Had an accident and checked the footage. Turned out that the camera stopped recording 2 months ago.

[hakuna]

I had an A129 Pro Duo which failed (I think the capacitor was gone). I had it installed and connected to the battery by a professional. I sent it to China to get it replaced. The new one stopped recording 2 months. I should have checked the SD card more frequently but this happened without any warning (the warning setting is 15 days) which isn't good. Unfortunately, I had an incident in the parking lot. Some dented my car and there is no footage. Filed police report and since there is no one to claim insurance from, I have to pay $250 deductible. I am not sure why this has happened. Is it because of the heat? I live in Texas where it's currently 100+ degrees and I don't know what it would be inside the car. The time was also incorrect in the dashcam even after setting it right.

I changed the time again yesterday and formatted the SD card and now it's recording. The time is correct when I checked today. I am not sure when it will suddenly stop recording again.

Here are the settings:

VIOFO A129 Pro Duo Settings:

Resolution: 4k + FHD
Bitrate: High
1 minute loop recording
WDR: On
Parking Mode: Low bitrate recording
Parking Recording Duration: 3 hours
Parking G Sensor: High Sensitivity
Parking motion detection: Medium
Motion Detection: Off
G-Sensor: Low sensitivity
Format warning: 30 days

Firmware version: A129Pro: V2.7
Build: 20220117

 

[DAP]

All dash cams are unreliable. All memory cards will wear out. Dashcams seldom alert you when either they fail, or the memory card fails. You MUST check regularly that they are working. Two dash cams gives you a higher likelyhood that at least one of them is working when you need it to be.

 

[Teflon490]

And it is more likely the SD card fails than camera itself. If the camera is now working fine then it was something on the card. It does not have to fail outright completely, most of the time it happens that something is written incorrectly on the card and this messes up the subsequent recordings. Many times it happened to me that some files on the card were not overwritten properly staying there forever leaving less space for new recordings. These things happen, that is why there is format reminder built in the camera. Format frequently and you should minimize issues like this.

 

[kamkar]

Argh,,,,, another one.

Absolutely NO dashcam are set and forget, you need to go over the content on the memory card now and then ( every couple of months or so ), and this is not time consuming i spend about 10 - 15 minutes on the computer looking over a full 256GB memory card in my card reader.

What i focus on is, first and last file in recording sessions start / stop in reasonable places, so this is where i live - my favorite gas station - where i do my groceries shopping - my friend and family's places.
I of course only play a few seconds of each segment i sample, just enough to see where it is, if a session start way down the street from a known place that could be a problem, same if a session end in the middle of nowhere.

After that is done on footage going back months or a month as i dont drive much and use large memory cards, then i sample some random files, just a few seconds again to make sure they are playable.

I would assume that particular model would give a alarm if it can not record. though these beeps are often not that loud these kind of failure alarms should be insane loud.

Otherwise the memory card are often the weak link, some times like i have experienced 2 times now ( in 10 years ) well the damn things barely work out of the blister pack, in spite of the card being kick ass brand / model and should be plenty fast for any POS dashcam, but they just are not and you have to do a RMA like i did on a brand new card, or like in the case with my 2 latest 256Gb cards ( Adata endurance + the new white Samsung EVO card ) just use them in other cameras,,,, in my case my kick ass 4K action camera that hit the card much harder than any dashcam will do.

The card i did RMA on, well at the time it was the fastest and most expensive card i ever had ( 64 GB ) and i dident even get to fill the damn thing 1 time,,,,, so yeah some times they just die,,,,, which is why i favor endurance cards that often have warranty for in dashcam use, most regular memory cards do not cover use in dashcams.

You can format the card with SDorgs SDformatter tool ( overwite + format ) or you can check it with H2testw that will report errors and list the read / write speeds of the card.
My Adata endurance card was supposed to be around 100 MB/s read and write speeds but upon testing the new card it was barely 30 MB/s,,,,, sdformatter changed that, though it still not make the card work in any dashcam

As you are in my adopted state ( Tx ) well parking guard is a tall order on the outside in the sun, but still the camera should not fry itself, so that on its own should not be a issue here.

I am not familiar with this particular model from Viofo, but you might want to take a look in the models sub forum to see if you should try a new firmware if you are not up to date there, there have been some parking / regular drive handover issues with some / a Viofo camera, but not sure if it was this particular model.

 

[arcticfire]

The Street Guardian I have will restart if the card fails or the led light will usually stop flashing, although sometimes it can still flash but the on screen recording symbol has stopped.

It's not really a fully reliable failsafe but does help. I tend to format my card periodically in camera anyway which seems to keep things running well.

 

[kamkar]

Yes the reboot / try again feature are nice to have, but that will not work on a memory card gone sour, or at least "funky"

 

[arcticfire]

Sorry, what I should have added was that it draws my attention to the dashcam when it reboots, so I know something is wrong.

 

[hakuna]

Well, I don't think it's just the card or card at all. The camera rebooted randomly while driving. This is after I put a new endurance card and formatted it.

 

[DAP]

Well, I don't think it's just the card or card at all. The camera rebooted randomly while driving. This is after I put a new endurance card and formatted it.

A rebooting camera is also a symptom of a power problem. This can be caused by something as simple as too much resistance in the wire between the power supply and the camera.

 

[StrayCam]

Viofo customers shouldn't have to guess as to just what is causing their recording problems. It's clear that Viofo participates on this forum, but only replies to customer problems when they feel like it.

There's another dashcam company on this forum (I believe they make the gw622 ?), and every time/anytime someone posts a problem or question about that dashcam, someone named "Millie" gives a reply to that customer! That's what one would call "good customer support." - - Wouldn't it be nice if Viofo did the same?

 

[Lothar]

Viofo customers shouldn't have to guess as to just what is causing their recording problems. It's clear that Viofo participates on this forum, but only replies to customer problems when they feel like it.

There's another dashcam company on this forum (I believe they make the gw622 ?), and every time/anytime someone posts a problem or question about that dashcam, someone named "Millie" gives a reply to that customer! That's what one would call "good customer support." - - Wouldn't it be nice if Viofo did the same?

Not sure that they're the best example to use here.
Regardless of how good their customer service may be, I still cannot recommend them based purely on some of their engineering decisions.
1.) Their dashcam hangs on a stalk which therefore makes it prone to vibrations.
2.) Their dashcam uses batteries rather than capacitor. There is no way that a battery dashcam can survive the heat. If it is 100°F outside, the temperature inside the car would easily exceed their stated operating temperature.

Taken directly from their manual:

 

[DAP]

Viofo customers shouldn't have to guess as to just what is causing their recording problems

I would extend that to Everyone's customers should not have to guess what is causing their problems with a product.

There used to be a time that if you got an error message "The printer is on fire!" you could look at the printer and see smoke coming out of it.

For some reason there has been a trend to delete all error messages from the code before it is released to the public. If you are lucky you will get a pop up window with an exclamation point as the only text and an "OK" button if something goes wrong.
If the software detects something went wrong, the software had to have tested some condition to determine that something went wrong, and it has the information to tell you what test failed, but for some reason software engineers have decided not to include the code to tell the user what test failed. This makes identifying and fixing the problem much harder.