First dashcam, experience in first month, repairs, firmware

kotysoft

Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2016
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Country
Hungary
Dash Cam
mini 0805, mini 0903
Hi everybody. Firstly it's good to be a part of your awesome community!
At second: Sorry for my bad english knowledge.

After a half year of digging in dashcams' review, I finnally bought my first dedicated dashcam, MINI 0805 from Gearbest. Until this point I used my phone (N7100) with DailyroadsVoyager.

I ordered for about $65. I was excited and happy. I also ordered a SAMSUNG EVO 32GB class 10 microSDHC.
Finally it's arrived. I've installed it immediately (with it's default charger) and started my first recording from work to home :)

That was a very big disappointment (for first).

I wont steal your time with my detailed stories and mistakes, so I collect my experience with it:

THIS ONE WAS UNFOCUSED
Disassembled and tried to follow David L.'s tutorial to fix it. Unfortunately my glue wasn't the same so it took approx an our to remove it with scalpel. After 1 hour of unsuccess, I was angry and broke the final glue parts with forced twisting, using pliers. FORTUNATELY it didn't broke.

For first, I had no miniHDMI cable, so I tried to focus step-by-step... focus, record, play on pc... again and again. Partial success. Better result but still not good.
Bought an HDMI cable and it was much easier to focus. SUCCESS!


VIDEO COMPRESSION NOT THE BEST... (NEEDED HIGHER BITRATE)

Googled for a step-by-step tutorial how can I change the bitrate. Found THIS useful article.
I wanted to play a little with bitrates at different resolutions and wanted to know how much time can I record with a specific bitrate, and wanted to compare "quality" of specific resolutions, so I made a simple sheet for that. Feel free to make a copy of it to your drive and play with bitrates! LINK

To compare different resolutions expected quality, I made a "Fictional Quality Rating" column, where the number based on resolution and fps. Default S.FINE qualities about 2.2 value.

Currently I'm trying with higher bitrates (about 30Mbps for better quality)


0805 FREEZE, LOCKED, RED LIGHT, CANNOT RESET, NO SCREEN (1)

One day to another it just didn't turn on. When I conneted USB or docket the red LED lit, but nothing happened. No screen, no sound, nothing but red light. Tried many things but nothing helped. I disassembled again (approx 7th time) and realized: one of battery cable just released at soldering. I don't know, maybe production issue, maybe I made a mistake at previous fixing. I soldered it back and voilá, started! :)

FREEZE part 2
Ok, the battery cable is fine, the camera has started and recording. NICE. But after 5-20 minutes of recording in car, it's frozen. Screen showed the last moment of capture and couldn't stop recording / power off. Reset worked well (long press power button, 30sec) , but everytime frozen after 5-20 mins.
Finally realized: the problem was my brand new Kingston microSDXC class 10 64GB card. It is using extFAT filesystem. Mini 0805 supports it (with newer firmwares), but not officially... I had to reformat my 64GB card to FAT32 and now it's working without problems! Unfortunately If I formating card in MINI 0805 itself then it makes extFAT again, and the problem is starting over.

Used 3rd party partition manager since no any FAT32 formatter or SDformatter could format it into FAT32 under Win7x64

TOO LOW SOUND QUALITY AND VOLUME (more quiet than samples on internet)
From the beginning I realized, my MINI has very bad sound quality. At last disassembly I realized:
The, blind chinese guy (who also set my focus) just put the two-sided adhesive foam tape onto my microphone! (probably this tape used to fill the gap between LCD and back panel).
I just removed the tape, put to different place , then finally I have better sound!
Ok, don't expect superb quality, but for me it was a very big help! The electronic noises still hearable in record, but much clear speach and SFX :)


NIGHTTIME QUALITY
I was a bit disappointed when I saw my first nighttime video. It was blurry, noisy, yellow and ugly.
Still experimenting the settings for my night usage, but some things currently I know (may not applies for every sceneries!)
- White balance set to BULB/Tungsten/lamp makes the whole picture less yellow
- 21:9 ratio (2560 x 1080) helps the AE (automatic exposure) to concentrate on important things not black sky and dark hood
- AE Meter mode: AVERAGE results a better overall picture at night, but maybe has negative effect at close licence plates when you has xenon headlights or any strong one
- Make sure your windshield and camera perfectly clear.

BAD GPS SIGNAL
Currently I'm using Registrator Viewer (Datakam Player). It shows the positions where the camera lost GPS signal. It's working and logging all positions but sometimes not perfect.

FIRMWARE CUSTOMIZATIONS (at your own risk!)

Since I digged myself into MINI 0805 things I found how to change Boot logo and how to edit language, replace faulty QtPlayer with Registrator Viewer, so I'm happy with my custom MINI now :)
 
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What firmware version you're using?
I have no issues with exFAT on my 64G card using 20160328_A7_805_ZX_1CARD_GPS
 
Currently my base ROM is the lates 20160604_A7_805_ZX_1CARD_GPS from skyhigh-global.com

At moment I've already modified ROM (bitrate, AE, bootlogo, player, language) but before I made changes, I already had this problem with this specific card KINGSTON SDC10G2/64GB
 
awesome review :D Very good work :D
 
Thanks Da Wei. BTW the original link has a typo (extra space before filename). Do you know anything about this new one? Any changes compared to 0604 or 0r 0627 (blue?) ?
 
Thanks Da Wei. BTW the original link has a typo (extra space before filename). Do you know anything about this new one? Any changes compared to 0604 or 0r 0627 (blue?) ?

I am email them to find the change log. I just flash 0706 today.
 
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