A139 Firmware

[kamkar]

I think more are working towards the smart cameras, as that seem to be popular.Personally i have no problem retrieving my memory card once a month and grab a few moments saved in the RO / event folder.
But if you for some reason save everything, then smarts would be good if they can make it work,,,,, but i dont personally understand people what save everything.

 

[ras07]

I screwed the A139 over the network to a stationary NVR, the rtsp stream from A139 is written as from an additional IP-camera. But now I'm waiting for it to become possible to receive a stream in parking mode.
When Viofo gives the opportunity to automatically turn on WiFi Station Mode when switching to parking mode?

 

[ChampaRando]

@viofo @VIOFO-Support
Any possibility of A139 having Station Mode in parking mode? It is supported in Thinkware, Blackvue. I am sure you guys can add an always on station mode option in the app? So people who dont need it can disable it?

 

[Nath]

@viofo @VIOFO-Support
Any possibility of A139 having Station Mode in parking mode? It is supported in Thinkware, Blackvue. I am sure you guys can add an always on station mode option in the app? So people who dont need it can disable it?

They are probably afraid of overheating issues. They mentioned it's possible to implement this and they could make a beta firmware for testing but I haven't heard from them any update on that ever since.

Only yesterday I've got an email on my questions (from about a month ago) about issues in StationMode firmware and they only provided me a link for the v1.6_0708...

 

[HonestReview]

They are probably afraid of overheating issues. They mentioned it's possible to implement this and they could make a beta firmware for testing but I haven't heard from them any update on that ever since.

Only yesterday I've got an email on my questions (from about a month ago) about issues in StationMode firmware and they only provided me a link for the v1.6_0708...

Considering the heat issues of the A139 on a sunny day, I doubt the A139 would survive to be useful long term in station mode. I had a discussion with @jokiin who told me 3 channel cameras have struggled with heat issues. This is one reason Street Guardian hasn't entered the playing field. In addition to lack of demand.

None the less, I tested both my cameras, and if parked in the sun for a while, they eventually overheat. Corrupting last file being written. So it's very safe to say Station Mode with low bitrate Recording wouldn't be all that beneficial.

If someone wants 3 channel, cloud support, and doesn't mind spending a fortune, picking up a a duo channel blackvue and a single channel blackvue would be about it. Someone mentioned there's a way to trick at least one model (not sure about others) into continuous recording. And of course Blackvue offers cloud support.

Unfortunately, for an actual 3 channel single setup, I think we will have to wait for technology to catch up. Right now, there doesn't appear to be a good way to cool the processor enough to keep from overheating. So more power efficient processors + better cooling is needed.

 

[Nath]

Considering the heat issues of the A139 on a sunny day, ...

I still haven't encountered them on my two 3Ch units. The worst scenario I noticed is one VHB sticker failure and sometimes a lost of focus on remote cameras. But yeah, StationMode will surely increase the heat and A139 could fail.

But summer is only part of year.

 

[HonestReview]

I still haven't encountered them on my two 3Ch units. The worst scenario I noticed is one VHB sticker failure and sometimes a lost of focus on remote cameras.

Not to mention that summer is only part of the year.

I've tested two cameras out (original and replacement), and both from different batches. Each in a 3 channel setup. Both those cameras act identically where they overheat and corrupt the last file being written. I even tested 3 different sd cards. Sandisk A2 Extreme, Sandisk High Endurance Samsung Pro Select.

Unless the beta batches were made in some completely different manner, this seems to be an issue across the board. It's very unlikely I got 2 dud cameras both repeating same exact behavior.

Yes, summer is only a few months. But from a longterm usage standpoint, if the camera will overheat in the sun, the extra heat generated by station mode won't do the camera further justice. It'll definitely shorten it's life if it hits thermal max continuously with station mode enabled. Necessitating it shut off between 65-70C.

@jokiin stated to me in a private chat, if the camera can't survive in 27-30C sitting in the sun, it'd never make it in Australia. Which is true, and also any are considered the "tropics" with year round hot weather.

