Any other usable batteries apart from the Cellink or Thnkware?

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As per the the title, are there other usable (cheaper), alternative batteries for battery back up in parking mode other then the Cellink or Thinkware ones as they seem to be really expensive?
 
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Not that i'm aware of. Doesn't help but the reason they are expensive is the type of battery inside that needs to be able to charge very quickly without the risk of catching fire as a normal lithium battery could when charged at that rate.
 
Thanks ... but ..thats annoying.

I've got very disillusioned with my F770 as the costs to run it properly seem to be spiralling.

I bought the camera after the car was hit while it was parked on the street while i was at work. I initially only installed the front camera but the SD card supplied wasn't big enough to record the entire day in parking mode so i had to invest in a larger more expensive card. (Time lapse mode is completely useless and I'm not even sure why it has this option tbh, so i have to use the motion sensor).
Even on its least sensitive setting parking mode it records everything, even the rain.
As soon as I installed the rear camera the now camera stops recording after around 5 hours even with the voltage cut off set to 12V.
So it looks like i'm going to have to invest around double the amount of the initial cost of the camera ust to get the camera to monitor my car while I'm at work.
And for all of this the quality is mediocre unless its really bright outside!
 
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Thanks ... but ..thats annoying.

I've got very disillusioned with my F770 as the costs to run it properly seem to be spiralling.

I bought the camera after the car was hit while it was parked on the street while i was at work. I initially only installed the front camera but the SD card supplied wasn't big enough to record the entire day in parking mode so i had to invest in a larger more expensive card. (Time lapse mode is completely useless and I'm not even sure why it has this option tbh, so i have to use the motion sensor).
Even on its least sensitive setting parking mode it records everything, even the rain.
As soon as I installed the rear camera the now camera stops recording after around 5 hours even with the voltage cut off set to 12V.
So it looks like i'm going to have to invest around double the amount of the initial cost of the camera ust to get the camera to monitor my car while I'm at work.
And for all of this the quality is mediocre unless its really bright outside!
I’m sorry for reviving an old thread, but I’ve ordered an F770 and should receive it next week. I’m a little disappointed already and I haven’t even used it. I wanted the system primarily for parking mode and I keep reading about all of its shortcomings. Also the finicky nature in regards to SD cards is a big concern.
 
I am still to find an alternative battery, so it looks like I'm going to have to shell out for one of the expensive ones.

If you haven't got the camera and can get a refund for the camera I would. Its short coming compared to it's expensive price just doesn't make financial sense compared to others on the market.
I recently had to use the camera to identify a moving vehicle. Now I have the 2 cameras fitted the image quality is not great at all. Even using an aftermarket image viewing system I was barely able to read the number plate. I had make 6 different guesses and compare these guess to a national vehicle data base before i could identify the vehicle concerned. When i had to do this using just the front camera this was not an issue.
 
I totally disagree about mediocre quality unless it's bright outside, i've never seen another dashcam with the nighttime recording quality of a Thinkware, even Blackvue there isn't much difference daytime but you can see the Thinkware is better in low light. Yes they are fussy with memory cards, genuine cards have S.P.O.R (Sudden Power Off Recovery) and not all cards have this, also why would you buy a quality product and then want to use a 'possibly' sub standard memory card inside and risk losing the footage. It would only take a few people to lose footage through a poor memory card and it would be all over the internet blaming the actual cameras and damage the Thinkware brand through no fault of there own.

As for parking mode recording the length of time does vary a lot from car to car and it's impossible to guess as there are so many contributing factors like: What condition is the battery in, what size battery is fitted, is the vehicle driven a lot to keep it well charged, external temperature, are there any other small faults on the car draining the battery whilst parked? I've known vehicles only get about 3hrs, i've known vehicles get 24hrs!
 
Well you would disagree about the image quality wouldn't you as you are the official seller of Thinkware products in the UK!

I can upload the footage if you like and show you how poor the quality is when running both front and rear cameras. The footage concerned was also taken on an overcast day and not sunny so if its worse in bright conditions there's no hope.

Its fine just to watch whats going on but to actually read the number plate and identify a car (which is what its there for isn't it?), the quality is not good at all.

As i said running just one camera I was able to identify a number plate on a moving car on a previous attempt without issue.

Considering the price of the complete package, the F770 is not a great viable option at all. By the time you add the price of a very necessary128gb card and a battery to actually make the parking mode useable with 2 cameras the cost is around £600. When you them compare the quality of this £600 system to any other £300 GoPro camera the quality is very poor indeed.

Yes the Gopro is not a dash cam but for the price to make the F770 (and possibly other Thinkware models) actually usable the price is just too high.

My car by the way only 18 months old with a very large battery so I know the car is not the problem. The battery is so good that the 'stop- start' function kick in within 5 minutes of running then engine, a function which only happens when the battery is sufficiently charged.

Regarding putting in sub-standard memory cards. I'm a preffesional photographer and companies like Sandisk are not inferior at all.
Are Thinkware cards still re branded Lexar cards who no longer produce memory cards for the public?
 
As i said running just one camera I was able to identify a number plate on a moving car on a previous attempt without issue.
one camera or two isn't the issue, in some situations you won't get a good capture, very much dependent on the situation you're in at the time, lighting, movement etc
 
I would totally agree that lighting conditions can make a massive difference to image quality.

In my mind though a dry, bright, overcast day should produce good (but possibly 'flat' results). I was also trying to identify a car traveling in the same direction as i was going too which again should be favourable over a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction.

