FW 2.18 vs 0.59 for night use ?

Marcel

Marcel

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Mobius
After having tested the last firmwares except the 2.18, the one I like better is 0.59 with WDR activated. The night scenes are lighter with this one. As I am interested with the 25 fps option, I ask about the night performance with FW 2.18.
Of course, when the image is lighter, the grain is more visible. But I like this option much better. And I don't want to have to move any slider specially for the night/parkings use only. So I want to the firmware to do the job...
Did someone compared ?
Thanks
 
If no answer, I'll try. But let's say that I spent a lot of time in testing the cam some weeks ago, and I'd like to change my mind from Mobius... at least for a while. Especially as I don't remember how to come back to FW 0.59 if necessary. This FW is "old" and it must be done manually. But you are right ;)
 
Going back is easy and can be done in the GUI. Just put the firmware in the same folder as the GUI name it similar to the others. I am running v0.59 because of the night performance. When I can, I will upgrade and compare.
 
This is interesting. "FWTLCAM_20121212_v0.59.zip" would be an acceptable name ? I presume that "20121212" or anything else has no influence
 
Is there anywhere the old firmware can be downloaded, only the newest is available on rc hobies ?
 
Marcel said:
This is interesting. "FWTLCAM_20121212_v0.59.zip" would be an acceptable name ? I presume that "20121212" or anything else has no influence
Click to expand...
Just name exactly as the others except the version; the date doesn't matter. Without renaming, the GUI won't recognize it.
 
Thanks a lot GJHS, I'll try running 2.18 very soon, as it is so easy using the GUI
 
I tried FW 2.18, with the option WDR night. I had not much time for testing at night. My first impression is that the night performance is not ridiculous. I'd like WDR night to be more effective. Even if I cannot
rigorously compare, as it was a very quick test, I think that the brightness is not higher than with FW 0.59. Is it equal or lower? I can't answer just now.
 
This is my result : (So, downgraded to FW0.59)

 
As suspected, which is why I feel v0.59 is the Mobius firmware sweet spot.
 
And just to have a look on the "real" scene, this is what I capture with my reflex

 
so why is the night time performance on 0.59 better than 5 firmwares later? shouldn't the newer the firmware the better things get?
 
It should. And the last firmware has many improvments compared to 0.59. But as writing a firmware is something all but easy, and sometimes needs compromise, this is why older firmwares are still available.
And I suspect that people in charge of writing the mobius' firmwares are not dashcam users :(
 
The default settings have changed but in the newer version you can tweak the Mobius settings however you'd like now?

Here's one I tried with the brightness, contrast and saturation all ramped up:


Out of the box 0.59 might be slightly brighter but the new low light feature and the fact you can tweak settings to your liking in 2.18 makes that my favorite for night footage so far.
 
You are right, and I planned to try to tweak the settings. But I did it with 2.10 and when the night performance seemed better, the day's one was bad as the pictures were saturated. And to be honest, after spending plenty of hours in tweaking, everything becomes confused in the head... That's why I said "I'd like to change my mind from Mobius"...
But I will try anyhow...
 
In FW2.18 I tried to tweak the brightness at +50. The pictures is brighter but unfortunately it seams that there is a threshold. When something is visible, it is brighter when tweaked. But when a part of the picture is dark, il remains black. With FW0.59 I can see some dark details invisible with FW2.18. I'll try in real conditions tonight but I am afraid that FW0.59 will go on for me
 
Marcel said:
It should. And the last firmware has many improvments compared to 0.59. But as writing a firmware is something all but easy, and sometimes needs compromise, this is why older firmwares are still available.
And I suspect that people in charge of writing the mobius' firmwares are not dashcam users :(
Click to expand...
I think you're right, this is an action cam first and the majority of users are RC flyers. With that said, the development team hasn't ignored the large dash cam group. Somewhere in the process of making the Mobius do all it can do, night performance degraded. The team worked hard to fix everything, just not sure night performance was ever a priority fix on the way to all the major Step 3 changes. The DSP codes from v0.59 are really old at this point, so it's not so simple to go back and pull parts out and plug them in with all the other changes made.

Question is wether or not it's worth tweaking v2.18 and keep Mode 2 as night settings or just run v0.59. The answer is in whether or not the extra tweaks and features of the higher firmwares, like Motion Detect are important to you. I had Mode 2 as "Low Light" which was easy to switch to in v2.10, if and when I remembered. So for me it's v0.59 for now, because set and forget is important as well as having the best night performance. As I said before, thanks to the development team (@Isoprop, Tom Frank and therau2000) none of which are dash cam users for keeping the improvements coming. The ultimate desicion comes from the developer
 
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