 

[jokiin]

Considering the heat issues of the A139 on a sunny day, I doubt the A139 would survive to be useful long term in station mode.

you wouldn't want it to automatically come on every time it went into parking mode, that would be pointless 99% of the time, if you had the option to enable it when you want it though is more logical, realistically when you would use this is when you're at home, parked in your garage, heat is much less likely to be an issue in that situation anyway, could be setup to turn the wifi back off after X minutes of inactivity

 

[HonestReview]

you wouldn't want it to automatically come on every time it went into parking mode, that would be pointless 99% of the time, if you had the option to enable it when you want it though is more logical, realistically when you would use this is when you're at home, parked in your garage, heat is much less likely to be an issue in that situation anyway, could be setup to turn the wifi back off after X minutes of inactivity

Please elaborate as I am a bit confused. What would be the benefit of having Station Mode enabled while the car is parked in a garage or outside in front of your house? I mean I guess if you live in a rough area, then there may be some benefit to monitoring the car. However, I think the main usage for station mode would be for parking in other places. At work, airport, parked on street, etc.

 

[jokiin]

Please elaborate as I am a bit confused. What would be the benefit of having Station Mode enabled while the car is parked in a garage or outside in front of your house? I mean I guess if you live in a rough area, then there may be some benefit to monitoring the car. However, I think the main usage for station mode would be for parking in other places. At work, airport, parked on street, etc.

most people have been looking at station mode as a way to automatically copy files off to a NAS or similar

 

[ChampaRando]

Exactly.
How my Thinkware U1000 and Blackvue DR 750X works is, it has a hotspot mode or wifi mode where camera acts as a client and connects to router's AP. So its their version of station mode.

If the camera cannot connect to an AP within 3 minutes, station mode is off until car enters parking mode again next time.
So if I park in a shopping mall, station mode turns on, fails to connect to my home router, and then wifi is off 3 minutes later. No heat issues!

I come home. It connects to my garage's router AP. My raspberry pi downloads footages and that's it. Easy way to backup event footages only (not the whole thing). In garage, it's no sun, no nothing, never had a heat issue since 3 months.

Even if Viofo adds an option, it will be good.
I only use 2CH anyways, so an option in the app is much better.

Even better would be a wifi cmd to turn the camera OFF remotely. The geofencing for parking mode is not useful for me because if I park outside the garage on the driveway, parking mode is needed but the geofence obviously cannot tell a difference between inside garage and outside garage, so a wifi cmd would be even better as my raspberry pi can turn off the camera in garage, saving power completely! Just like the power button but automatically.

 

[HonestReview]

Exactly.
How my Thinkware U1000 and Blackvue DR 750X works is, it has a hotspot mode or wifi mode where camera acts as a client and connects to router's AP. So its their version of station mode.

These cameras upload to the cloud, though through proprietary manufacturer created hotspots that connect to the camera. Of course, on a viofo, you could set up a hotspot with your car's net, unlocked cell phone, etc. Although, a car's hotspot is natted so you wouldn't be able to remote into the camera and view the footage live from anywhere. As inbound connections would be filtered.

If the camera cannot connect to an AP within 3 minutes, station mode is off until car enters parking mode again next time.
So if I park in a shopping mall, station mode turns on, fails to connect to my home router, and then wifi is off 3 minutes later. No heat issues!

I come home. It connects to my garage's router AP. My raspberry pi downloads footages and that's it. Easy way to backup event footages only (not the whole thing). In garage, it's no sun, no nothing, never had a heat issue since 3 months.

Even if Viofo adds an option, it will be good.
I only use 2CH anyways, so an option in the app is much better.

Even better would be a wifi cmd to turn the camera OFF remotely. The geofencing for parking mode is not useful for me because if I park outside the garage on the driveway, parking mode is needed but the geofence obviously cannot tell a difference between inside garage and outside garage, so a wifi cmd would be even better as my raspberry pi can turn off the camera in garage, saving power completely! Just like the power button but automatically.

Call me dense, but what's the point of downloading videos every night from your garage? Unless there specific event needing saved, I find no purpose in backing up daily driving.

