estore009 "A118c" not actually capacitor but has battery

Johnny6

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Once upon a time I purchased what I believe was a genuine "A118c" from estore009 on ebay and after having problems lately with the camera not closing files I took it apart thinking I would be replacing the caps and to my surprise I find a swolen 3.7v lithium battery jammed in there soldered onto either side of where the two 2.7v capacitors are supposed to be. This dashcam was purchased years ago (probably around 4-5) and I could be wrong but am fairly certain back then you had them as a trusted place to buy it from in your A118C page (https://dashcamtalk.com/b40-a118).

Funny enough it does work fine using the official Viofo and foxoffer "c" firmware.

I am about to put a couple of caps I have here in to see if this fixed the closing file problem but just wanted to post here so others know because I thought it was a bit dodgey and probably wont ever buy from them again.

Picture is the one on the left I purchased many years ago and the one on the right (blueskysea branded) that I opened to check if it also had battery the one on right was purchased more recently probably around one year ago from the same seller.
 

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Your right I checked my emails it was purchased December 2015 (feels longer lol), its possible seller just sent the wrong one I guess..

EDIT: to add onto that, does anyone know if its safe to replace the battery with the two capacitors? I have been running the C firmware the entire time and it looks like the pcb is the same as my other one with the two through holes for the two caps as I live in australia summer heat is pretty high in the car and it gets above 50-60c commonly so dont really want to put another battery in there.
 
I think the seller just sent me the wrong one, was a unwelcome surprise when I opened it though but I think I was a bit harsh because I still think its a genuine one

No I dont think so, the RTC battery appears to be missing (although I can easily add one but will it even work if I do? I assume it goes where the round white stencil is with two solder pads and the permanent marker squiggle is) I never use the clock/time function anyways because it never kept time and I guess I know why now.
Honestly clock is not very important to me would be nice if it worked but not a big deal if thats the only thing not working if I add caps.
 

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not sure if you could just add an RTC cell, at this stage there's little to lose other than a few dollars and some time if it's not functioning anyway, if you go caps without an RTC cell it won't work correctly, every time it loses the time it will go back to default and then start overwriting files it has just written based on them having an earlier date than other files already on the card
 
It was functioning well with the "C" firmware however would recently cut out as soon as power was unplugged corrupting the last file, and my other a118c's that have the caps I just tested you can turn them on after they shutdown because there is enough charge left in the caps to power them up so it still might work fine simply using the remaining charge in the caps - unless left for a long time without use (enough to completely drain the caps) I think itll likely work without it. I am however going to get a
ML621 or MS621 as this appears to be the correct battery and install it to see if everything functions fine and will report back once done probably going to be a little while with everything I have to do, thanks so much for all the help jokiin will report back with how it all goes
 
I just took the two caps and rtc battery out of my 'fake' a118c and put them into my older genuine a118 one hopefully it works fine now will update the thread in a few weeks if its all working ok.

Also strange to note that the 'fake' gearbest a118 I got last year (and did have bios troubles with) has identical pcb exact same novatek chip same hynix ram same SPI flash chip everything looks identical and placed exactly the same so I have no idea why it doesn't accept the 'real' firmware only thing I can think is the cmos sensor is different (even though video quality is identical as well), I can upload photos of the fake board if anyone is interested.
 
Here are the photos of the 'fake' gearbest a118c, I have already removed the caps and rtc battery from it but I am fairly sure it had the exact same brand caps as my original one purchased around the same time and I know it had FDK battery. This is one of the ones that wont boot with official firmware and was fixed using the 'fake' firmware provided on this forum - (https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/gearbest-a118c-firmware-problem.30842/page-2), there is also another internal photo of the fake version there.

If you want or need better pictures let me know though really not sure I can get better pictures than this.

By the way the other a118 dashcam has been holding date after being unplugged for over 24hrs will write back in a few weeks if any hickups but so far just replacing battery with caps and adding the rtc seems to be a success.
 

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Just a quick update, dashcam has been working fine for a few months after adding caps and rtc battery.

The only problem I have now is that the car I installed it into has a quirk where the cigarette lighter 12v 'fades' out and it caused dashcam to turn off when starting the car, this also causes the 'timer delay relay' I installed to not reset as most of the time there is still enough voltage to keep relay active but dashcam will shut off and not turn back on.
 
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