I've found two recent examples of it failing to auto record after sitting for an extended period. The first was 4 days and yesterday was 7 days. The date time hasn't been lost in either case. In both cases the Mobius has auto started perfectly for the rest of that day's trips (after I've noticed the red light not flashing and manually started midway on the first trip.)
It just started auto recording fine when I went to remove it to check the files. I'll have to try and remember to check it before starting the engine next time. It's wired into the BCM lighting circuit so I'll have to see if that circuit is behaving abnormally when the vehicle's battery drops in charge.
It does reset the time/ date. It's always after the vehicle has sat for an extended period- it's never happened when it's driven every couple of days (so I don't think it points to an intermittent cable issue.)
I have also got a "delay on" timer to prevent ignition power interruptions/ spikes affecting the power up sequence (as a fail safe.) But it does appear to be a booting issue of some sort given the power button will start it, power is obviously being applied to the Mobius. I'll try wobbling the cable next time it happens before pushing the power button.
Now I've got two Mobius in the same vehicle I can also swap them around to see if the fault moves with the camera.
I'll try removing the delay timer and see what difference that makes.
what sort of delay timer are you using and how is it currently configured?
From memory it's set for about 3 seconds delay on?
Yes. The theory being if there's a power drop-out it's a minimum of 3 seconds- to give the Mobius time to "sort itself out".just want to make sure I understand what you're doing correctly, you're using a timer to delay power from turning on to the camera for 3 seconds, is that correct?
Yes. The theory being if there's a power drop-out it's a minimum of 3 seconds- to give the Mobius time to "sort itself out".
the situation is fixable in firmware but they don't seem to know how to do it
No, caps are fine, it's the shutdown and startup sequence which needs to be coded differently, a power off delay timer can workaround this issue thoughSo the capacitor's size isn't the culprit?
@jokiin Thank you for the clarification.
IIRC @Isoprop had mentioned more than once that the size of the capacitor is to blame. Maybe he's also been led to believe this as the information could be coming from the guys at Mobius.
If this is indeed true for the Mobius, they seem to have dropped the ball long before the Mobius 2.
A larger capacitor would allow a different and simpler work-around within the current limitations of its hardware and firmware.
A larger capacitor would allow a different and simpler work-around within the current limitations of its hardware and firmware.
a larger capacitor would not actually fix the problem, it's the shutdown/startup sequence that needs modifying, having a larger reserve capacity of power won't change that at all, we had the identical issue when we first tested the GC and had to rewrite the process in the firmware
My analysis of Mobius with capacitor is that if the capacitor could hold enough charge to run the cam for more than 10s it would be possible to use the PC program's power-off-disconnect 10s option and the camera wouldn't shut down with momentary power fluctuations. But the cap only holds enough power for maybe 5-6s of operation so power-off-disconnect has to be set to immediate otherwise the last file doesn't save properly.
So my experiments suggest that Mobius could be 'fixed' with either a double-size cap using existing firmware, or a modification to the firmware to allow couple of seconds power-off-disconnect instead of 'immediate' which is too short to cope with brief power interruptions or '10s' which is too long for the cap to keep the cam running.
Mobius is relatively quick to power up - about 5s - so those initial few seconds would be the only risky period of time where power fluctuation might upset the cam.
Another weak point of the small-ish cap is that it takes around 20-30s to reach full charge and during that time if an accident occurred the cam might not save the last file properly.
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....larger caps take longer to charge, the smaller caps actually have an advantage here, I keep hearing the excuse about the caps being too small but there are other cameras out there using the identical size caps without issue
Curiously, my JooVuu X cams manage to charge their caps in about half the time it takes my Mobius cams - that's based on how soon after receiving power the cam can have power removed and still be able to save the file. I've lost the file with the exact figures but from memory it was something like 10-15s after receiving power for the JooVuu and 20-30s for the Mobius.
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