New E1 questions

[DFredd]

I have just purchased an E1 and have been trying it out in my office. I am still in the Amazon return window, and wanted to be sure it worked OK before installing it in my van. I have a number of questions. Apologies is this is too long....

1. Time is often incorrect. E1 randomly changes time zone to Mountain. I am in Central, hundreds of miles from Mountain zone. When this happens it shows the time as one hour earlier than actual until I change the zone back to Central. Other times it will show the time as one hour later than actual. When it does that, the zone stays in Central, but it acts as if it were in Eastern zone. The camera has been in my home, with GPS connected when these issues have occurred, not in a moving vehicle. Is this common and is there a fix for it?

2. The manual shows a WiFi icon in the upper right corner of the display, indicating on, off, or connected. I have no icon there regardless of the state of the WiFi. Is this normal?

3. The manual seems to say that the orange dot to the left of the recording time indicates Parking Mode. This dot is always present, blinking, when the camera is recording and not in Parking Mode. Is this normal?

4. If a collision occurs, it appears that the camera will take a still photo, and put the current video clip in the Event folder. If a collision occurred at the beginning of a video clip, the events leading to the collision might be in the previous clip. Is there a way to get the prior video automatically saved as an event?

5. Somewhere, after I had purchased the camera and SD card, I saw a comment that said Vantrue suggests not using SanDisk cards. Of course, that is what I had bought, since I’ve always had very good luck with SanDisk in DSLR’s. Is this true? Are there SanDisk issues in this camera?

6. The manual says “The system will automatically update with the Micro-SD card firmware upgrade file. The camera will restart once the upgrade has been completed.” I assume this means I am to download the latest firmware from Vantrue’s website, load it on the Micro-SD card, insert it in the camera, and when powered up the camera will automatically update. True? Should I format the card in the camera before doing this?

Interesting to note that the camera I just received has firmware EBH182, released in August ’22. There have been three firmware updates since then. Seems Amazon must have quite a few of these getting dusty in warehouses.

Thanks in advance for any responses, and I appreciate your indulgence.

DFredd

 

[rcg530]

I have just purchased an E1 and have been trying it out in my office. I am still in the Amazon return window, and wanted to be sure it worked OK before installing it in my van. I have a number of questions. Apologies is this is too long....

1. Time is often incorrect. E1 randomly changes time zone to Mountain. I am in Central, hundreds of miles from Mountain zone. When this happens it shows the time as one hour earlier than actual until I change the zone back to Central. Other times it will show the time as one hour later than actual. When it does that, the zone stays in Central, but it acts as if it were in Eastern zone. The camera has been in my home, with GPS connected when these issues have occurred, not in a moving vehicle. Is this common and is there a fix for it?

2. The manual shows a WiFi icon in the upper right corner of the display, indicating on, off, or connected. I have no icon there regardless of the state of the WiFi. Is this normal?

3. The manual seems to say that the orange dot to the left of the recording time indicates Parking Mode. This dot is always present, blinking, when the camera is recording and not in Parking Mode. Is this normal?

4. If a collision occurs, it appears that the camera will take a still photo, and put the current video clip in the Event folder. If a collision occurred at the beginning of a video clip, the events leading to the collision might be in the previous clip. Is there a way to get the prior video automatically saved as an event?

5. Somewhere, after I had purchased the camera and SD card, I saw a comment that said Vantrue suggests not using SanDisk cards. Of course, that is what I had bought, since I’ve always had very good luck with SanDisk in DSLR’s. Is this true? Are there SanDisk issues in this camera?

6. The manual says “The system will automatically update with the Micro-SD card firmware upgrade file. The camera will restart once the upgrade has been completed.” I assume this means I am to download the latest firmware from Vantrue’s website, load it on the Micro-SD card, insert it in the camera, and when powered up the camera will automatically update. True? Should I format the card in the camera before doing this?

Interesting to note that the camera I just received has firmware EBH182, released in August ’22. There have been three firmware updates since then. Seems Amazon must have quite a few of these getting dusty in warehouses.

Thanks in advance for any responses, and I appreciate your indulgence.

DFredd

I'll try to tackle a few of these questions. The first one regarding the firmware version. EBH182 is a very old (given we're in late Feb 2023) firmware for the E1. There have been several versions released (test and production).



The early firmware versions had problems with time zone settings shifting away from the selected time zone, not entering parking mode even though the vehicle was stationary for the required 5-minute period. I would suggest that you download the latest firmware version (as of 17-Feb-2023) ECA063, put it on the microSD card, put the microSD in the E1 and power it up to upgrade the firmware and re-select your preferred firmware settings.

When the E1 is in parking mode, when the screen is on you will see a large orange circle with the parking mode type in the middle of the display. Here's a screenshot from my review video (just released today).



The E1 screen shows the Wi-Fi icon in the upper right with a slash through it since I did not have the Wi-Fi was not enabled at that time. Vantrue moved a few items on the E1 screen over the past several firmware versions. The screen shot of the E1 (left one) is with firmware ECA063 installed.

Beginning with firmware EBK231, the file locking strategy was updated when an impact occurs. I have some info from Vantrue on that topic, but the graphics are not in English. I still think the logic can still be understand with the English text descriptions even though the English descriptions are a bit cryptic (IMO).

Changes in the EBK231 firmware:

1. Add Korean to the language list.
2. Add a new locking mechanism, the same as E3.
3. Optimize large icons. For example, the recording icon's display, after optimize it, it will not obscures the parking monitoring small icons.
4. Fix the the recording time is not displayed but the dashcam is actually recording.

The locking mechanism has 4 conditions.

1. When the locking point is 15 seconds before the current recording（B）, it will lock the previous recording（A） and the current recording for 30 seconds and transfer them to the EVENT folder.


2. When the locking point is 15 seconds after the current recording(B), the current recording and the next recording(C) are locked for 30 seconds and transferred to the EVENT folder.



3. When the locking point is within 15 seconds before and after the current recording, only the current recording is locked and transferred to the EVENT folder.


4. When the locking point is 15 seconds before the current recording, and the video is the first segment of the recording, there is no recording in front of it . Only the current recording will be locked.

 

[DFredd]

Thanks for the info! I'll update the firmware today and take another look.