeps restarting from time to time at interval of 1 to 5 minutes.

During the long distance journeys, once it starts rebooting, it will keep on doing so until I exits the car. For example, it started rebooting at intervals at around 12pm, then will keep doing so until I reached my destination at 2pm. External temperature at mentioned above ranged from 32°C to 40°C, going up and down depending on whether there are clouds or not.

Weirdly, say if I made short distance drive (less than 20 minutes) where on entry, the external temperature was already above 35°C, the dashcam behaved nicely (no reboot). I have parking mode turned on.

I wonder if other 4K dashcams have this issue?

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Could be the heat where I experienced One or two times when it’s extremely hot in the afternoon. I believe the heatsoak in the dashcam itself caused it to overheat thus the protection. Mine restarted once and i diverted the AC to the windscreen for a while which I believe it helps.

Wonder where did you place your dashcam? Mine hidden behind the dark tint at the top.

 

[programatix]

Wonder where did you place your dashcam? Mine hidden behind the dark tint at the top.

Mine is behind the mirror.

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

 

[minc3]

Mine is behind the mirror.

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Not sure whether the dotted part provides any heat protection but it was freaking hot for the past few days. Probably you would want to try divert the AC to the windscreen when the constant restart looping starts while driving in a sunny day.


EDIT: added photo.

Would like to push it further up but the rear view mirror limits it.

 

[Arese]

I did read your message correctly - no cheekiness please.

I am disagreeing with your satisfaction with v2.1 where double beeps have been removed to warn about dropped frames. It is all fine that you did not experience drop frames in your tests, but if the warning function has been removed, as others have reported so since about v1.3, then I don't find this acceptable for me. As I said it gives a false sense of security to remove warning beeps. I don't want to have to remove the SD card all the time to review the files to see if there are any missing frames where I could have been warned about it with double beeps.


I am not sure why you are happy with the removal of the double beep warning when it was you yourself made the below comment:

Well if you correctly read my message and then still found a way to draw the wrong conclusion maybe it's your reading comprehension skills the issue because I haven't at any moment said that I was happy with Viofo removing the double beeps to warn us of dropped frames you're putting words into my mouth and that's not ok.

You quoted my message, I was initially surprised to hear they had removed it and was worried they removed the double beeps without fixing the frame drops.

Upon running my tests I concluded that Viofo actually fixed the problem of frame drops (at least in my case). Yes it's not ideal that they removed the double beeps as a warning I hear that but look unsure how to phrase it more explicitly, right now my dashcam is working better than when running on the v1.1 which for me is definitely a reason for satisfaction.

We all have different criteria when it comes to judging a product and that's fine. For me, I consider the removal of the double beep warming and having to check every now and then my SD card a minor trade-off I can live with to get no frame drops, working parking mode and good picture quality. So you should chill out and stop trying to force your opinions onto others.

 

[LeoeL]

2.1 is out from 3 August. Are you sure frame drops are fixed?
I didn't read that in the changelog.
I'm running 1.7T (with beeps warning). I drove in the last 2 months for 2600 Km; 2 long trips (500+500+800+800). 30 seconds lost only during the second 500 Km at the end of the first file (at 10 AM when the car wasn't hot)
Then? Probably I changed some setting in Parking Mode and now is OK but the issue remains.
Audible warning are necessary. There are bluetooth earbuds (€ 20) that have "human warnings" (i.e. "Battery Low") and VIOFO switches from beeps to nothing?