Dash Camera Heat Test

[mentadent]

I wonder if a light colored interior is more important than light colored exterior.

 

[Nigel]

No appreciable difference in interior temp.

When you are further south, with the sun directly overhead, the colour is not going to make much difference, and black actually radiates heat faster than white, so it is quite easy for the disadvantages and advantages to cancel out. Further north, with the sun shining on the sides of the car, it is a lot easier for the absorbed heat to get inside through the door panels and windows, so the colour can make more difference. Up here in the UK, I used to park with the sun shining directly at the windscreen at midday (suns rays at 90° to the glass), making it very easy for the sun to heat the interior directly, with none of it being reflected off the angled glass, so my interior temperatures can be almost as high as yours, despite being only 15° from the arctic circle.

I wonder if a light colored interior is more important than light colored exterior.

I think that once the sun's energy has got through the glass, it is going to be absorbed by something, whatever the colour, it will just bounce around a bit first in a lighter interior. So unless you have mirror finish seats, it will make a small, but fairly insignificant difference. You don't want a light interior, they are terrible for reflections, for both dashcam and eyes, even if you do have a CPL/polarised driving glasses.

 

[Dashmellow]

I wonder if a light colored interior is more important than light colored exterior.

A vehicle's interior color can make a difference in interior temperature but it tends to be relatively negligible in the scheme of things.

The primary factor determining how hot your car gets sitting in the sunshine is the exterior color.

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

 

[Augustus]

A vehicle's interior color can make a difference in interior temperature but it tends to be relatively negligible in the scheme of things.

The primary factor determining how hot your car gets sitting in the sunshine is the exterior color.

100% this. The video has gone up by Ben and seems to support what I found earlier this year in the hot Aussie summer - that the Viofo A229 Pro shut down around the 70/80C mark but the Vantrue Nexus 4 Pro kept on going. My rough testing was done on a car that's steel grey in colour, so not white and not my last cars black.

I'd argue though in that article you posted previously that Queensland isn't the hottest state in Australia, it's more where I am Western Australia where it's a dry heat. But I guess where they're coming from is that most of Queensland is up north towards the tropics so it is pretty humid - couple that with a reasonably hot summer and its stifling! Lol

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

100% this. The video has gone up by Ben and seems to support what I found earlier this year in the hot Aussie summer - that the Viofo A229 Pro shut down around the 70/80C mark but the Vantrue Nexus 4 Pro kept on going. My rough testing was done on a car that's steel grey in colour, so not white and not my last cars black.

I'd argue though in that article you posted previously that Queensland isn't the hottest state in Australia, it's more where I am Western Australia where it's a dry heat. But I guess where they're coming from is that most of Queensland is up north towards the tropics so it is pretty humid - couple that with a reasonably hot summer and its stifling! Lol

Yes the Vantrue lasted longer. However we did notice that 1.3 is not lasting as long.

 

[Dashmellow]

I'd argue though in that article you posted previously that Queensland isn't the hottest state in Australia, it's more where I am Western Australia where it's a dry heat.

Thanks for your personal and knowledgeable feedback, Agie. I find it especially interesting because this was the first time I have ever posted or quoted from a large language model AI chatbot assistant. I'm still rather skeptical and a bit distrustful of these tools but I've been intrigued by Perplexity AI which is connected to the internet full time and provides links to the sources it has drawn from and I found the answers it provided reasonable and seemingly straightforward enough to quote from, at least for the kind questions I posed to it. Apparently, it only got it partly correct when it mentioned Queensland. I think it got most everything else right but it is hard to be certain which is one of the problems with these things so far.

Another interesting new AI search engine is ANDI which I have yet to fully explore. It is still in alpha testing so you may get errors and need to clear local settings and reload the app. For those who are not familiar with it, you may want to check it out along with Perplexity. Actually, there is a whole spate new AI search engines popping up everywhere like mushrooms on a rainy day but perhaps that is a discussion best reserved for another thread.

 

[Dashmellow]

Ben, In regard to the question about air movement inside the oven compared to a vehicle cabin when parked, I'm curious to know the logic of your reasoning for selecting "dehydrate" rather than say, "bake" or some other setting. I'm guessing that dehydrate might engage more fan activity to pull moist air out of the unit whereas bake might not engage the fan as much or at all during the "cooking" process.

