A139 (Pro) Telephoto Remote Camera

[pinoyplaya4life]

Exactly… no real calculations to show….

 

[Dashmellow]

Exactly… no real calculations to show….

Still trolling obviously.

Hope your new lens fits after all of your "calculations"!

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

Still trolling obviously.

Hope your new lens fits after all of your "calculations"!

Not trolling….. enlighten me with where you think the lens fits in the A139 remote camera. I want to see that 5-8 years experience come to play, without physically buying the camera or lens… lets see that design.

Would love to see what you come up with.


You have the specs of the lens, some camera specs available online and Tony has already taken measurements of some important parameters. You should be able to come up with the lens placement within the camera assembly.

Lets see it?

 

[Dashmellow]

Not trolling….. enlighten me with where you think the lens fits in the A139 remote camera. I want to see that 5-8 years experience come to play, without physically buying the camera or lens… lets see that design.

Would love to see what you come up with.

So, you claim not be a troll but here you are still baiting me? No thanks, I have no interest in having any further interaction with you. "Don't feed the trolls", as they say.

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

So, you claim not be a troll but here you are still baiting me? No thanks, I have no interest in having any further interaction with you. "Don't feed the trolls", as they say.

It’s simple… its either
1.) you have no idea how to do it
2.) you will end up with the same results I’ve already shown which you have not proven to be incorrect.

 

[TonyM]

Should another person browsing through this forum purchase the same 8mm lens Tony purchased (to be installed on the A139 interior/exterior camera)? I would advise against it, especially if they are new to this since its not a simple plug and play.

I don't think any third party lens will be a simple plug and play with this remote camera. Not everyone has the right tools and parts to open the housing, remove the lens, focus the new one and secure it in position, and finally figure out how to mount it. It's not hard, but it takes a good hour or two to get everything done and back up and running in the car, not accounting for further focus or position adjustments.

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

I don't think any third party lens will be a simple plug and play with this remote camera. Not everyone has the right tools and parts to open the housing, remove the lens, focus the new one and secure it in position, and finally figure out how to mount it. It's not hard, but it takes a good hour or two to get everything done and back up and running in the car, not accounting for further focus or position adjustments.

I should clarify what I meant by “plug and play”. By that I meant no real modifications needed to any physical parts of the camera. Modifications such as cutting parts of it, opening up the camera lens cover opening diameter to fit a larger diameter lens, changing the lens holder to non-stock holder, … etc. These modifications I would say are not plug an play.

Opening up the camera and removing the old lens to replace it with a new one I would consider plug and play. Similar to how you first used the 6mm lens. Granted you spent some time adjusting focus, but it didn’t need any cutting or etc.

Same way how you would have to replace RAM on your computer… this I would consider plug and play. You still have to open the computer up and get to the ram but in most cases, you don’t need to cut anything to make room for the RAM.

But I guess others might consider plug and play to something along the lines of plugging in a usb stick to a computer. So I should clarify what I intended to mean by it. Since it is a DIY afterall.

 

[joe384]

Yes, of course there are differences. But are they enough to justify buying another camera, having another camera on the windshield, using more power in parking mode (2CH vs 1CH)? I like having the redundancy of a second camera, and looking at other examples there are times when the difference between these two is much greater, so I will continue using 2 cameras. However I am already thinking about installing this 8mm telephoto in a higher resolution camera.

Very interesting videos. There are sometimes when I noticed the 4K actually captures a slightly better number plate read, this seems to be when the car is on the edge of the view of the telephoto ( I assume this is because of motion blur) but in mostly all cases the telephoto edges out.

I currently have an original mobius (with the varifocal) and an A139, and so can have the mobius switched off in parking mode. I do like the idea of doing a rear telephoto camera as wellusing your idea, but I will obviously have the same problem (not being able to switch it off independently)

I suppose it's not impossible within the firmware to switch off the extra cameras when in parking mode, obviously viofo would have to develop and add that feature!

