A129 Pro firmware

Sometimes when firmware come out it have bugs this is what I was thinking but I took a chance and updated to V2.9, thank you for your reply.
 
Ver. 2.5 (original that came with the camera)

I may have discovered a potentially dangerous bug that prevents full shut-off of the camera when overheat protection kicks in while camera is in park mode. It appears that instead of switching off due to overheating, the camera goes into some sort of limbo mode where the REC led is constantly flashing and the camera is completely unresponsive until it is power cycled. There are multiple reports of people having similar experience and in most cases it is regarded as SD Card failure, and most likely this is true for most cases, however, I have a very interesting observation that I've made that led me to believe that there is also a bug related to important safety function!

As some of you may know I've designed my own hardware kit with bells and whistles including multi-point temperature monitoring of the kit. Typically there is a difference between ambient temp and the temperature of onboard regulator of about 13C (lets call it deltaT) and I am able to monitor both on my phone.

Today, happened to be the hottest day that my car has seen this year and coincidentally, right when the temperature reached its maximum, I have observed that the deltaT started dropping slowly from typical 13C to about 8C which was very weird to see and I immediately knew something was going on with the dashcam as it is no longer pulling its ~2.6 Watts for parking time-lapse mode yet is still on/active! I walked over to my car which was baking at the sun and saw that the REC led was constantly flashing and the camera was super hot (expected) but unresponsive (unexpected!). I have since tested the SD card both inside the cam and on my pc and ruled out it being an issue. I think what has happened is that the dashcam has overheated but failed to shut itself off and instead entered into some sort of unresponsive cycle. If this is really due to an overheat protection failure; I am not sure if it fails only in parking mode (the scariest of all scenarios since you are not around the car) or if it also may happen while driving, or if this is only an issue of Ver 2.5 (but I have not seen any change logs mentioning this specific issue so maybe it is still present in V2.9/2.10).

Would be great to hear a word from Viofo itself if they are aware of this issue.
 
bobcat said:
Ver. 2.5 (original that came with the camera)

I may have discovered a potentially dangerous bug that prevents full shut-off of the camera when overheat protection kicks in while camera is in park mode. It appears that instead of switching off due to overheating, the camera goes into some sort of limbo mode where the REC led is constantly flashing and the camera is completely unresponsive until it is power cycled. There are multiple reports of people having similar experience and in most cases it is regarded as SD Card failure, and most likely this is true for most cases, however, I have a very interesting observation that I've made that led me to believe that there is also a bug related to important safety function!

As some of you may know I've designed my own hardware kit with bells and whistles including multi-point temperature monitoring of the kit. Typically there is a difference between ambient temp and the temperature of onboard regulator of about 13C (lets call it deltaT) and I am able to monitor both on my phone.

Today, happened to be the hottest day that my car has seen this year and coincidentally, right when the temperature reached its maximum, I have observed that the deltaT started dropping slowly from typical 13C to about 8C which was very weird to see and I immediately knew something was going on with the dashcam as it is no longer pulling its ~2.6 Watts for parking time-lapse mode yet is still on/active! I walked over to my car which was baking at the sun and saw that the REC led was constantly flashing and the camera was super hot (expected) but unresponsive (unexpected!). I have since tested the SD card both inside the cam and on my pc and ruled out it being an issue. I think what has happened is that the dashcam has overheated but failed to shut itself off and instead entered into some sort of unresponsive cycle. If this is really due to an overheat protection failure; I am not sure if it fails only in parking mode (the scariest of all scenarios since you are not around the car) or if it also may happen while driving, or if this is only an issue of Ver 2.5 (but I have not seen any change logs mentioning this specific issue so maybe it is still present in V2.9/2.10).

Would be great to hear a word from Viofo itself if they are aware of this issue.
Click to expand...

Great, thank you for this so what firmware do you have?
 
Spartacus2go said:
Great, thank you for this so what firmware do you have?
Click to expand...
Same as the one that came with the camera, Ver 2.5. Outside of today's observation it was working flawlessly for almost 2 years.

I can set personalized overheat protection via HK kit, which I've done already so not as worried about the camera side failing, but thought to bring this up regardless as it is a potential safety concern.
 
Has anyone noticed that the locked files are not actually locking? I am using the latest firmware and for whatever reason the locked folder is always empty. I have formatted the card, reset settings, and done everything and it seems to not want to lock the files. I just ordered a new SD card to see if that is the issue.
 
Ty07allstar said:
Has anyone noticed that the locked files are not actually locking? I am using the latest firmware and for whatever reason the locked folder is always empty. I have formatted the card, reset settings, and done everything and it seems to not want to lock the files. I just ordered a new SD card to see if that is the issue.
Click to expand...
@VIOFO-Support Do you have any information on the locked files not actually locking?
 
So the V2.5 (20210907) still seems to be the best?
 
I've been aware for a long time that files are locked in parking mode motion detection.

There are 2 options for motion detection in a129 pro, both in parking mode and in the main menu.

Motion detection files in the main menu are not locked. but motion detection files in parking mode are locked.