 

[Nigel]

That 70mai A810 is going to need a new lithium battery!
Shouldn't it have been the first to shut down, to protect its battery?

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

Ben, In regard to the question about air movement inside the oven compared to a vehicle cabin when parked, I'm curious to know the logic of your reasoning for selecting "dehydrate" rather than say, "bake" or some other setting. I'm guessing that dehydrate might engage more fan activity to pull moist air out of the unit whereas bake might not engage the fan as much or at all during the "cooking" process.

View attachment 73578

That was only setting that would let us start at 145 degrees fahrenheit

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

That 70mai A810 is going to need a new lithium battery!
Shouldn't it have been the first to shut down, to protect its battery?

We did not verify if video files were still recording on that unit. Which is why we put NA on results.

If it needs a new battery I am not worried….

 

[Dashmellow]

That was only setting that would let us start at 145 degrees fahrenheit

OK, I see.

But why do you need to start at that temp? When I park my truck it might be only 75º F or even less if I'm running the air conditioning and then it builds in temperature after I leave it parked. Wouldn't something like that be more like a real world scenario?

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

OK, I see.

But why do you need to start at that temp? When I park my truck it might be only 75º F or even less if I'm running the air conditioning and then it builds in temperature after I leave it parked. Wouldn't something like that be more like a real world scenario?

This is a heat test not a mild test.

Vehicle interiors get really hot, windshields get really hot.

A lot of people leave it in parking mode in hot sun all day with a battery pack. We want to show extreme scenarios.

I drive around all day in heat with these dash cameras in my vehicle.

But we are in Canada not down south

 

[Dashmellow]

This is a heat test not a mild test.

Vehicle interiors get really hot, windshields get really hot.

A lot of people leave it in parking mode in hot sun all day with a battery pack. We want to show extreme scenarios.

I drive around all day in heat with these dash cameras in my vehicle.

But we are in Canada not down south

Well, since you raised the question (@rcg530, actually) of air flowing around the cameras during your testing in your video rather than being in a static enclosed environment like a vehicle cabin, what I'm suggesting is a way to avoid this problem in your testing since there appears to be a setting on your oven that will more closely reproduce that. I'm certainly not suggesting a "mild test". I don't even get why you're saying something like that.

FWIW, thinking about this a bit further, who among us says, "I left my car dehydrating out in the hot sun"? Most, if not all of us would say, "I left my car baking out in the hot sun". You get the idea.

I'm in a northern climate myself yet much to my surprise my A119 Mini 2 shut down two days ago in the heat even though it was merely a warmish, humid, overcast day. I had been parked but the camera was not running but after I drove for a while I realized it was no longer operating although it did start up when I started my truck and drove away from the supermarket. It took ten or more minutes of highway driving with the windows open for the camera to start up again. Not sure what's going on with the camera as it does other weird things too like triggering the G-sensor and saving the video during a slow left turn in a parking lot. My A119 V3 never has any problems like this.

Anyway, I know you put quite a lot of hard work into this project and what you've accomplished is impressive and appreciated but it seems to me the goal should be to reproduce real world conditions as close as possible, especially after you yourself brought up the issue in the first place in your own video. That's all I'm saying.

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

Well, since you raised the question (@rcg530, actually) of air flowing around the cameras during your testing in your video rather than being in a static enclosed environment like a vehicle cabin, what I'm suggesting is a way to avoid this problem in your testing since there appears to be a setting on your oven that will more closely reproduce that. I'm certainly not suggesting a "mild test". I don't even get why you're saying something like that.

FWIW, thinking about this a bit further, who among us says, "I left my car dehydrating out in the hot sun"? Most, if not all of us would say, "I left my car baking out in the hot sun". You get the idea.

I'm in a northern climate myself yet much to my surprise my A119 Mini 2 shut down two days ago in the heat even though it was merely a warmish, humid, overcast day. I had been parked but the camera was not running but after I drove for a while I realized it was no longer operating although it did start up when I started my truck and drove away from the supermarket. It took ten or more minutes of highway driving with the windows open for the camera to start up again. Not sure what's going on with the camera as it does other weird things too like triggering the G-sensor and saving the video during a slow left turn in a parking lot. My A119 V3 never has any problems like this.

Anyway, I know you put quite a lot of hard work into this project and what you've accomplished is impressive and appreciated but it seems to me the goal should be to reproduce real world conditions as close as possible, especially after you yourself brought up the issue in the first place in your own video. That's all I'm saying.

