Camera suddenly unreliable

japitts

New Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2019
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Bristol
Country
United Kingdom
I've had a DR650GW-1CH fitted since 6 or so years and it's been great.. until the past couple of weeks. We've been on a driving holiday involving several 3 hour+ drives to get there, and then probably 500 miles every few days or so - the point being, it was suddenly doing a lot of recording. It's been used for the same trips twice a year for the past 5 or so years and it's been fine, but maybe a factor I don't know.

Anyhow... first time it played up.. normal running except for audible "please check SD card" audible warning and both LED on permanently... assumed it was an SD fault so reformatted it (card is a 64Gb as old as the camera but it's only been reformatted once before in its life) and thought nothing more of it. 4 or 5 days later...it failed to record a 200mile drive but we didn't get any audible warning. Bought a new SD card and all was ok initially... long story short, both SD are now running fine for a random period of time before the camera locks up on engine-on, and you have to alternate to the other SD.

All points at the camera, but the video files are perfect and it doesn't strike me as a "way" for a digital camera to fail. With the SD in the desktop app, the software reads as V1.00, my reading of the Blackvue site is that V1.004 is available - I will certainly try this, but wondered if anyone else has come across this behaviour previously?

Thanks :)
 
It is a very old camera,,,, at least i would not expect a dashcam to last that long.
BUT ! memory cards are often the culprit of irregular performance, and that might still happen with a brand spanking new memory card, at least that what i have experienced 2 times, and funny enough with the most expensive and fast memory cards i have ever gotten in 64GB size.

You need to keep a eye on what a dashcam record, and you also need to do a in camera format of the memory card every 2-3 months, i use 5-10 minutes on the computer now and then to look over one of the 128 GB cards i use now.
 
Which specific microSD cards are you using?
 
Well on the one hand.. the "original" SD is a Lexar 300x 64Gb SDXC Class I with a 10 logo in circle. The "replacement" is a Sandisk UltraPlus of the same spec.

And meanwhile in the blue corner... I tried doing a FOTA update using the Android app and spent the best part of 20minutes in the update cycle bringing the camera from V1.00 to V2.008 which included another reformat.

So while being curious how long the camera should last, I'm going to cross fingers and touch some wood.... :)
Thanks for the replies so far!!
 
6 years is pretty good service for an aftermarket consumer-grade device living in a car 24/7. It's a very tough environment and today's lead-free solders don't help with that at all. Dashcam technology has marched on too, so 6 years later there are better cams available now which alone might make it worth retiring the old cam.

Phil
 
An interesting perspective... I'm genuinely quite surprised by that... but I don't use parking mode, mine only powers on with the ignition, if that makes any difference. I'm not really in a position to replace the camera at the moment, but it's certainly food for thought. Maybe it's something I need to investigate, what a new camera might offer.
 
Back
Top