cdmonline
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2015
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 1
- Country
- Australia
Hi,
I recently took possession of my new Mini 0806. Although I'm generally very happy with it, there are a few issues I'm trying to work through. I did buy a couple of [cheap] 128Gb microUSB memory cards from China on eBay ($5 each) and I've had both these installed. I suspect 1 of these is a bit dodgy, as after the first few Gb of data, the recordings are all corrupt - the file size and name all appear normal but they are unreadable. I'm now trying the second card to verify if it's an issue with the card or with the mini. Will report back my findings. My gut tells me it's the memory card and I just have a dud, but we'll see.
I did check the mini0806 web-site for the latest firmware but it's not clear whether the firmware I have is newer or older than what's presented there. The date formats (I assume they are dates) between what the device reports is it's firmware and what the web-site show are different, so I'm unsure of whether the comparison is correct and don't want to bugger anything up. I don't see anyway to reverse the installation of a new piece of firmware. Does the reset to factory settings include restoring to the version of the firmware that the device came with?
I have found that the battery life of probably no more than a minute or 2 at the most whilst unplugged is a bit disconcerting.
Another oddity is that even though I have functional memory cards in both slots (both have been tested - although one might be a bit dodgy) and I have the memory card slot choice set to AUTO, it still uses slot B every time, when I would have expected it to use slot A, since that's alphabetically first. I know slot A works, since I've tested it with nothing in slot B and it does write the files correctly.
For whatever reason, my unit does NOT store/remeber the date correctly. I've corrected the date several times but it keeps losing the correct date. Consequently, it's difficult to locate the appropriate recording on the memory card. It would be really nice if the date stamp could be incorporated into the file name - or at least it would be nice if you could have the option of choosing this, as opposed to a sequential file naming scheme.
I have noticed that there is a slight distortion to my radio signal when the device is plugged into a power source in the car and operating. I listed to AM radio, so not sure if this also affects FM. It's not a big distortion, but it's there some of the time.
The small self-adhesive clips that came with the unit are not adhesive enough, so I've had to order some more to keep the power cable neat and tidy.
I am intrigued by the reports that the video image quality can be improved with installing Nigel's firmware. Again, I don't know if I'd be going backwards in doing this or not, so some advice/guidance here would be appreciated. It doesn't look like there has been any update to the firmware since May, which surprises me since the web-site does state that it's updated every Friday - it's now the end of September.
Overall, I'm very happy with the video quality, although I have seen conflicting advice on what's the best resolution/bit rate to set the unit to. Day vision can sometimes be a bit of an issue with direct sunlight. Night vision seems quite good. I haven't tried using the filter yet. Is that just for daytime use? I don't know if I'll have the discipline (the idea is to set and forget the dashcam is there) to keep adding/removing the filter manually.
GPS seems to work very well and does lock in quite quickly. I'm just not sure what to do with the GPS information once it has been written. I can offload the movie files and see them but I've no idea how to take advantage of the GPS data. I would be nice if I could see the movie alongside the track of the car (using this GPS data) on a map in unison with the footage. Anyone know how to achieve this?
It would be nice if the formatting of the information on the screen could be improved. As it it, I have the longitude and speed on 1 line with the latitude alone on the next line, so the longitude and latitude data don't line up on the screen. It's an CDO thing (that's like OCD but with the letters arranged alphabetically like they should be!). Also, the screen is clearly very small and this makes actually reading the icons and text on the screen very difficult with my aging eyes. Sometimes, I've seen text flash on the screen and simply couldn't read it. There's plenty of screen real-estate to make the text and icons bigger so an option to allow this would be nice.
I've had to switch off the lane departure feature, as it was constantly beeping at me with 'Collision Warning' flashing up on the screen every 5-20 seconds or so. I have tried to calibrate to get the horizon lines in the right place but just can't get rid of these continual warnings. I'll have to live without that feature for now.
I've no idea whether the collision impact works. Obviously, I don't want to crash the car or have someone drive into it to test it out.
Connecting/disconnecting the unit to/from the cradle could be better. It's really quite stiff and I think should be re-designed to be a spring-loaded clip mechanism instead. Unfortunately, I mounted mine rather close to a tollway electronic reader I have stuck to the windshield, so every time I remove the unit from the cradle, the sudden release after applying the right amount of pressure means I whack my hand against the other reader.
On balance, I'm very happy with the unit. It does the job and has pretty decent video/audio quality. Having said that, it hasn't been entirely plain sailing, and I am working through some issues. I did send in an e-mail to the folks at the mini0806 web-site but I've yet to hear back from them. It's been about 4-5 days so far.