Above my "pay grade" as the saying goes, but did you write a script for the Raspberry Pi to pull off footage? How is the script going to know what video to pull off? Not all footage is tagged an event. There could be something you saw happen on the road, not affecting your car, that needs downloaded. So pretty much that would necessitate manually locating the file

Far as parking mode files, I guess you could automate downloading them upon connecting to a hotspot. Again, way over my head as I don't script or do code.

Either way, I don't see the added benefit of station mode while parked in a garage. Blackvue / Thinkware use station mode to allow you to view the car from anywhere in the world. Or upload, alert, and then be able to pull event footage off the cloud.

The Viofo wouldn't be ideal for 24/7 live recording with station mode to view a live feed from worldwide due to heat. Although I guess Station Mode would still let you pull off files from afar...but again the whole heat issue.

 

[ChampaRando]

My script just downloads all parking / event modes (not motion). So locked files you can say. Yes I get 2-5 false positives in a day, that accounts to roughly 200-300MB. It will transfer in less than 5 minutes via 5GHz (tried it with car ignition on).
I have a large NAS here (20TB+) which stores my home surveillance anyways. This will go there.

These cameras upload to the cloud, though through proprietary manufacturer created hotspots that connect to the camera. Of course, on a viofo, you could set up a hotspot with your car's net, unlocked cell phone, etc. Although, a car's hotspot is natted so you wouldn't be able to remote into the camera and view the footage live from anywhere. As inbound connections would be filtered.

Yes I know they are natted. I am not trying to access anything from afar, or asking viofo to enable an Amazon AWS Server to enable cloud features, like Thinkware Blackvue do (I know Thinkware uses Amazon AWS as I sniffed their app packets once). A simple feature to connect to your LAN in parking is beneficial to many people. These both cameras upload to the cloud, yes. How they do it is, once you're home, it actually first connects to OUR wifi, then through our LAN goes to WAN and into Amazon AWS/Blackvue servers. Why bother with all that, when I can route it to my NAS myself and have more, faster and cheaper storage.

Google "blackvue github" You'll be surprised with how many scripts 100s of people wrote to automate such tasks. Some programs are even SOLD to automate Blackvue downloading.

And how does my script work? It looks in locked files. Looks at file name, takes a month and a year from file name. Then I have set my script to make folders in the NAS according to Year/Month. So 2021_07_23 would end up in folder "MyCar/2021/07" and it will upload it there. It also checks for any files that are older than 3 months in the camera that are locked and will delete them automatically (rather than them building up over time and time as locked files are NEVER overwritten by the camera, until we manually remove/flash SD card). I have this script ready, all it needs is Wi-Fi (or better Station Mode) in parking. My blackvue does this, Viofo needs wifi only.

Now, I do not drive daily, you can say 5 days a week roughly I will drive. Getting even the maximum say 400MB of locked files everyday, in 5 days, that means 400*5=2000MB=2GB per week. This means roughly 104GB per year. That is nothing for a 20TB server. Despite my script deletes files downloaded from the NAS after 3 months anyways so I will nowhere near get that 104GB mark anyways, even if my NAS allows me to.

 

[ChampaRando]

Just to add: This can be very useful for a car leasing/taxi company. I know some companies / truck companies here in Sydney, AU use a Blackvue and they have automated scripts written (simple bash scripts even can do the job), to extract footages.

This can be useful for them too, if they start to buy Viofos.

Also some benefits to me backing up to the cloud: What if my SD Card fails and I lose some footage I actually NEED? It will be a rare occurrence, but we, as humans, only realise it once something happens 😛. Like in Cybersecurity, people don't think about backups or fixing bugs until they are found and exploited and affected. Another thing is, what if some footage I need is overwritten? I know locked file do not get overwritten but there was a bug in Thinkware few months ago, where it did and luckily my cloud backup saved me. To locate the file, like I told you, my structure is similar to the app. In the app, it organises things by "parking/locked/all files". I have the same folder. The app also seperates files by dates. I have got that too! Year/Month structure. It's basically a second backup you can say.

