Micro SD card questions

[HangFire]

I've been running my e-prance Mini 0801 (w/ GPS but no 8GB) for a few days now with a San Disk Class 10 card, and right on cue this morning it started turning off with some kind of card error. I was expecting it so I still had my 207 running.

Miraculously all the Class 6 cards on Amazon doubled in price recently. I was thinking of this Class 4 card, does anyone have any experience with it?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B003OA8T92
Or maybe a better question is, is there a firmware flash available that fixes this problem for good, on any card? I see discussion of Class 6 cards failing to roll over so I'm a little hesitant to spend another $22 for something that may just fail anyway.

Thanks,
HF

 

[CheckYourLights]

While i don't have an 801 I have been using SanDisk cards for a long time until recently. I had a Memory Card Error with my Class 10 SanDisk MicroSD card in my G1W. I have since switched to this Transcend Class 10 Micro SD card witch is only 23 dollars on Amazon with no more problems in my G1W. If possible i would try and barrow someone's other brand micro and see if that fixes anything before spending more money, but that what happened to work for me and a few other members.

 

[Lunar]

I've been running my e-prance Mini 0801 (w/ GPS but no 8GB) for a few days now with a San Disk Class 10 card, and right on cue this morning it started turning off with some kind of card error. I was expecting it so I still had my 207 running.

Miraculously all the Class 6 cards on Amazon doubled in price recently. I was thinking of this Class 4 card, does anyone have any experience with it?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B003OA8T92
Or maybe a better question is, is there a firmware flash available that fixes this problem for good, on any card? I see discussion of Class 6 cards failing to roll over so I'm a little hesitant to spend another $22 for something that may just fail anyway.

Thanks,
HF

Personally I would avoid Sandisk cards for a little while as they recently admitted they had sent out some batches of cards that were well below spec, read the following.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/SanDisk-says-it-produced-some-bad-32GB-and-64GB-microSD-cards_id40986

I've used Samsung cards for about 6 weeks now without any problems, but in view of the fact that class 10 cards use a faster bus speed, and in the manual they suggest not using class 10, I would go for class6, though I must add I've had no problem with the Samsung class 10 I did run with for a couple of days, but I think it may be prudent to opt for class 6 if ordering new cards... JMO. Or perhaps a good quality class 4 if there's a big price difference.

 

[HangFire]

I've used Samsung cards for about 6 weeks now without any problems, but in view of the fact that class 10 cards use a faster bus speed, and in the manual they suggest not using class 10, I would go for class6, though I must add I've had no problem with the Samsung class 10 I did run with for a couple of days, but I think it may be prudent to opt for class 6 if ordering new cards... JMO. Or perhaps a good quality class 4 if there's a big price difference.

I'm sure you're right, but it bothers me when the quality brand Class 6 cards on Amazon are 50% more than the Class 10 cards. Also if speed is the problem I'd rather NOT have a "fast" Class 6 that passes the threshold.

Still not sure what to do... going to ping e-prance about a possible firmware flash and report back.

HF

 

[Ardea]

See my recent post on card speeds. A class 6 card can be written to about 8x faster than the camera can write when recording, as tested. Seems class 6 is not necessary!

 

[Lunar]

HangFire, I have used 2 of the SanDisk 32g Class 4 cards in my e-prance 0801 without any issues. https://www.amazon.com/gp/B004G7D0EG

I also have a couple Sandisk cards that work fine, one should just be aware that they did produce a few that didn't meet their specs. I don't think Sandisk would have put out that announcement if they had not made any bad one's do you ?..lol not good for their business. TBH I've not seen any errors at all, except 1 time on a Transend card, regardless of which card I used in the camera, I've mainly used class 6 cards purely because of their statement in the manual advising against class 10... no other reason.. Only card I did have a issue with was a Transend 32gb which gave a write error because it had one faulty sector, a full reformat mapped it out and that one's been fine also since, though I'll admit I've not used it extensively. In short, most of the decent branded cards will work fine, and AYS your Sandisk 32GB cards have been great for you also. My own experience with 32GB class 10 cards for 2 or 3 days use were also good.

TBH I don't think you can have too many cards..lol I must now have at least a dozen TF cards, and more than that number of standard SD cards, I have so many toys that use them, from camcorders, DSLR, camera's, MP3 gadgets, and of course these 4 dash camera's I now have, god only knows why I bought 4..lol Though I'll probably leave the Mio 368 in the wifes car.

 

[Lunar]

See my recent post on card speeds. A class 6 card can be written to about 8x faster than the camera can write when recording, as tested. Seems class 6 is not necessary!

I did some extensive speed tests too as posted on the forum, a good quality class 4 will run fine. You also have to bear in mind however that when it starts to re-cycle, it's write speed capability will be drastically reduced, so class 6 or class 10 gives that little extra headroom, but if people don't want to pay for class 6 cards then thats up to them, in the UK they are similar price, but I too have noticed they are getting more expensive now, as supply is starting to dry up. Everyone's is now manufacturing class 10 or UHS-1 and UHS-2 cards. A good quality class 4 should work okay.

The reason I tend to recommend Samsung cards, is purely because when I was testing a load of different cards, the Samsung cards seemed to give the better write speeds, by quite a margin actually, and thats the only reason I bought a few of them. I'm not saying other brands are rubbish.. far from it. I have 3 or 4 few different brands here myself, but there can be big differences in write speeds, just because they have a sticker and classification on them doesn't always mean they are as good as they claim. In fact I've seen a good class 4 card write faster than a poor class 10.

 

[Lunar]

I'm sure you're right, but it bothers me when the quality brand Class 6 cards on Amazon are 50% more than the Class 10 cards. Also if speed is the problem I'd rather NOT have a "fast" Class 6 that passes the threshold.