Are you saying that adding the rear camera does not reduce image quality on the F770 as I'm sure every review i read it actually does.
 
the chipset they use is capable of much higher bitrate in single channel mode which would give a greater result, from what I know they aren't doing that, in two channel mode the chipset struggles, it's a limitation of the hardware
 
Which is why the quality of the of my footage is so poor. I rest my case.

Bottom line is if you want to run 2 cameras the F770 is not a good choice. Its ok if your car is stationary and the car you want to identify is stationary but if both cars are moving then you will struggle for sure.

In a bid to get the quality back up again I've now disconnected my rear camera. This has worked and I've now also now get a full day recording in parking mode back too.

Its just really annoying that ThinkWare gets great reviews for products that really are not fit for purpose in the real world.

I wonder if any of the other Thinkware models are any better tbh but at their prices i don't think i'll ever take the chance to find out.
 
Search the F50 threads for sample video and see for yourself, I've seen Bigfoot sightings that had superior quality
 
I would love to say that makes me so glad i bought the F770 instead of the F100 but as the quality with 2 cameras on the F700 is so poor I can't. :oops:

So in summary my thoughts about the F770 are;

1. Thinkware make their cameras to only really accept their own SD cards at hugely inflated prices that they only guarantee for 6 months (which in my opinion really says a lot about the quality of these cards) despite ThinkWare telling customers that their cards are the 'Rolls Royce' of cards. :ROFLMAO:
2. The quality when viewing footage on the Thinkware App is so bad Thinkware actually recommend using an alternative player instead of theirs. :eek:
3. If you leave your car for the day while at work, the parking mode only really works with a 128gb card or greater if you want your vehicle covered all day. (see point 1)
4. If you want to run 2 cameras you will also need to buy one of their expensive batteries to get the parking mode to run all day otherwise the cameras will stop working after about 4 hours.
5. Time lapse parking mode is so ineffective as a 'mode' it just isn't worth having as an option.
6. In parking mode even in the most insensitive setting it records EVERYTHING that moves. Even rain landing on the windscreen.
6. If you run 2 cameras you will struggle to identify a vehicles registration plate in the footage if both vehicles are on the move at speed.
7. In incident mode the least sensitive setting never goes off (even if you hit really large potholes) but just one setting up it activates when going over almost every speed bump and small imperfections in the road.

I could go on but .... :unsure:

In short I would not recommend an F770 camera (and at present not any other ThinWare product) to anyone.
I've already pusuaded 3 of my friends not to buy one and make the same costly mistake I have and will continue to do so to other people who remark on how unobtrusive the camera is on the windscresn (its only really good point and even then Thinkware and most other manufacturers it would seem, only make products that allow the lens to be as close the centre of the windscreen as possible for left hand drive cars).

We all buy products that tick all the boxes on paper and get great reviews in reviews (biased perhaps?) but i reality are really not that good in our life and in my case its the ThinkWare F770 ....
 
Interestingly no reply form the ThinkWare distributer ...
 
Interestingly no reply form the ThinkWare distributer ...
Think you for your detailed replies. I’m definitely going to consider sending it back and going with something else asi I would hate to have to also get a Celllink to get a parking mode that works. Or I may just run the front camera and not the rear. I’m really conflicted at this point.
 
I wanted a front and rear discreet camera that had a parking mode to cover my car while i am at work all day and I'd love to give this camera a good review because on paper it has everything i needed however it just doesn't perform in the real world.
The F800 may be better and actually perform in the real world but there is way I'd buy another ThinkWare product based on my experiences with the F770.
 
In many ways I agree. I have been running my F770 for a little over a year now and have come to not really like it too much. Till a few days ago, I have only used one other camera (Blackvue DR650GW) so I can't really say if the quality is good or bad overall. I am still loving my Blackvue, it has done it's job by saving me money in two accidents. Back to the F770, I am still running an older firmware and understand the newer ones render almost any other memory card unusable. Do the newer firmware versions improve the video quality? Probably not, I never checked. My card selection is still limited though. The older Samsung Evo U1 cards worked, but the newer U3 cards are rejected. Now the U1 cards price tripled. The Sandisk Ultra A1 is now what I I can use.

Parking mode, it picks up a lot of useless video, but that is a given with so much moving around. Mine misses a lot of stuff too. I got a nasty door ding at work, it never recorded the truck that pulled into and out of the parking space next to me. It did record the person walking away from and to his truck a few times. At the time I had my timed cutoff set to 6 hours, now I have it set to 12 hours. You can see this video here... https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/parking-mode-door-ding.34919/

So far I haven't found a need for the extra battery pack. I am still using the car's main battery with no low voltage cutoff at 10 hours.

A couple other problems I ran into are the buttons started rattling like crazy and sometimes the memory card misses the track, ending up inside the camera housing elsewhere. I gave up trying to use the wifi to recover video, the app crashes every other video I preview.

Recently picked up a Blackvue DR590-2CH to install in the wife's car and a Street Guardian SGGCX2 to use with a suction cup in other vehicles. Don't think I'll get another Thinkware.
 
I've fitted the Cellink Neo6 battery in a bid to get parking recording all the time the car is left while I'm at work now that i have 2 camera. There was no way i was going to buy another Thinkware product and buy their battery just in case its as bad / quirky as the F770.
I starting to think the only who actually think the F770 is a good camera are the people that sell them and reviewers who may not had had to pay for them in the 1st place.
 
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