CPL has turned orange and losing date/ time.

murcod

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Location
South Australia
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Australia
Dash Cam
Mobius, A119v2, A119v3
Has anyone else had their Viofo CPL lens change to a bright orange colour? I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the camera as all the footage is badly tinted orange and it turns out the CPL is the cause. Bizarre.

Also any tips on why the date/ time would also be resetting- it seems to go back to 4/1/2018. (DD/MM/YYYY.) It only seems to be holding it for a couple of days.
 
4/1/2018 may be the default date in your firmware version, if that's the case it would be an RTC cell problem

haven't seen any other reports of CPL changing colour, can you post a pic?
 
Certainly sounds like the REAL TIME CLOCK is causing the date to reset. I believe there is a tiny battery inside that keeps the date and setting when not be power by the vehicle, it may be that the battery is failing. Do not have any experience of changing said battery. So good luck.
There are 2 different CPLs the older ones are a dark shade that leans towards brown and the newer ones that have a green hue.
Its sounds to me like the Ozzie sun has baked it, perhaps try cleaning it with a lens cleaning solution, if it is no better then I would think the coating on the lens has broken down. If that's the case the only alternative is to get a replacement.
 
Yes, I'm thinking the sun has played a part- it's turned the brightest shade of orange. Below is a still. It would be one of the original CPL's not the latest- it used to be a grey/brown colour IIRC. I just checked against my LCD monitor and the polarising side of it appears to still be okay.

I'll have to investigate the backup battery. It's annoying as the loss of date/ time is the one thing that annoys me with my other (Mobius) cameras and now the A119 is doing it as well. It's probably heat related too.

A119%20CPL%20orange.jpg
 
Make the scene look very nostalgic, looks old and nostalgic almost like an old glass negative. The traffic lights and modern cars give it's secret away.
I have 1 of each of the different CPL's but in the UK we don't get enough sun to cause those sort of problems.
 
Unless someone have set fire to my adopted home country again, than that's really orange indeed. :eek:
Also a first time for me hearing about this kind of CPL issues.
 
I thought for sure it was an issue with the camera, but took the CPL off to check- just in case. I'll get a picture of the CPL itself and post it later.

That type of effect is quite disturbing to anyone here- it looks like there's a massive bushfire about to hit.
 
Here's a picture taken looking through it at the sun. Bright orange.

Orange%20CPL.jpg


The A119 (it's actually an A119V2) is out of the car and I corrected the date/ time yesterday- I'll check it after 24hrs has past.
 
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The date/ time lasted for ~36hrs. It's back in the car (minus the orange "special effects" filter) and I'll keep checking it to see when it fails.

I'm very annoyed with the filter. I'm putting off buying another in case the camera's date/ time issue turns out to be irrepairable, if that's the case it will be time to find a replacement.
 
There are 2 different CPLs the older ones are a dark shade that leans towards brown and the newer ones that have a green hue.

Just checking the above, I found two different CPL's for sale on some sites eg. like here EDIT the forum corrupted the link- search Viofo CPL on Banggood's website. You'll get two different looking CPL's listed.

I bought from (the official?) Viofo Australia website and get the feeling I might have ended up with the "old" model again. Is there an easy way to tell?

It appears to have a grey tint to me and has a sticker with 1931 on the box. It does list the A119S/ A129 on the back, as well as the earlier models. Perhaps that's a positive sign?
 
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The tooling is different, the newer one has a bump top and bottom to support the larger diameter lens
 
The tooling is different, the newer one has a bump top and bottom to support the larger diameter lens

How the hell do you know all this stuff about other manufacturer's products @jokiin !

It does have a bump. :)

Now you've pointed that out the two listings on Banggood's site show the obvious difference.
 
Okay, so I ordered a replacement rechargeable battery to fix the RTC losing time. It had been keeping the time okay in the cooler months, but back to Summer and it was losing the date/ time again.

The A119 was a PITA to work on. I removed the four screws but the case didn't want to separate, then literally sprang apart in my hands with bits flying everywhere (the plastic pieces and spring that control the lens tilt angle.) The battery I ordered was an MS920SE (off AliExpress to keep the costs down), which turned out to be a fair bit bigger than the stock battery.

I left the PCB board in the upper section of the case which makes soldering the battery difficult. Once again the PCB didn't want to come out and I didn't want to force it. The MS920SE wouldn't sit flat on the PCB as it fouls on the PCB ribbon connector for the lens assembly, but that's not a big deal as the lens assembly will clear it when the camera is reassembled. I ran it for about 8hrs yesterday to charge the battery and after 10hrs sitting with no power it still had the date time stored :). So it's back in the car and I'll keep an eye on it to see if the problem is fixed.
 
That's a long time... how would it fair long term with lots of short trips?
 
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