Panorama X2 firmware 1.02.03 (Rear Parking mode camera recording enhanced / Stability Improved)

mcaf123 said:
Are you sure you have it hooked up to your car properly? I had this issue and had to mess around with where the wires were connected to.

Another issue I had was that the cables were being bashed whenever I closed the glove box coz they were installed right behind it.... Maybe check something like that?
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I powered it in the cigarette lighter and the cable is hanging from the cam to the plug, just to test it out, i tought the cables were the issue but now i don't think so.
 
Mauro said:
I powered it in the cigarette lighter and the cable is hanging from the cam to the plug, just to test it out, i tought the cables were the issue but now i don't think so.
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Parking mode doesn't work when only plugged into the cigarette lighter
 
mcaf123 said:
Parking mode doesn't work when only plugged into the cigarette lighter
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Does not indeed, im just testing all options to see if it freezes up, and still does.
 
Yeah mine has frozen a couple of times the last two days as well - it's still too cold here for me to be happy disabling voltage cut off and swapping to just a time based cut off - as soon as it warms up a bit I'll up it a bit but for the time being I need a car that starts every time :)
 
reverend said:
Yeah mine has frozen a couple of times the last two days as well - it's still too cold here for me to be happy disabling voltage cut off and swapping to just a time based cut off - as soon as it warms up a bit I'll up it a bit but for the time being I need a car that starts every time :)
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I'm not too far from you (I think) and I've had no issues turning off my cutoff
 
I'm not sure mate, my coming home headlights don't work when the car is below 11.8V and the camera has cut out many times at what is supposed to be 12.1V but in reality is 11.8V when it was cold - is yours a petrol or diesel?

The one time I didn't use power cut off and it sat running on the timer I almost couldn't start the car and it took a few mins to get it to turn over - the battery was new in April last year and to be honest the run time seems to be increasing as the weather is warming up but as we still get frost overnight I'm not risking it just yet as I need to be able to get to client sites on time.

Too risky for me just yet - plus workarounds are just an excuse for Sungmoon to delay the fix - the Chinese New Year is putting a stop to things for the next week so fingers crossed they can get on the case soon afterwards :)
 
reverend said:
I'm not sure mate, my coming home headlights don't work when the car is below 11.8V and the camera has cut out many times at what is supposed to be 12.1V but in reality is 11.8V when it was cold - is yours a petrol or diesel?

The one time I didn't use power cut off and it sat running on the timer I almost couldn't start the car and it took a few mins to get it to turn over - the battery was new in April last year and to be honest the run time seems to be increasing as the weather is warming up but as we still get frost overnight I'm not risking it just yet as I need to be able to get to client sites on time.

Too risky for me just yet - plus workarounds are just an excuse for Sungmoon to delay the fix - the Chinese New Year is putting a stop to things for the next week so fingers crossed they can get on the case soon afterwards :)
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I've got a diesel. And I park in an underground garage at night so that might have something to do with it
 
Ah that probably does help a bit actually - I did wonder if the alternator was struggling with all the heated windows and seats and stuff that are on at this time of year but everything other than the X2 seems to be ok.

I can't wait for the better weather as performance will get better with the sunny days and at that point I'll be happier to do some more testing - at some point I'll turn it off and hook up a multimeter in the mornings to see what it's displaying. A live display on cam when they can sort that out will help with debugging for sure :)
 
The rear camera is doing a good job in these latest firmwares - here's a clip of mine with the privacy glass going from the total darkness of unlit roads into a Maccy D's drive through (I was desperate and couldn't be bothered to cook when I got back from work!!)

 
i have had the 128gb sandisk cards in the unit since sunday. its now late Thursday evening and i have over 10 hours left of recording time with my settings.

so others know my setup,

park voltage cutoff disabled
60 park, 30 drive, 10 event
motion detection low
event logging OFF whilst driving (i forget what this mode is called)
high bit rate/low brightness front and rear
led bling stays on all the time
screen stays on all the time.

no freezing, no hiccups. 128 gb sandisk front/rear
 
reverend said:
Have you got any footage with the ND2 filter please? I meant to try one but never got around to ordering one!
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Ok so my setup is the cpl and a gopro hero nd filter. I removed the nd glass from its hero housing and glued it to the front of the cpl filter.