Still not sure what to do... going to ping e-prance about a possible firmware flash and report back.

HF

E-Prance AFAIK don't have any magical fixes, the 20130913 is their latest version for camera's with GPS only, and 0922 is their latest for cams with GPS & 8GB.

Just buy a cheap but good brand class 4, and all should be good. These cams write at approx 17200kbps which equates to 2.1MBps, a good class 4 should write at 4MBps or IME even 5+MBps, so in theory a class 4 is plenty fast enough. However, as I've stated many times, when the card fills it will then need to continually delete files to make room to write more, and I do suspect it's this re-cycling where it needs to delete files is where you need that extra speed headroom, as I feel it must impact greatly on the cards ability to write it's files fast enough to keep up. The write speed capability of a card given by manufacturers will always be it's 'Continous Write Speed' when the camera starts to re-cycle it's no longer able to write continiously, as it has to stop writing, and then start deleting, and AIS this will have a big impact on actual write speeds you actually get.

On checking Amazons prices this morning, I agree prices of the class 6 do seem inflated a little as you can get class 10 cards cheaper, But are still within a couple pounds of other cards on Amazon UK. I assume it's because they no longer make them, I suspect the reason they are a little more expensive is because they use better quality memory to achieve their faster speeds. Another important factor too is the fact that all these cards have a tiny controller file system chip on the card, so the efficiency of that will likely have some bearing on the writing speeds too, infact some SD cards also have built-in wifi capability too AYK.
Remember, class 2 class 4 and class 6 all use the standard bus/clock speed. which is the most compatible, and is probably why the manufacturer printed that statement in the camera's manual.
In theory of course, all the cards should be backwards compatible, but in use.. who's knows..lol

Class 10 cards primarily achieve their boost in speed by having a faster clock speed, the latest superfast UHS-2 cards have a even faster clock speed. It's no different than simply overclocking your PC's memory, if the memory chips used are not good enough then some will not overclock very well and will return errors. Overclocking the bus/clock speeds is a cheap way to achieve faster speeds, it's only successful if the memory chips and the controller chip used are faster enough to run at those speeds.. There has been extensive discussion on this subject in the main mini 0801 thread, MANY TIMES...lol

 

[HangFire]

E-Prance AFAIK don't have any magical fixes, the 20130913 is their latest version for camera's with GPS only, and 0922 is their latest for cams with GPS & 8GB

Thanks, Lunar. Is there a link for this flash? I took a quick look but found only other vendors links.

HF

 

[Lunar]

Thanks, Lunar. Is there a link for this flash? I took a quick look but found only other vendors links.

HF

This is the 20130913 firmware for the mini 0801 with GPS (but no internal 8GB) IOW just for the GPS only version. NOTE, I haven't tried this myself as my camera's came with 0913 already installed. I think most of the firmwares are available from the mini 0801 FAQ. I believe this particular 20130913 firmware for GPS only was sent to us from E-Prance, I got it from a link in the long mini 0801 thread.. thinking it may come in handy if I ever need to revert back, ie. in the event later versions are ever released.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/67n9f9ur9kpwk4x/20130913-NO1-SPIF-TB15.bin

I'll leave it on there for a few days.

 

[HangFire]

Lunar, got it, thanks. I'll wait and try the new card before I try the flash. One change at a time.

I received the SanDisk Class 4 today, formatted it with SDFormatter V4.0 and then it finished H2testw at exactly 5.00MB/S write speed and 21.0 read speed. We'll see how it does in the Mini starting tomorrow.

 

[HangFire]

Well, total failure tonight with http://www.amazon.com/gp/B003OA8T92 .

It ran Friday morning and afternoon just fine, but failed to record part way through a local drive this evening. It would run for 3 minutes and then shut down and fail to record the file. I would start it again, or do a power cycle, same thing.

Card is formatted as per jokiin and passed a complete H2testw.

Now I'm reading the only card this will work with is a Samsung brand. What a joke.

Are the other vendor's Mini's any better than this POC? I've already got half the value of the cam tied up in microSD cards.

 

[HangFire]

What a POC. I tried Stamp (very large date/time across bottom of picture) and didn't like it. So I turned it off. I noticed it was back on so I want to turn it off. It's already "off". lol I guess I didn't turn it "off" enough.

 

[HangFire]

Lunar, that bin didn't prompt a flash. I tried the one linked from the FAQ and that worked, but I think I'm just back where I started from now.

 

[HangFire]

How long should one expect it to run on battery? Mine is low bat/shutoff within a minute. It's been running on power continuously for weeks.

EDIT: I restored to defaults (again) according to Angel and I turned Audio off. We'll have to wait a few days and see what happens.

 

[HangFire]

The current thinking on this card seems to be that it requires 1 min loops with audio off and Samsung Class 6 (and only a Samsung Class 6) card to operate. This is not an acceptable compromise for me, because a 1 minute loop gives about a 1 in 60 chance of an incident being cut in half, and I want the option of turning the audio on and off as I please.

Mine is going back to e-prance for a refund. This is the second dashcam return in a row after the 207GS and its bad light level handling. I think I'm going to have to step up in price to get a functional, stable 1080p dashcam. The Mini 0801 was too good to be true.

 

[jokiin]

unfortunately when a product is built to a price there are compromises made, I think a few of the factories that put these together do so at bare minimum spec/price and this is the result, the issue for consumers for products such as these is that you can't tell which are which, even the best of this model are still limited in potential through the hardware choices that were made, perhaps they shouldn't have buckled to consumer pressure and only released it in the TS version rather than MOV, at least it doesn't suffer the stability issues, they should probably pull the bitrate back a bit to increase stability, with the hardware they're using anything above 12Mbit is going to be a challenge