i1000 / F70 / X6 720P Dual Lens DVR Dash Camera

[FSC830]

...
- front image okay in daylight
-- can read most license plates of cars in opposite direction in city traffic up to about 40km/h
-- can read most license plates of cars in front up to about 15-20m distance
...
- normal rear camera image, NOT mirrored, quality sufficient to read the number plate of cars approaching from behind in daylight, but not at night when trailing cars have lights on

- annoying on and off sounds cannot be silenced
- status LEDs far too bright
...

WOW!
You must got a specific camera, be lucky...
After runnnig for some days I can only confirm the reports that license plates are hardly could be read if the car does not stop in front of you . When driving at low speed in city areas sometimes you could read license plates of cars driving against your direction or parking at the sides. But mostly this is not possible, also when driving on highways with higher speed it seems to be impossible to catch a clear license plate.
Even when standing and the distance to a car in front of you increases more than 3-4 meters you cant read the license plate, 15 to 20m are an outstanding value for this camera :?: .

Anyhow, compared to the price it is a "good buy", but do not expect much from the videos. I agree that the front cam video will help you in most situations of an accident to identify what happens, but in case of a hit and run I dont think that this cam will help you.

BTW: in the meantime the seller refunded some bucks back due to the inverted rear come and I found an other seller who is able to deliver a non-inverting rear cam as spare part .
But in the next future I will replace the main cam with a better one and use the main cam as a rear cam.

 

[dashcamjunior]

Maybe I should have been more specific in my review:

License plates are readable on video playback if both cars, my own and the other one, are stopped or only in slow motion (max. 30-40 km/h in good lighting conditions).

When driving by faster or in less than optimal conditions, I normally have to watch the video jumping manually from frame to frame. Not always the camera catches a readable shot in one frame, sometimes I need to watch more frames together to identify different parts of the license plate.

This will depend on the dimensions and layout of the license plates as well: in Germany, license plates are large and have big, wide, black letters and numbers and a font optimized for OCR (optical character recognition). Italian number plates are as large as german ones (EU standard format), but with smaller character space, plus more - and thus narrower - characters.

I can immagine that, for example, american number plates with small characters will be even harder, if not impossible to read.

Hans

 

[jokiin]

even the best 720p cams struggle to get number plates while moving, at 1080p with a decent bitrate you can catch plates on cars going in the opposite direction at 100km/h

 

[FSC830]

Maybe I should have been more specific in my review:
...
Hans

Yes, all of your points confirms my experience, but the 15-20m is anyhow a very good result.

@jokiin: You make my day, still waiting on my 1080p cam, hope it will delivered at last by end of week ...

Regards

 

[tekisui]

Hoping someone can help me out with this. Recently picked up some variant of this camera from Amazon and I'm having major issues with it. Initially everything is fine, camera starts when power is applied and shuts down appropriately when power is turned off. But the next time I start my car or apply power through any other means the camera wont start up. Just blinks one blue LED. Reset does nothing as well. Only thing I can do is let the camera sit for a few hours and then it will start back up again. But the next time it is powered down and restarted it does the same thing. This happens if the camera is getting external power or running just off the battery.

Other thing I've noticed is this camera seems to be running a different firmware than most.It has F20_20130315. Cant find anything about this firmware or any other posts of people using it. Love this camera and would like to keep it but its fairly worthless if it wont run consistently. Any ideas? Does anyone know if its possible to roll back to a more stable firmware?

 

[jokiin]

Hoping someone can help me out with this. Recently picked up some variant of this camera from Amazon and I'm having major issues with it. Initially everything is fine, camera starts when power is applied and shuts down appropriately when power is turned off. But the next time I start my car or apply power through any other means the camera wont start up. Just blinks one blue LED. Reset does nothing as well. Only thing I can do is let the camera sit for a few hours and then it will start back up again. But the next time it is powered down and restarted it does the same thing. This happens if the camera is getting external power or running just off the battery.

Other thing I've noticed is this camera seems to be running a different firmware than most.It has F20_20130315. Cant find anything about this firmware or any other posts of people using it. Love this camera and would like to keep it but its fairly worthless if it wont run consistently. Any ideas? Does anyone know if its possible to roll back to a more stable firmware?

you might be able to use another firmware, the majority of these in the market are all built on the same generic mainboard that comes from the one supplier, your problems may not be purely firmware related though, this model has a particularly bad track record (greater than 30% failure rate), you might be lucky though and get it working on another version, it's a shame they didn't use a different chipset as the concept is quite good, the design idea itself I like, they just shouldn't have built it on this platform

 

[FSC830]

.... Reset does nothing as well. Only thing I can do is let the camera sit for a few hours and then it will start back up again. But the next time it is powered down and restarted it does the same thing. This happens if the camera is getting external power or running just off the battery.
...