- Chris
I recently took possession of my new Mini 0806. Although I'm generally very happy with it, there are a few issues I'm trying to work through. I did buy a couple of [cheap] 128Gb microUSB memory cards from China on eBay ($5 each) and I've had both these installed. I suspect 1 of these is a bit dodgy, as after the first few Gb of data, the recordings are all corrupt - the file size and name all appear normal but they are unreadable. I'm now trying the second card to verify if it's an issue with the card or with the mini. Will report back my findings. My gut tells me it's the memory card and I just have a dud, but we'll see.
I did check the mini0806 web-site for the latest firmware but it's not clear whether the firmware I have is newer or older than what's presented there. The date formats (I assume they are dates) between what the device reports is it's firmware and what the web-site show are different, so I'm unsure of whether the comparison is correct and don't want to bugger anything up. I don't see anyway to reverse the installation of a new piece of firmware. Does the reset to factory settings include restoring to the version of the firmware that the device came with?
I have found that the battery life of probably no more than a minute or 2 at the most whilst unplugged is a bit disconcerting.
Another oddity is that even though I have functional memory cards in both slots (both have been tested - although one might be a bit dodgy) and I have the memory card slot choice set to AUTO, it still uses slot B every time, when I would have expected it to use slot A, since that's alphabetically first. I know slot A works, since I've tested it with nothing in slot B and it does write the files correctly.
For whatever reason, my unit does NOT store/remeber the date correctly. I've corrected the date several times but it keeps losing the correct date. Consequently, it's difficult to locate the appropriate recording on the memory card. It would be really nice if the date stamp could be incorporated into the file name - or at least it would be nice if you could have the option of choosing this, as opposed to a sequential file naming scheme.
I have noticed that there is a slight distortion to my radio signal when the device is plugged into a power source in the car and operating. I listed to AM radio, so not sure if this also affects FM. It's not a big distortion, but it's there some of the time.
The small self-adhesive clips that came with the unit are not adhesive enough, so I've had to order some more to keep the power cable neat and tidy.
I am intrigued by the reports that the video image quality can be improved with installing Nigel's firmware. Again, I don't know if I'd be going backwards in doing this or not, so some advice/guidance here would be appreciated. It doesn't look like there has been any update to the firmware since May, which surprises me since the web-site does state that it's updated every Friday - it's now the end of September.
Overall, I'm very happy with the video quality, although I have seen conflicting advice on what's the best resolution/bit rate to set the unit to. Day vision can sometimes be a bit of an issue with direct sunlight. Night vision seems quite good. I haven't tried using the filter yet. Is that just for daytime use? I don't know if I'll have the discipline (the idea is to set and forget the dashcam is there) to keep adding/removing the filter manually.
GPS seems to work very well and does lock in quite quickly. I'm just not sure what to do with the GPS information once it has been written. I can offload the movie files and see them but I've no idea how to take advantage of the GPS data. I would be nice if I could see the movie alongside the track of the car (using this GPS data) on a map in unison with the footage. Anyone know how to achieve this?
It would be nice if the formatting of the information on the screen could be improved. As it it, I have the longitude and speed on 1 line with the latitude alone on the next line, so the longitude and latitude data don't line up on the screen. It's an CDO thing (that's like OCD but with the letters arranged alphabetically like they should be!). Also, the screen is clearly very small and this makes actually reading the icons and text on the screen very difficult with my aging eyes. Sometimes, I've seen text flash on the screen and simply couldn't read it. There's plenty of screen real-estate to make the text and icons bigger so an option to allow this would be nice.
I've had to switch off the lane departure feature, as it was constantly beeping at me with 'Collision Warning' flashing up on the screen every 5-20 seconds or so. I have tried to calibrate to get the horizon lines in the right place but just can't get rid of these continual warnings. I'll have to live without that feature for now.
I've no idea whether the collision impact works. Obviously, I don't want to crash the car or have someone drive into it to test it out.
Connecting/disconnecting the unit to/from the cradle could be better. It's really quite stiff and I think should be re-designed to be a spring-loaded clip mechanism instead. Unfortunately, I mounted mine rather close to a tollway electronic reader I have stuck to the windshield, so every time I remove the unit from the cradle, the sudden release after applying the right amount of pressure means I whack my hand against the other reader.
On balance, I'm very happy with the unit. It does the job and has pretty decent video/audio quality. Having said that, it hasn't been entirely plain sailing, and I am working through some issues. I did send in an e-mail to the folks at the mini0806 web-site but I've yet to hear back from them. It's been about 4-5 days so far.
- Chris
