A139 parking mode

savcoco

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Neamt
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Romania
Dash Cam
Viofo A139
Just buy a A139 dashcam on 2 ch and I dont get it how Parking mode works. Mention that I try to use camera without HK3 hardware kit, the camera is connected to a usb powerbank when parked (30.000mA powerbank). I attached the settings bellow and mention that with these settings the camera records all the time, it seems not be able to enter in parking mode. From Customer support I know that the camera should be enter in parking mode in 5 minutes of 000km/h and without G sensor impact. What should I do? I want that camera start record in auto event detect/motion detection not recording all the time. Any ideas? Thanks!
 

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It should go into parking mode, I have low bit rate parking mode, I can't remember if it makes a noise going into parking mode, but when I drive off coming out of parking mode to driving mode mine announces "starting 2 channel recording.."

Your settings look fine - are you getting a steady gps light?
 
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Using a power bank are a ghetto way to get parking mode, so not something that are advised to do in general, but its true some people use it.
With the proper hard wire kit the system seem to work fine, and it probably also would if a proper dashcam power pack was inserted on the 12 V side of things.

But connecting a 5V USB power bank and you go old school, and run into a couple of requirements.
1: the system must be able to enter parking mode from sensor input, often this was G-sensor i think.
2: Or the most ghetto result, which is the camera will just record normally for as long as there is juice on the battery.

Some systems have a option for 2 or 3 wire parking mode, the 2 wire are the old fashioned way relying on a sensor to change to parking mode, which some brands dident even bother with back in the day, 3 wire hard wire kits where the one +12V wire are the trigger signal are now the norm it seem.
 
I'd just get the A139 HWK. Works flawlessly and has adjustable low-voltage cutoff. Motion detect with pre-buffering works excellently in this cam, with all cams detecting motion, not just the front cam like some do.

Phil
 
No sneaking up on the van :)
 
O it operate on motion detect o_O
I could imagine that could be a problem in parking lots / places with lots of movement, or at least movement more than every 5 minute.
That could be why OP did not see the camera go into parking mode, could also be he is impatient and have only waited a couple of minutes. :)
I suggest to cover windows / cameras with a towel to make sure the cameras see no movement, just that one time so you can make sure it work, and feel good / safe with your viofo product.
 
1. Reset camera to default values
2. Set the date/hour
3. Format the card
4. Enable parking Mode
5. Turn Off, turn On the camera by removing power cable
6. Be sure the GPS is connected to the satellites. Do not try this at home, try in the car under clear sky.
7. Camera will enter into Parking Mode after 5 minutes with the car parked!

Without HK3 the camera is using satelites to enter in parking mode. If you will not allow this it will never work.
 
Having used both M/D and low bitrate with this cam I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both. In a low-motion setting using M/D doesn't eat up card space but with 3 cams and using L/B a card gets filled up fast so you won't have recordings from previous days. With more motion it's a toss-up; that will fill a card too. But with as good as the M/D is done with this cam, if you use a low or medium sensitivity the 'false alarms' will be minimal. This is my first cam where I've found M/D to be rel;able enough for me to consider it usable. Having both choices is good :) My only 'complaint' is that you can't select only G-sensor detection- M/D must also be enabled for it to work- but I'm more skeptical about G/S than I am M/D as it won't capture many forms of vandalism, only impacts :(

Without a large dose of AI there can't be any perfection of parking modes; they will always be too much or too little and you'll be left digging through many files to find an event or it won't be there at all :cautious: I think the A139 has hit the right balance with the technology now used in dashcams for parking modes, no others are any better :cool:

Phil
 
On CCTV cameras, usually the FPS is low. This means that for security purposes low FPS is the correct choice. Even 2FPS or 5 FPS can be enough.
When using Parking Mode the idea is almost the same, the dashcam become a surveillance camera. Why not using it with low FPS? The audio offered by low bitrate is so important? Or more important is to have enough space on card to record all activity around car?
Do not forget that when it is almost dark outside the motion detect will not work even the camera can offer useful images which can be recorded in low bitrate mode or time lapse mode.
 
Do not forget that when it is almost dark outside the motion detect will not work even the camera can offer useful images which can be recorded in low bitrate mode or time lapse mode.

Where I used to live there was some lighting in the parking lot, and M/D worked well at any hour of the day or night up close, and close is where parking events occur. I still have some lighting parked here at home, much less than before, but the M/D still performs well. With zero lighting only the IR-illuminated cabin cam would detect motion. I have actually tested that too, and walking right beside the van within view of the cabin cam activated recording every time, one meter away wasn't reliable, and nothing past that. The front cam of course sees nothing in total darkness and I expect the rear cam to be the same, but to the rear the cabin cam's IR still detected me at the rear doors of my van. Given a little light you get useful images at least as good as most other cams can do. Only a well-tuned IMX291 cam does better with this and then not by a lot.