Seems that is a broken unit .
Found some more issues with that camera.
As already reported here it strongly interferes with the car radio (not amateur radio, just normal FM radio as usual in Europe).
When a jack is plugged into the AV out plug the camera immediately stops recording and switches to "playback" mode.
The get the live picture you need to switch manually back to record mode and start recording.
What a nonsens... If you start up the cam with a connected external display is does not start recording .

In my oppinion the design and size is really ok, I like the flat case, but operation turns out more and more useless...
Points of improvement from my point of view:

Main camera should be 1920x1080 and rear cam 1280x760 (or also full HD ).
Start up with connected external display should operate in the same way as without ext. display.
Much much much less radio interference!!!
I wonder if this camera matches FCC and other local rules for radio interference :?:

Regards

 

[jokiin]

When a jack is plugged into the AV out plug the camera immediately stops recording and switches to "playback" mode.

I'm not surprised by this really, the chipset they use is actually a tablet PC solution and the rear cam uses what would normally be an AV input on a tablet, it's a hack solution unfortunately

I wonder if this camera matches FCC and other local rules for radio interference :?:

the public version of this product has no certifications at all

 

[tekisui]

Think I'm just going to return it. Love the design and the ability to mount it directly to the windshield but this camera is way too flawed to be relied on. Any suggestions for a camera that has a similar style mounting option? What i mean is the ability to mount it directly to the glass instead of using a suction cup mount?

 

[jokiin]

I don't know that there's much else like this one, there is meant to be an updated solution coming for this product, haven't seen it as yet though and not sure how long it might be, a shame really as I think the design concept is good, would be good to see it working properly

 

[saabdriver]

I bought this camera about 5 months ago. It had been doing a fine job for a while. I frequently uploaded files directly via USB (disk mode), and I believe this may have damaged something.
I'm not sure what happened but at first i noticed that half of the recordings were becoming corrupted in the camera. Now, the camera shuts off after just few minutes of operation (a solid red light would remain as if charging from the car). Somehow, it stays recording just fine when plugged into my USB port, but it doesnt work in the car. Try to use the secondary camera shuts the device off after just a second.

The battery seems not to hold a charge at all. I know this was an inexpensive camera but I really liked its low profile and features. Could the car power adapter be damaged somehow? What would cause the camera to work fine on USB but not through the adapter?

 

[dashcamjunior]

You might try using your PC USB cable, and connect it to a USB power source (no PC USB Host), like a 12V-to-USB cigarette lighter adapter or any USB PSU for testing. If it works fine, your original power adapter or it`s plug is probably faulty. The camera accepts any standard mini-USB cable as power only source, not like many Garmin units that require a special mini-USB plug.

 

[FSC830]

Mine is running fine also, but I have got it only since 3 weeks.
Do as advised with front cam only. The main unit provides the rear cam with 5V, so it seems to be normal that the device shuts off quickly when rear cam is connected and batterie power is low.
If you got luck it is really only the power connector which is faulty.

But I also saw that sometimes the video files are corrupted. After setting video recording time to 1 minute I have not lost a single file.
Before that the recording time was 5 minutes.

BTW: checking batterie life was abt. 1 hour in idle state and abt. 45 minutes when recording (only front cam).
In idle state I sometimes pushed a button to enable the display and looking for the batterie icon.

Regards

 

[midcoast1]

I have had one of these cameras for a week . Worked fine for the first 5 days then started shutting as well . It now works fine with just the main camera operating but as soon as you try to operate the rear camera as well it just shuts down with low power warning .

 

[jokiin]

I have had one of these cameras for a week . Worked fine for the first 5 days then started shutting as well . It now works fine with just the main camera operating but as soon as you try to operate the rear camera as well it just shuts down with low power warning .

this model has a very high failure rate unfortunately, great idea, but wrong solution

 

[jamika]

Thanks alot share wonderful ideas...!!!

 

[WindsorFox]

Okay so after my first trial today and all I can say is yuck! Not just digital blocking at random points, but the focus comes and goes. WTF? If the 'experts' would look at the link and tell me if that blocking is due to the SD card being too "slow"?? And when I get to the intersection it's like a camera that you knock out of focus and when I start moving it bounces back into focus. Weird...

 

[jokiin]

if that blocking is due to the SD card being too "slow"??

highly unlikely

 

[WindsorFox]

if that blocking is due to the SD card being too "slow"??

highly unlikely

So any ideas or send it back? I got it off eBay but specifically bought from someone in New Jersey just in case.
I've written to ask this guy what cam he is using...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJcPzcV9nUg

If anyone has a suggestion I guess getting the $50 dash cam as a starter was a bad Idea and I should have gone straight into a better model and be done with it.

 

[jokiin]

I've written to ask this guy what cam he is using...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJcPzcV9nUg

If anyone has a suggestion I guess getting the $50 dash cam as a starter was a bad Idea and I should have gone straight into a better model and be done with it.

from the video I'd guess a DVR207 (or one of the variants of), at $50 you get what you pay for I guess