 

[TonyM]

I don't need a telephoto in parking mode, which is one reason I've wondered whether I really want to use a modified remote camera for my telephoto. It will run down my parking mode battery a bit faster.

 

[viofo]

I don't think any third party lens will be a simple plug and play with this remote camera. Not everyone has the right tools and parts to open the housing, remove the lens, focus the new one and secure it in position, and finally figure out how to mount it. It's not hard, but it takes a good hour or two to get everything done and back up and running in the car, not accounting for further focus or position adjustments.

We just got a new idea about how to implement this, it will come with better specs, and it will take some months for development.
After we confirmed the quality, we can offer some samples to DCT users.
We do wish there is no necessary for the user to replace the lens and do the focus.

 

[TonyM]

We do wish there is no necessary for the user to replace the lens and do the focus.

I fully agree with that. You don't want regular customers opening up cameras.

 

[TonyM]

I have been looking at this 7.8mm lens, as an alternative to my 8mm lens. I recall it was mentioned here a few days ago.

I don't think it was an option when I was looking at lenses in November last year. There was a 6.8mm lens, but not 7.8mm.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802638305097.html



I took a few more measurements of the lens holder in the A139 remote camera and measured the thickness of a typical sensor. Assuming the lens diagram and listed dimensions on AliExpress are accurate, I estimate that this lens will have approximately 0.5mm thread engagement within the lens holder. At 0.5mm pitch that might give a full turn so it might achieve focus, but it might not be a solid connection. So it would probably end up needing a longer lens holder, similar to what I used for my 8mm lens.

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

I have been looking at this 7.8mm lens, as an alternative to my 8mm lens. I recall it was mentioned here a few days ago.

I don't think it was an option when I was looking at lenses in November last year. There was a 6.8mm lens, but not 7.8mm.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802638305097.html

View attachment 63569

I took a few more measurements of the lens holder in the A139 remote camera and measured the thickness of a typical sensor. Assuming the lens diagram and listed dimensions on AliExpress are accurate, I estimate that this lens will have approximately 0.5mm thread engagement within the lens holder. At 0.5mm pitch that might give a full turn so it might achieve focus, but it might not be a solid connection. So it would probably end up needing a longer lens holder, similar to what I used for my 8mm lens.

that’s the one I ordered. There is a missing dimension on the drawing which could impact how it fits through the camera cover. But I assume that’s 14mm…or hope it is (just looking at how big it is scaled between the 12mm and 18mm diameters). The seller hasn’t given me that dimension yet.

Also looking at the 12mm version but the 15mm diameter might be too big to fit on the lens cover; preventing the lens to go in or I won’t be able to put the cover back on. I don’t have dimensions for that inner diameter.

Did you happen to measure the diameter of the lens cover ID? I recall you said the 8mm lens you had just barely fit and that has 14mm diameter within that section. I think the hole in the cover might be 14.5-15mm since it had a bit of clearance. But that clearance really is meant for positioning tolerance. So the 12mm I’m looking at would have issues fitting through.

Here’s the 12mm lens spec below and the missing dimension on the 7.8mm.

Was looking at lenses between 8mm-12mm. I think 12mm would be my max based on how far I want to see. And you’ve already shown what 8mm looks like which might be the best better pov. But after seeing your 4K vs 8mm comparison, the two wasn’t that much different in terms of seeing plates. I wanted an advantage to 4k and more convinced to try find a 12mm that would fit. Might need to enlarge the lens cover hole which is easier to do without damage to camera.

 

[TonyM]

I have now moved the 8mm telephoto lens across to my Mobius 1S. It has a long lens holder right at the front of the camera, and it is much easier to work with for opening the body, lens removal and focusing.

The A139 remote camera is probably the second-easiest camera that I have used for lens replacement, and I hope the information in this thread helps others who might want to try a similar modification.

