Not a Happy Camper with the A139

HonestReview

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2019
Messages
3,557
Reaction score
790
Country
Sweden
I am going to amend this post and verify again tomorrow. My car was sitting outside in 25C direct sunlight today when I came out to find my A129 Duo still recording and the A139 powered off. Unit was very hot to touch.

In the off chance the voltage cutoff may have shut down the camera. It'll be about 26C tomorrow.

Will see what happens.
 
Last edited:
I have only done my usual 1 hour parking in the sun, i can up that on Sunday as i will be going to my friends house to do the friend thing again, and this Sunday should be even warmer ( 25 deg C )
I will try that and park facing the sun to cook as much as i can.

I am PT running a WD purple card in the A139
 
So I parked my car outside today in the direct sun. Let it sit outside for an hour or two. Guess what? My A139 must have overheated because I came out to find the unit POWERED OFF.

I replaced out the Zenfox T3 because of this issue, and now it seems the replacement suffers the same problem.......

Going to reach out to support. This is unacceptable.

Anyone else experiencing this issue? I am using a Sandisk Extreme 256GB card.
We are getting close to midsummer, hottest part of the year in the northern hemisphere, just like when you tested the T3!

There is no way it is overheating in Sweden, so you must be somewhere much closer to the tropics.

Since you won't tell us where you actually are, I think you need to put a thermometer in your car and record the actual temperature up around the camera mounting position to show that it is reasonable to expect it to continue recording in whatever temperature you have...
 
We are getting close to midsummer, hottest part of the year in the northern hemisphere, just like when you tested the T3!

There is no way it is overheating in Sweden, so you must be somewhere much closer to the tropics.

Since you won't tell us where you actually are, I think you need to put a thermometer in your car and record the actual temperature up around the camera mounting position to show that it is reasonable to expect it to continue recording in whatever temperature you have...

I have amended my post and will verify this before I draw 100% conclusion. In the event it was the Voltage Cutoff and not the heat.

It was 25C today.

FYI: When it's 25 degrees outside it can get to 35C degrees inside after 10 minutes and 42C after 30 minutes...

What don't you understand about an enclosed vehicle and direct sunlight?

Anyway, I will cool my jets. Having a bad day today. And will make sure my statement is accurate. I HOPE I AM WRONG and rushed to judgment, but I already saw a thread on here about the camera overheating.
 
I've been through several more days with temps as high as 88F (31C) doing parking recording with low-bitrate, all other settings maxxed out, my van parked closed in full sun and I've yet to have the first failure of any kind. Same results when using motion detect for parking. This is with Samsung EVO Select cards in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB sizes.

I did get some issues using a SanDisk Extreme A2 64GB card both during parking and driving. Mostly rebooting and boot-looping while driving, but I did get a few freeze-ups/shutdowns while parked. As cards have a temp limit too, perhaps that might be involved, but these issues happened to me in lower temps, and I've since moved that card to other cams where it works flawlessly. Others use this card to good effect in their A139 cams so I really don't know what to think.

Hotter weather coming but it's at least a few weeks away I hope.

Phil
 
I've been through several more days with temps as high as 88F (31C) doing parking recording with low-bitrate, all other settings maxxed out, my van parked closed in full sun and I've yet to have the first failure of any kind. Same results when using motion detect for parking. This is with Samsung EVO Select cards in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB sizes.

I did get some issues using a SanDisk Extreme A2 64GB card both during parking and driving. Mostly rebooting and boot-looping while driving, but I did get a few freeze-ups/shutdowns while parked. As cards have a temp limit too, perhaps that might be involved, but these issues happened to me in lower temps, and I've since moved that card to other cams where it works flawlessly. Others use this card to good effect in their A139 cams so I really don't know what to think.

Hotter weather coming but it's at least a few weeks away I hope.

Phil

I'm going to park my car in the direct sun tomorrow and see what happens. I noticed I have the file length set to 5 minutes. So all the files concluded. The "new file" that started was empty and/or corrupt like an unexcepted shutdown. So leading me to believe heat, but could have been voltage cutoff.

Either way, I'll see what happens tomorrow with test #2.

You'd think if it were memory card related, it'd start beeping versus the camera being completely shut down. Leading me to two conclusions:

1. Overheating
2. Voltage cutoff as I have 2 cameras running and that one shut off.

Hope to hell it's #2 or I'm going to be extremely upset.
 
I noticed I have the file length set to 5 minutes. So all the files concluded. The "new file" that started was empty and/or corrupt like an unexcepted shutdown. So leading me to believe heat, but could have been voltage cutoff.
voltage cutoff would give a clean shutdown
 
voltage cutoff would give a clean shutdown

Yep. That's my suspicion but I'll wait to pass judgment until I replicate the problem. Should I discover it is indeed an overheating issue, Viofo going to have some explaining to do. As I bought this item and wasn't given it as a beta.

I see there's a thread on the topic but this seems to deal more with the memory card than camera itself. One thing I can say is the main unit of the A139 gets VERY VERY HOT.
 
Two things to note:

1. The files are around 143MB but are unplayable, indicating a hasty and improper shutdown. Again, I suspect overheating. Will test again during mid day when hottest.

2. I tried to see if my A129 Duo, also recording in parking mode, captured any auditory warning. I.E. Shutting Down, Overheating, etc. Nothing was announced, complicating the issue.

I would think if it were a memory card freeze, the unit would be beeping or have rebooted. Not completely powered itself off. We will see what happens when I repeat the test. If it does overheat again, I am going to ask Viofo to mail me out another / replacement camera and see if that unit has the same issue.