If motion detection files are not locked in the main menu, they should not be locked in parking mode either. this is purely software based.

I propose a solution to make the feature functional as a user; Just as it is not locked in the main menu, motion detection should not be locked in parking mode either. Only when motion detection recording starts in parking mode, it should be locked whenever there is impact, bump or shake, that is, if the impact sensor is affected.

this recommendation and feature will be important for all cameras. Because security-based features need to work flawlessly.
 
Lock doesn't lock the videos really. I found out the hard way. All it does is sperate it into a folder called LOCK but it treats it like any other file, for example it just overwrites the file you thought you locked because you only told the camera to put it into a folder locked. It's a really dumb design. Other cameras actually LOCK files and don't let them be overwritten.
 
dashcams said:
Lock doesn't lock the videos really. I found out the hard way. All it does is sperate it into a folder called LOCK but it treats it like any other file, for example it just overwrites the file you thought you locked because you only told the camera to put it into a folder locked. It's a really dumb design. Other cameras actually LOCK files and don't let them be overwritten.
Click to expand...
As we have explained before, basically, the space of the card is divided into two parts. 30% for locked video files and 70% for normal files. When the size of locked videos reaches the limitation, they will be overwritten to leave space for new locked videos. Thanks for your reminder, we will take your desire not to overwrite the locked videos into consideration and will optimize this.
 
VIOFO-Support said:
As we have explained before, basically, the space of the card is divided into two parts. 30% for locked video files and 70% for normal files. When the size of locked videos reaches the limitation, they will be overwritten to leave space for new locked videos. Thanks for your reminder, we will take your desire not to overwrite the locked videos into consideration and will optimize this.
Click to expand...
Why do you think a customer would press LOCK??? Because they want to save a footage right??? Now why would you overwrite it? Because you have reached a limit of the memory card, understood. But, NOBODY is telling you that you must delete the saved footage. You are deciding it's best for the customer to delete their saved footage without their approval. You are not asking customers anymore if they want to save it. You don't care because you see the memory card is full and you will delete it. This is totally completely wrong and it should never be this way. If a customer has as memory card and they can record 600 minutes for example. WHY is it so important that you delete the 1 minute of saved video? Why don't you delete 599 minutes and leave the 1 minute alone until the customer deletes it.
How will it make any difference to a customer that has 599 minutes on memory card instead of 600? No customer can tell the difference. But at the end of the vacation the customer remembers that there was a video they want to retrieve and it's gone.
I hope it understand this, because you would never build something like this in the first place. You care that a customer gets 600 minutes and throw away an important video so they don't lose 1 minute.
Truck had something lose fall out and they kept driving. I hit save. But NOT according to Viofo. According to viofo it's "I will hold on to this 1 minute video just for a little while and then I will overwrite it because I won't permanently lock it." This is horrible. I didn't have to time deal with checking the dash camera during my 8 hour drive and the next day when I finally had time it was gone. 128GB memory card
I would be much happier if I have only 599 minutes to record and 1 minute is permanently saved until I delete it myself or format the memory card.
Basically I didn't need to press LOCK as the video would be lost anyways.
1688613505726.png
 
VIOFO-Support said:
As we have explained before, basically, the space of the card is divided into two parts. 30% for locked video files and 70% for normal files. When the size of locked videos reaches the limitation, they will be overwritten to leave space for new locked videos. Thanks for your reminder, we will take your desire not to overwrite the locked videos into consideration and will optimize this.
Click to expand...
Is this identical for all viofo dashcams?
It would explain why my A139 Pro, when using a small partition, has only the latest locked video but a few non-locked videos on the card, while the earlier locked videos are vanished.
Edit: found your older posts about this in the A139 Pro sub-forum.
This is quite weird imo. Why not make it 70/30 RO/non-locked?
If I have space for 10 videos, I can only lock 3 of them.
If I format the card and only record 5 videos but lock all of them, I'll end up with only 3 videos, although I didn't reach the storage-limit of 10 videos at all.

Imo it would only make sense to always keep space for 1 current video but make the rest lockable.
Or at least give a beep+speech warning, when the lock-limit is reached so the driver can stop soon and download the videos he wanted to save.

PS: yes, I know, the annoying German customer again with the stupid data protection laws.
This 30/70 thing completely kills the possibility to only use something like 4x 1min loops but being able to lock what's needed in an accident.
I'd really like a setting to either get rid of the 30/70 limits and simply make all videos lockable and then stop the recording ¦¦ or make a setting that overwrites the loop constantly and only stores the current loop, if the emergency button is pressed or the G-sensor triggers (I'm willing to beta-test custom firmwares! I'd even be open to help code them :))
 
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dashcams said:
If a customer has as memory card and they can record 600 minutes for example. WHY is it so important that you delete the 1 minute of saved video? Why don't you delete 599 minutes and leave the 1 minute alone until the customer deletes it.
Click to expand...

That's literally not how it works. Sounds like your fault for storing wayyyyy too many locked files on the card and being too lazy to move it off onto a computer.
 
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