 

[kamkar]

I think first of all a commercial system must be made tamper proof, but otherwise yeah a automated way of getting footage off camera would be very useful.

Sort of related i have just gotten a mail from my phone provider saying that they have upped me to free speech in DK / EU and my data to 50 GB / Mo
Problem is i MAX use 3 hours of talk a month and 3 GB of data, so i contacted them saying i felt it was a bit silly to upgrade me, and if anything the only interests i might have in this would be 5G with flat rate data, and 2 SIM cards so i could put a hot spot in my car.
Then i would at least be ready to test future smart cameras.

 

[joe384]

you wouldn't want it to automatically come on every time it went into parking mode, that would be pointless 99% of the time, if you had the option to enable it when you want it though is more logical, realistically when you would use this is when you're at home, parked in your garage, heat is much less likely to be an issue in that situation anyway, could be setup to turn the wifi back off after X minutes of inactivity

Yes, it turns the wifi off after X minutes of inactivity by default I think.

What ChampaRando wants an option to turn on wifi or station mode when the camera goes to parking mode. If they are parked at home, the script will connect and download footage, if not wifi will turn off because of no activity.
They also want to power off the dashcam through the api so basically they can park at home, script will connect and then power off the dashcam when finished.

It's great to see ChampaRando wants to completly automate this but I think Viofo will probably be focusing on bug fixes mainly.

I myself would be happy just to turn on wifi manually for the moment, it's nice to have everything automated but sometimes it can involve a lot of work to the point when you wonder if it is worth the hassle! 😉

 

[joe384]

Just seen a few mentions of the geofencing, does this option do anything at the moment?

I think I saw a post which said the option is there but nothing is implemented in the firmware.

 

[ChampaRando]

I haven't tested Geofencing at the moment, so I cannot speak for that. But when I asked Viofo regarding my request if there 3exists a CMD to turn off camera, they said to try the Geofencing with the latest beta, so I suppose it works now?

But I feel implementing Wi-Fi auto on or station mode in parking mode is really easy. I just do not have the uncompiled firmware code, else I could do it myself 😛. I don't feel its too much hassle to implement for Viofo, but I agree they will probably fix bugs first before this. 🙁

 

[Nath]

@ChampaRando It's not that hard to get a bit deeper access via internal UARTs (unprotected root access). Probably could be possible to enable StationMode at every parking mode start via script or cron. 🙂

 

[HonestReview]

Just to add: This can be very useful for a car leasing/taxi company. I know some companies / truck companies here in Sydney, AU use a Blackvue and they have automated scripts written (simple bash scripts even can do the job), to extract footages.

This can be useful for them too, if they start to buy Viofos.

Also some benefits to me backing up to the cloud: What if my SD Card fails and I lose some footage I actually NEED? It will be a rare occurrence, but we, as humans, only realise it once something happens 😛. Like in Cybersecurity, people don't think about backups or fixing bugs until they are found and exploited and affected. Another thing is, what if some footage I need is overwritten? I know locked file do not get overwritten but there was a bug in Thinkware few months ago, where it did and luckily my cloud backup saved me. To locate the file, like I told you, my structure is similar to the app. In the app, it organises things by "parking/locked/all files". I have the same folder. The app also seperates files by dates. I have got that too! Year/Month structure. It's basically a second backup you can say.

But your solution doesn't address this concern. Say you are driving and someone hits your car. Even with Wifi, there's no event based cloud service. So you would still need to be driving with Station Mode Activated. And you'd need inbound connections permitted, to be able to access the files from afar. Meaning a rooted cell phone hotspot or router with a sim card that permits such activity.

So I am not sure what your configuration does to address this matter. As the event could be "erased" or "glitched" in some rare off chance between the accident and pulling video off the card taking what you said "What if my SD Card fails and I lose some footage I actually NEED".

And then in parking mode (where camera overheats in hot weather), the same as above applies. What happens if there's an event? Running Station Mode could overheat the camera, meaning it might not be capturing events, if the thermal settings instruct camera to shut down.