DashCamAndy
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2016
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- United States
I've been a mostly-content owner of a 3rd-Gen 806 for eleven months now. It's certainly had its share of issues, most of which I have been able to work around or simply deal with. Today's issue is more like the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back."
This afternoon, my microSD reached full capacity, and the camera stopped. I got back into my vehicle to hear the dreaded "zzbing zzbing zzbing" error noise, at 2-second intervals. I squint at the screen to try and read that horrible miniscule red font and manage to decipher "File fgmt. Needs format."
Lo and behold, my microSD had approx. 500MB available. It would seem that the Loop Recording feature no longer works, no files have been deleted since the last time I emptied the card. I am using the latest firmware, 2016-11-15, and this is a new problem that I did not have with any previous version. Apparently, this also corrupted my card in the process, since I cannot delete or copy files off the card on a PC without "G:\DCIM is not accessible. Data error (cyclic redundancy check)" error. (Running chkdsk fixed it, but I had to reboot Windows because attempting to copy files made my computer get stuck in a loop.)
I don't make it a habit to fill my card up, I usually empty it out regularly. This is the first time in the two months that I have been running the newest firmware that I filled the card. I have filled the card on older firmwares and... Well, see below about loop cycles, but I never had it crash. I do reformat almost religiously every month in the camera.
I have found it to be a decent dashcam, I really like it and plan on doing a supercap upgrade in the future (battery life from full charge: 45 seconds of menu navigation), but there are certain things that seem to be firmware-related that really hold it back.
The error message text is single-row in red, abbreviated to fit. It would be nice if the error messages could at least be centered with two rows of text. It could still be red in color, but with a contrasting background like the menus so it would be much easier to read. I'm not sure if it is possible to do.
For the last few firmware updates, rotating the image for upside-down mounting in the 1080p-30 WDR recording format does not work at all. I've adjusted my preference to accommodate this, so no longer a big deal for me.
1080p-45, with a 3-minute file limit, records 3 minutes of awesome video with the last video frame as an additional 5-minute still image. There is no gap in actual recording (the next file starts at the proper time).
Manually-locking files has never "Locked" the file (I do get the padlock icon on the screen, though), and severe braking with G-sensor set at 2G doesn't "lock" a file either (nor does it trigger the padlock icon). Pulling G-sensor data directly from the video file with DashWare shows enough to trigger a save.
Loop recording: why is it described as "overwriting the oldest files first" when it simply overwrites at random? (A problem I also experience on a GiiNii GD-250.) Granted, I have only used two dashcams so that is my only experience, but when loop recording is described as automatically overwriting the oldest files first, there should be some truth to that!
The GPS? That has never worked properly. I can drive for an hour on a cold-start and never get a lock. It makes no difference if power is plugged into the GPS mount or the Mini itself. However, if I start my vehicle, wait for ten seconds, and slide the camera into the GPS mount, I almost always have a lock - and I do dozens of restarts a day where the camera never loses power long enough to shut down, the GPS drops out during the engine restart, and within a second or two GPS locks back on. If I guessed, I'd say the Mini boots before the GPS unit is ready, so the Mini doesn't "see" it?
It has survived almost a year in Connecticut, sliding in and out of the same GPS mount multiple times a day, and it still goes... But this latest firmware update seems to have broken the auto-deletion completely, and now I'm starting to reconsider buying an 826 because the 806 has so many quirks. I'll be rolling my firmware back in just a moment.
/End rant. LOL
TL; DR Latest firmware update seems to have broken auto deletion of files on full microSD.
This afternoon, my microSD reached full capacity, and the camera stopped. I got back into my vehicle to hear the dreaded "zzbing zzbing zzbing" error noise, at 2-second intervals. I squint at the screen to try and read that horrible miniscule red font and manage to decipher "File fgmt. Needs format."
Lo and behold, my microSD had approx. 500MB available. It would seem that the Loop Recording feature no longer works, no files have been deleted since the last time I emptied the card. I am using the latest firmware, 2016-11-15, and this is a new problem that I did not have with any previous version. Apparently, this also corrupted my card in the process, since I cannot delete or copy files off the card on a PC without "G:\DCIM is not accessible. Data error (cyclic redundancy check)" error. (Running chkdsk fixed it, but I had to reboot Windows because attempting to copy files made my computer get stuck in a loop.)
I don't make it a habit to fill my card up, I usually empty it out regularly. This is the first time in the two months that I have been running the newest firmware that I filled the card. I have filled the card on older firmwares and... Well, see below about loop cycles, but I never had it crash. I do reformat almost religiously every month in the camera.
I have found it to be a decent dashcam, I really like it and plan on doing a supercap upgrade in the future (battery life from full charge: 45 seconds of menu navigation), but there are certain things that seem to be firmware-related that really hold it back.
The error message text is single-row in red, abbreviated to fit. It would be nice if the error messages could at least be centered with two rows of text. It could still be red in color, but with a contrasting background like the menus so it would be much easier to read. I'm not sure if it is possible to do.
For the last few firmware updates, rotating the image for upside-down mounting in the 1080p-30 WDR recording format does not work at all. I've adjusted my preference to accommodate this, so no longer a big deal for me.
1080p-45, with a 3-minute file limit, records 3 minutes of awesome video with the last video frame as an additional 5-minute still image. There is no gap in actual recording (the next file starts at the proper time).
Manually-locking files has never "Locked" the file (I do get the padlock icon on the screen, though), and severe braking with G-sensor set at 2G doesn't "lock" a file either (nor does it trigger the padlock icon). Pulling G-sensor data directly from the video file with DashWare shows enough to trigger a save.
Loop recording: why is it described as "overwriting the oldest files first" when it simply overwrites at random? (A problem I also experience on a GiiNii GD-250.) Granted, I have only used two dashcams so that is my only experience, but when loop recording is described as automatically overwriting the oldest files first, there should be some truth to that!
The GPS? That has never worked properly. I can drive for an hour on a cold-start and never get a lock. It makes no difference if power is plugged into the GPS mount or the Mini itself. However, if I start my vehicle, wait for ten seconds, and slide the camera into the GPS mount, I almost always have a lock - and I do dozens of restarts a day where the camera never loses power long enough to shut down, the GPS drops out during the engine restart, and within a second or two GPS locks back on. If I guessed, I'd say the Mini boots before the GPS unit is ready, so the Mini doesn't "see" it?
It has survived almost a year in Connecticut, sliding in and out of the same GPS mount multiple times a day, and it still goes... But this latest firmware update seems to have broken the auto-deletion completely, and now I'm starting to reconsider buying an 826 because the 806 has so many quirks. I'll be rolling my firmware back in just a moment.
/End rant. LOL
TL; DR Latest firmware update seems to have broken auto deletion of files on full microSD.
