Dead A119 V3 - recovery process

reverend

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Dash Cam
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I ordered an A119 V3 from Amazon which worked out of the box but went totally dead at the first firmware upgrade attempt.

When connecting to a power source or PC there were no lights and it was totally dead.

I'd tried the firmware install from a 128GB card formatted as FAT32 - the camera just went totally dead at this stage.

I tried putting the firmware onto a 64GB card formatted as FAT32 and again nothing and it appeared dead.

I had a quick dig through the firmware and found a reference to FW96670A.bin so I copied the file from the Viofo website (FWA119V3.bin) and changed the name to FW96670A.bin ensuring both files were on the card.

This time I was armed with a USB Doctor and could see again that the camera was dead in terms of lights and the screen, but pulling 0.12a. I went for a magic pee, and still at 0.12a a couple of minutes later.

So I pressed the power button and the power usage dropped to 0.02a.

Pressed the power button again and the green power light started flashing showing the firmware update process and the camera recovered with the settings reset to default (and I cancelled the replacement order from Amazon).

Hope this helps someone in the future if you have a problem during firmware updates.

The most important step was the magic pee :)
 
Patience when upgrading the firmware as it can take 5-10mins. It flashes slowly then fast then slow again before flashing fast again whilst flashing the firmware. Then you have a pause whilst the V3 boots about 5-10secs. or more. Do not forget to reset it to default settings to save possible problems and then set it up to your liking.
 
Patience when upgrading the firmware as it can take 5-10mins. It flashes slowly then fast then slow again before flashing fast again whilst flashing the firmware. Then you have a pause whilst the V3 boots about 5-10secs. or more. Do not forget to reset it to default settings to save possible problems and then set it up to your liking.
Don't worry I've updated hundreds of dashcam firmwares and this was definitely an anomaly in terms of what happened.

This one had fully died going from v1.00 to v1.02 - it never even got as far as flashing the lights the first time around, it just died a death, maybe the initial download was corrupted.

Sometimes it's better to have firmware downloads in an archive so you find out when unpacking the archive if it's corrupt - or alternatively have a hash that will confirm the downloaded file is the same as the source. An idea for @viofo maybe.

The process I posted above with the firmware renamed fully reset the settings too, I've not looked at the camera since posting earlier, the hardwire kit only arrived today so got to figure out a way to install it now!
 
The few V3's I've updated so far seem to have had a different blinking led sequence than the other models. Threw me for a loop when I went to update the first one. They did update though with no issues.
 
When I did mine it caught me out.

I put the card in with the 1.02 firmware and plugged the unit into a wall socket. There were no lights at all so I didn't know whether it was receiving power.
I left it and after about a minute it fired up and 1.02 had been installed.

Now, as soon as it gets power the red 'rec' button lights up almost immediately to acknowledge power.
 
Thanks for sharing this guide, it seems this camera have a wrong loader.
Please try to update this loader.

Next time for new firmware update, it should accept the firmware FWA119V3.bin.
 
Great thank-you @viofo - I'll get the camera updated before popping into the car, hopefully that first post will help if anyone else gets caught out with the old loader (y)
 
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