I've never been a believer in M/D as I've never seen it done this well; normally it's crappy and nearly useless. Before low-bitrate I trusted only full-time recording. L/B is probably the best way to go with most cams and you can have it here too if you prefer it. I'm a cautious and skeptical person but this cam has convinced me that M/D can be a viable option here even if I wouldn't use it with other cams.

Phil
 
On CCTV cameras, usually the FPS is low. This means that for security purposes low FPS is the correct choice. Even 2FPS or 5 FPS can be enough.
When using Parking Mode the idea is almost the same, the dashcam become a surveillance camera. Why not using it with low FPS? The audio offered by low bitrate is so important? Or more important is to have enough space on card to record all activity around car? ...
What good it is for to have a slideshow of how somebody "supposedly" backed into your car or smashed a wing mirror while passing on a freeway..? CCTV uses low fps because most of the time there are plenty of them, their FoV is much larger (not to mention specific angle of a view) and most of the time are used for slow objects as humans are or just for monitoring purposes.
 
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In CCTV with a camera filming people walking around i could do with a lesser FPS.
Okay if someone hit your car in a parking lot it is probably also going to be at slow speed.

Still in CCTV i would not accept below 25 FPS and in dashcams 30 FPS, and i use 30 FPS low bitrate which i found that even if it is low bitrate i can still resolve the license plate on a car passing by at 60 kmh

In CCTV 5 FPS will be fine in a camera say monitoring your driveway, with a trip wire or intrusion rule, to set off a alarm or another set of events.
Myself i have a couple of tripwires around my parked car, this make it fairly easy to re-frame as i dont always park in exactly the same place, so every day getting home i have to check alignment on my parked car is okay, and then if i change it save the new correct position as waypoint 1 as thats what my tripwires are attached to.
But the IP camera aimed at my car are still 30 FPS,,,,, or i think so, CUZ taking the raw footage strait from the NVR and uploading it to youtube it come out as 1440p 60 FPS,,,,,,,, which i dont get.
 
Time-lapse can be OK for parking, but not when too slow. I wouldn't want less than 1FPS and to me anyway any longer times would be on the verge of useless. The menu selection with most dashcams offer this and worse; I'd like to see more in the other direction such as 2 or 3 FPS and losing the 3-5 second choices. By that point there's little advantage over low-bitrate as far as the amount of data being sent to the card.

The idea is to always have the needed images in good detail without fail. The only positive way to achieve this is continuous normal recording which is hard on cards and cams both. Always a compromise but good to have workable choices since each of us will want something different :cool:

Phil
 
I'm of the opinion that 1~5 fps time lapse is an OK parking mode, it saves space and hopefully reduces CPU heat output. I can imagine motion detection to be quite stressful as the visual sensor chip is running all the time, filling up the input frame buffer and the CPU constantly comparing frame by frame to look for changes. The annoyance of this is even in the lowest setting, my A129 Duo still picks up changes in brightness when the clouds pass by. So now I'm on 2 fps time lapse instead of motion detect because I got tired of looking at 30 fps of nothing happening. Having a continuous file that shows 30 minutes of real time played back in 2 minutes does help locate an incident a bit more quickly. Downside is there's no audio.

In moderately low light situation (dusk, etc), I think the low frame rate also helps the sensor expose a bit longer. However if object is moving quickly this will result in motion blur. In very low light situations, it wouldn't help at all (and I think the camera has a limit to how slow the exposure time can get to prevent excessive motion blur). For example, a 1 fps video doesn't expose every frame at 1 second.

For home monitoring, I think 15~20 fps is an acceptable compromise between storage space, network bandwidth, streaming stability (related to network bandwidth), and being able to see something happening.
 
2- 5 fps should get you what you need. Low light recording has it's own limits for each cam but there may be something in the difference at dawn and dusk- would be nice if someone did some deeper research with that to see is there's any noticeable difference in the images. Can't really compare to security cams as those have better heat management and space to allow for switchable IR filters etc, plus they usually don't have as much fast motion to deal with.

I think the future is in AI and having a cam smart enough to know what you want then adjust itself to provide that. AI is still in infancy so I'm not betting on when it happens or what the associated cost will be.

Phil
 
Thanks for all replies! For the moment I use a Sandisk ultra card, and in 2 days I will receive high endurance card and I will make all your suggestions to see if its ok! Now it is in time lapse mode and recording all the time with 5fps. I will write again in 2 or 3 days when I will receive the endurance memory card.
 
Today I sent the front camera to Viofo again because it didnt pass some tests and seems to be a problem. I hope to give you good news when I will receive it again. Soon I ll be back here! Thank you!
 
What is the firmware version installed on it?
 
I tried wirh to firmware version, 1113 and 1221. Yesterday I spoke with the seller, with original charger the camera went in Parking mode, but the Viofo charger is not usb, is cigarette 12V. On powerbank, A139 camera has not entering in all Parking mode: event detection or time lapse.
 
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