Hoping if it freezes, I have a faulty unit versus another Zenfox T3 Fiasco of bad quality control. Something I would not expect from Viofo. A well known DashCam manufacturer with a solid reputation and generally well built cameras.
 
It was 25C today.

FYI: When it's 25 degrees outside it can get to 35C degrees inside after 10 minutes and 42C after 30 minutes...
Get yourself a thermometer so that you have some real figures to talk about instead of highly inaccurate speculation! Maybe stick it in view of the cabin camera so that we have the evidence recorded…
 
There is no way it is overheating in Sweden

Finland and Siberia at the north had about 30 degrees a week or so ago :unsure: Thats like 1500 KM north of where i am.
I will crank up my timer tomorrow and see how she like that.
 
My timer has been set to 2 hours as part of testing it, but I'll increase that today. I don't see it having an effect on my results as my testing so far has encompassed the hottest parts of the day already. I think LVC is at 12.2V with my HWK which did give me long recording times before the timer was implemented.

Unfortunately my old 'bus' has experienced some mechanical problems which has twice over-drained the battery and I've once did that leaving the headlights on, so I'm probably going to be needing a replacement before winter arrives and maybe sooner. Not a dashcam problem but it does affect that.

You'd think they could build a vehicle which does not need repairs in the first thirty year of use... :ROFLMAO:

Phil
 
The original battery in my car lasted 8 years, and to be honest when i replaced it last year it did not look sick one bit, but replacing did cure a problem with a dashcam, so some form of electric corona must have crawled along my +12 V wire.

Now that testing parking guard are also more of a norm i have become more focused on the dedicated dashcam power packs, i might have to pick up one of those next year, that if IF my financial long term prognosis hold up.

Also just noticed that both of my small "positioning lights" in the front are blown, i want to put LED in there but even that is not legal, so just have to go with the stupid old bulbs again.
And BTW the one of them are less than a year old, and already blown :mad:
 
The original battery in my car lasted 8 years, and to be honest when i replaced it last year it did not look sick one bit, but replacing did cure a problem with a dashcam, so some form of electric corona must have crawled along my +12 V wire.
I got almost 4 years from new out of my Suzuki battery, not a great battery though, replaced with one that was the same physical size but it weighed over double what the factory fitted battery did, expect it should last a bit longer than the original battery did
 
I'm definitely going to do an auxiliary power system when I get around to it. But as I am the one who put the "Pro" in "procrastination", I wont promise when that will happen :rolleyes:

Mine will likely be AGM-based simply because of costs and because it might also be seeing some high-current-draw usage as it's not going to be just for dashcams. If excess money arrives it will be LiFePO4 or LTO but excess money doesn't happen here much anymore.

Phil
 
25.5C (78 Degree) Outdoor Temperature. Car's Digital Thermometer registers car as 40C (104 Degrees) sitting in direct sunlight. On a Sandisk High Endurance 256GB, Camera shut down (powered off) after only 28 minutes and corrupted the files being written when it shut down. Both camera and SD card very hot to the touch. Parking Mode + Low Bitrate Recording.

Viofo A129 Duo works fine while A139 powers off.

Either I have a faulty camera or this thing performs even worse than the Zenfox T3.

Will be performing same test on the Sandisk A2 Extreme. Although, I doubt it's the memory card. Seeing how the camera itself is powering down and simply not beeping with a recording error.
 
Last edited:
Car's Digital Thermometer registers car as 40C (104 Degrees) sitting in direct sunlight.
Car thermometers measure outdoor air temperature. If it is 40 outside, it could be 100 centigrade at the mirror…

You really should check what temperature you really have, not make claims based on the weather forecast!
 
I would NOT leave a regular old fashioned thermometer in the car, unless you like alcohol of worse yet Mercury all over the place.

My car temp gauge read 24 deg C for my drive today, i assume thats somewhere under the car out of the wind cuz it do not go down with speed.

The sun burn on my scalp and forehead from last Sunday / Monday are not even over yet, i assume i am record thin hair now cuz that have never been a problem before. :giggle:
Arms and back are ready for a new round of UV spanking. ( i think i will have to source a cap somewhere )
 
Car thermometers measure outdoor air temperature. If it is 40 outside, it could be 100 centigrade at the mirror…

You really should check what temperature you really have, not make claims based on the weather forecast!

The numbers above about how hot an enclosed car get were pulled from a news station that reported the temperatures of an enclosed vehicle. Let's even say it's 26C out and the car got to 50-54C inside within 25-30 Minutes.....

Does it change results? This camera cannot function in Late Spring...It would fail in Australia and Most other Places as Summer is only going to be hotter than now of course.

My Sandisk A2 Extreme failed exactly like the Sandisk High Endurance. Lasted 22 minutes before camera had powered itself off.

Either my unit is faulty (as my A129 Duo works perfectly and continues recording) or this camera has a major design flaw. I.E. Zenfox T3 repeat.

I have no way to measure camera's temperature as I do not own a Thermal Reader. However, it's not that hot out and this shouldn't be happening.

See image of what happened in my Mid Day Test. Both Sandisk A2 Extreme and Sandisk High Endurance exhibited identical symptoms. Camera shut off, last file being written corrupted.20210605_140907.jpg
 
Last edited:
voltage cutoff would give a clean shutdown

@jokiin Verified things 100% and you're right. Either I have a faulty unit (A139) or the camera has a design flaw and won't withstand summer. As at 26C and in sunlight, we're not talking Tropical Weather. This is weather the majority of the world experiences.

Hoping my unit is just faulty.
 
Back
Top