I wish we could have done a real world test but it is not feasible being located in Canada. The @rcg530 and @Panzer Platform located in California would be only 2 I know that could do real world.

The main thing I think we accomplished was giving people a great measure of which ones will last to higher temperatures.

So if you have a Viofo A229 Pro and your unit is shutting off due to heat an A229 Plus will probably solve your problems.

If you have an A229 Plus and it is shutting down

Maybe look at Vueroid or Thinkware.

 

[Dashmellow]

I wish we could have done a real world test but it is not feasible being located in Canada. The @rcg530

WHAT?

Clearly, I am merely talking about using a different setting on your test oven than "dehydrate" such as "bake" to avoid excessive air circulation from the fan to mimic real world conditions. That's what thermal test chambers are for, even DIY ones!

 

[SafeDriveSolutions]

WHAT?

Clearly, I am merely talking about using a different setting on your test oven than "dehydrate" such as "bake" to avoid excessive air circulation from the fan to mimic real world conditions. That's what thermal test chambers are for, even DIY ones!

We don't have money to buy that kind of equipment.

A manufacturer has that kind of equipment.

We do not. Maybe in a few years when the channel gets bigger we will invest in that type of equipment.

Let me try and re explain the oven used

No other setting would start at the 145 setting. They were all like 200 degrees or higher.

Which operating temperature of all the units were up to approx 140 or higher.

We could not start at 200. Limitation of equipment we used.

Also other settings were going to make it harder to mount equipment in there as there would be burners turned on above or below. Which in turn we might as well used a normal oven. Which we were not prepared to do.

We did the best we could do with the equipment we got.

We look at this as a learning experience and we are taking all feedback to make future tests better.

We seen things we could have done better as test went along. But all you can do is learn from those challenges and grow.

Cheers

 

[Nigel]

I am merely talking about using a different setting on your test oven than "dehydrate" such as "bake" to avoid excessive air circulation from the fan to mimic real world conditions.

It is a fan oven, the fan will be used for "bake" as well as dehydrate, but "bake" has a few issues, such as including an unwanted pre-heat cycle, which goes to the wrong temperature, an automatic conversion of oven temperature to fan oven temperature, so that you can follow your recipes without needing to convert yourself, so it unhelpfully doesn't operate at the temperature you set! And I wouldn't be surprised if it also unhelpfully grills the dashcam a little as part of the bake process.

Dehydrate is much simpler, allows lower temperature settings, gives the correct temperature, and prevents accidentally using plastic melting temperatures.

If you want to remove the air circulation, you would need to put the cameras inside a box, which would have been inconvenient. and taken longer to do the test since the inside of the box would warm up much slower. A sealed box would also enable control of humidity, which will have some effect on cooling performance, but I don't think it matters to the results and is unlikely to change the ordering of the dashcams, and in any case, some dashcams get used in hot humid places, some get used in hot dry places!

This test was an interesting experiment, but I'm not sure what the results mean. I certainly wouldn't score the 70mai highly, since it shut down at way past useable lithium battery temperature, and it has a battery, not a supercap. I think I am probably happier with the lowest shutdown temperature of that group, to get long life, but obviously some people really want 24/7 parking mode, in hot regions, and are prepared to replace their dashcams frequently. So we don't need exact results from this testing, just an idea of which cameras will operate in relatively hot conditions, which shut down at more reasonable temperatures, and which fail to shut down, so are likely to die quickly.

To be a really useful test, we want to know how long the cameras can survive at those temperatures, but nobody is going to do that test, except for some of the manufacturers testing their own products, and by the time someone had completed that test, there would be another generation of dashcams to buy, which would have different results.

Nice video, but the results shouldn't be taken too seriously, and certainly not as "this dashcam is best because it ended up at the top of the list"!

 

[SR14626]

I don’t use parking mode, so my use for my A229 pro centers strictly driving to and from locations in my own state (Hot Florida) and interests in those that have the same camera I do in a hot climate. Nice to have someone do a test like the OP, but I like to hear from hands on owners to judge whether a camera is worthwhile, and thus far the A229 pro fits the bill, as well as the A119 mini 2. I wanna thank the OP for all the work he put into this. Thank you.

 

[mentadent]

It wasn't very sunny or hot here today and my car reached 114F inside at 1:24PM. It was only 69F outside.