A229 Pro has been MUCH more stable!

Have you tried using the included 12V car adapter and power cable as a test?
 
No, as I have no cigarette lighter to plug it in. F150 Powerboosts do not have cigarette lighters upfront. What they do have is an auxiliary 12V battery to provide power to onboard computers during engine start/stop sequence, and I doubled that battery capacity on my truck (and the main 12V battery is maxed out to at H8 size).

Are you suggesting that a brand new, professionally installed HK6 cannot provide a stable power? That does not look good on VIOFO...
I can try to suffer for a bit and power the dashcam from 110V phone charger (so it is electrically isolated from main 12V).
 
sky1111 said:
No, as I have no cigarette lighter to plug it in. F150 Powerboosts do not have cigarette lighters upfront. What they do have is an auxiliary 12V battery to provide power to onboard computers during engine start/stop sequence, and I doubled that battery capacity on my truck (and the main 12V battery is maxed out to at H8 size).

Are you suggesting that a brand new, professionally installed HK6 cannot provide a stable power? That does not look good on VIOFO...
I can try to suffer for a bit and power the dashcam from 110V phone charger (so it is electrically isolated from main 12V).
Click to expand...
I was thinking more just to eliminate any possible issue with the chosen fuses or connections.
 
@sky1111 It's starting to sound like perhaps a problem with the camera itself. Have you tried disconnecting the rear camera ?
Also try powering the camera with the VIOFO supplied cable and a 5V 2.0 A USB supply (iPhone charger) without the rear camera connected.
 
Thank you, @lufa6977 for your suggestion - looks AutoHDR is buggy, was causing reboot.
Once I disabled that, I have not seen any reboots - but too early to conclude yet. With HK4, the dashcam would reboot randomly ANY time of day, so definitely HK4 was a source instability.
 
Folks, we need to differentiate between dashcam unexpected reboot, and normal stop recording, switch HDR setting, resume recording

Eventually I succeeded in toggling HDR using BT remote, and yes, the recording has stopped and then restarted; so it seems to be design limitation and not a bug.
Once I removed HDR switch out of equation, the unexpected restarts seem to disappear. Which means that HK4 was very likely the culprit of random reboots.

Unfortunately we (end users) do not have a direct way of confirming of dashcam's unexpected reboot. In Windows, there is Event Log, System Reliability monitor, etc.
 
@sky1111 just to confirm, you experience unexpected reboots that are NOT happening exactly at T= HDR ON?
But The random boots only happen when the HDR timer is enabled?
 
sky1111 said:
Folks, we need to differentiate between dashcam unexpected reboot, and normal stop recording, switch HDR setting, resume recording

Eventually I succeeded in toggling HDR using BT remote, and yes, the recording has stopped and then restarted; so it seems to be design limitation and not a bug.
Once I removed HDR switch out of equation, the unexpected restarts seem to disappear. .
Click to expand...

As I recall, the "restart" is due to the way VIOFO designed it to behave. I was told it was to cleanly close out the HDR/non-HDR file and resume recording in the new mode.

Once I disabled the HDR timer on my A229 Pro, the restarts ended. Somewhere in one of the A229 Pro threads, there is a mention of this behaviour.
 
Hack_man said:
@sky1111 just to confirm, you experience unexpected reboots that are NOT happening exactly at T= HDR ON?
But The random boots only happen when the HDR timer is enabled?
Click to expand...

In my case, if I had HDR to enable at 7 pm, then the A229 Pro would do a "restart" at 7 pm.
 
Hack_man said:
@sky1111 just to confirm, you experience unexpected reboots that are NOT happening exactly at T= HDR ON?
But The random boots only happen when the HDR timer is enabled?
Click to expand...
No, that's not what I am saying.
- HK4, HDR timer = random restart + HDR timer restart
- HK6, HDR timer = HDR timer restart
- HK6, no HDR timer = no restarts

AutoHDR simply adds noise (as extra restart).
VIOFO 512GB microSD - definitely worth the money IF you can get it a bit cheaper than MSRP (my installer offered it even cheaper than Aliexpress)

Interestingly, the other vehicle that has exactly the same setup with HK4, random reboots are rare, but do happen. I guess next year I will have to replace that with HK6 too...
 
I started a Thread on the subject of reboots caused by the HDR timer. I now understand HDR reboots are expected behavior for Viofo cameras (and Vantrue).
It's not expected behavior for the HK4 to randomly cause restarts. Makes me think that cable is electrically intermittent.
What about -HK4, no HDR timer?
 
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I had HDR timer from the day 1 I had the dashcam installed. Random reboots became a thing much later. There is no reason for reboot, lets say at 10am or 3pm. I would say year one was no reboots, year two of operation reboots became increasingly annoying - and still very random.

I cannot go back to HK4 and try without HDR timer.
 
I want to provide an update here: I can confirm now, that replacing HK4 and turning off auto HDR eliminated random reboots. To be more specific, my HK4 was the real culprit for random reboots - at least for cold time of the year.

We shall see next summer how the dual channel setup handles the hot months.
 
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