 

[Harsh]

Been rewatching some of my old videos from the 8 and 12mm, and samples in this and other threads by TonyM. I feel 8mm is not enough zoom and 12mm is a tad too much. Haven't come across any 10mm lenses on AE in my past searches, but if Viofo is looking at a custom lens, 9.5-10mm IMO would be the sweet spot.

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

Been rewatching some of my old videos from the 8 and 12mm, and samples in this and other threads by TonyM. I feel 8mm is not enough zoom and 12mm is a tad too much. Haven't come across any 10mm lenses on AE in my past searches, but if Viofo is looking at a custom lens, 9.5-10mm IMO would be the sweet spot.

I would agree. Have had no luck finding anything in between 8mm and 12mm though.

Here’s some POV videos on a 12mm lens on a remote A129 pro duo. I believe the remote cameras are the same sensor (or size) as the A139, so results should be identical.

I like that you can still see the entire car when stopped just a good normal distance from the car in front of you. I also like how he was able to clearly capture plates of cars on the other side of the light (it doesn’t look like the 4k camera was able to capture any of it at all). If I can’t find a 10mm (that meets all other requirements), I might give the 12mm one a shot and just modify the A139 front cover to increase the inner diameter (I measured it with a ruler and came out to be close to 15mm) and allow for the lens to pass through (15mm diameter). I’d want a bit of clearance to account for tolerances between the lens, lens mount, and lens cover true position.

 

[TonyM]

Also looking at the 12mm version but the 15mm diameter might be too big to fit on the lens cover; preventing the lens to go in or I won’t be able to put the cover back on. I don’t have dimensions for that inner diameter.

Did you happen to measure the diameter of the lens cover ID? I recall you said the 8mm lens you had just barely fit and that has 14mm diameter within that section. I think the hole in the cover might be 14.5-15mm since it had a bit of clearance. But that clearance really is meant for positioning tolerance. So the 12mm I’m looking at would have issues fitting through.

I measured the aperture at 14.1mm (min) if you really want to know. That won't be a big problem for the 12mm lens though, since the front plate is ~17.5mm from the sensor. The front end of the lens will sit just in front of the plastic front plate.

You would have to slide the lens in through the hole before screwing it into the holder. I did that with my 8mm lens. The tricky bit is getting inside to tighten the lens collar once you get the lens in focus. You can see that part-assembled state in this photo:

 

[pinoyplaya4life]

I measured the aperture at 14.1mm (min) if you really want to know. That won't be a big problem for the 12mm lens though, since the front plate is ~17.5mm from the sensor. The front end of the lens will sit just in front of the plastic front plate.

You would have to slide the lens in through the hole before screwing it into the holder. I did that with my 8mm lens. The tricky bit is getting inside to tighten the lens collar once you get the lens in focus. You can see that part-assembled state in this photo:

Thanks for the measurement. 17.5mm distance from sensor to front of lens cover (when closed) should work… perhaps too close. Based on my calculation, the start of the 15mm flange on the 12mm lens should sit around (13.9mm + 4.67mm + sensor thickness) measured from the PCB which is greater than 17.5mm you measured. So it should work as you said.

Hm… now I want to try that 12mm. Still looking for somewhere in between 8mm - 10mm.

On other aspects of the lens….

I’m thinking having aperture of f4 (or smaller; higher f-stop) might yield better results to increase depth of field and account for the changes in DOF due to focal length change compared to stock. Otherwise, the sides will have a hard time capturing license plates.

Might narrow my search down to f4-f8. f8 might be too dark at night but since plates are overexposed due to headlights, perhaps that would work out in its favor.

 

[TonyM]

Personally, I wouldn't go slower than F2 on a telephoto. At F8 you will only capture number plates if nothing is moving.

 

[viofo]

I am afraid the 10mm and 12mm lens FOV is too small.
Also we need to balance the lens length, too long does not look good.
The 6mm lens I tested before is only a little high than a regular lens.
I am checking a lens designed for car manufacture, the FOV(D) is about 83 degrees, and the FOV(H) is 65 degrees, will it be too wide for a telephoto lens?