My journey today took me over a range of hills. These were twisty and took me from shade to bright sun. Its clear that the exposure mechanism of the camera cannot cope with this as the sunny patches were way overexposed to the point that it flared so that I couldn't see the car in front, let alone the plates. 3 to 5 seconds later the exposure would catch up. I'd hit another shade spot and the cycle would start again.

Mounting the cpl with nd filter was also insufficient to reduce the flare, although the surrounding edges were more saturated. The shutter speed slowed down sufficiently that I could not read a vehicle plate approaching me at 50kph (while I was stopped) due to blur. Without the filters I can read plates at 100kph head to head.

Conclusion: Filters aren't going to fix the exposure and flare issues of this unit. It may improve if you reduce the angle of view by turning off wdr, but it's clearly shown in overcast conditions that there is a massive hotspot from the centre to the top of the screen. Also worth noting that I'm not seeing improvement by adjusting the high med low bright settings either. Mine are set on high.

My rear camera appears to have much better results, interestingly.
 
Strange thing happened today. On the way to work (30 min) everything was fine, went to lunch again fine. But on my way back when i start my car from green dot went to red but didnt start recording, stayed at 00. Couldn't go to settings menu, the only icon that worked was front and rear cam (left upper corner). When went to the rear cam it was recording, and from there i could go to settings menu. Tried to play the videos to see what got recorded, pressed the front sd card and started playing what was recorded on the rear one. When the screen was on the front cam nothing worked, when switch to the rear everything seemed to be ok. Restated few times and nothing, still rear cam records on the sd card for the front cam. Couldn't play the videos on the rear sd card to see what was there. Formated both cards still the same. Than switched the sd cards, plugged it in and the front started to record as it should. 5 min latter the screen was unresponsive. Unplugged it and than plugged it again and nothing, now does not even boot up. It seams death. I'll play with it tomorrow and update what is going on. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks, it is unplugged now, so will see how it goes tomorrow
 
NZDashcam said:
Conclusion: Filters aren't going to fix the exposure and flare issues of this unit. It may improve if you reduce the angle of view by turning off wdr, but it's clearly shown in overcast conditions that there is a massive hotspot from the centre to the top of the screen. Also worth noting that I'm not seeing improvement by adjusting the high med low bright settings either. Mine are set on high.

My rear camera appears to have much better results, interestingly.
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Sounds like the AE is aggressively compensating for the ND filter then :/

I get the same issues in bright sunlight here in the UK - you may find you get better footage out there by angling the camera up a bit more as I've found that bizarrely the Panorama cameras can throw the rulebook out in really bright conditions and work better when there is more sky than road. More tweaking is required there and to be honest we've been asking for that for ages but Sungmoon has had to concentrate on grey box issues and so on.

Mine seems to really start clipping stuff when the sun is hitting everything in view from behind, ie if you're driving into the sun the rear camera will struggle more and vice versa. I might go and relocate the rear camera down the back window a bit to see if I can minimise the amount of parcel shelf I have in there to see if that helps me. I've got a theory the X2 doesn't like much black dashboard / hood or parcel shelf in the videos and confuses the AE big time. Plus my privacy glass confuses it too!!

WDR doesn't affect angle - it's wide dynamic range. The hotspot you see is where the gain /exposure is ramped right up to keep a bright image, but the flipside of that is that the brighter stuff clips and you can't read numberplates due to the longer exposure times etc.

The brightness settings currently only affect night time video - I have asked on multiple occasions for it to affect day video as that should help in these sorts of circumstances big time. They could leave the camera default brightness at high for daytime so it doesn't affect users who are used to the old settings but the manual control would mean the camera would work much better in other countries.

To be fair the camera runs better on 1.02.03 than it has in the past but things can still be improved but it's slowly getting there.

I actually run mine in low brightness for driving mode and just use high brightness for parking mode to pick more up when parked in darkness at night - it works better at reading numberplates with my xenon headlights and gives me some pretty sharp night video.

I need to tweak the focus and then see which brightness setting I prefer - I keep swapping with each release and so far I do prefer the low brightness setting as it works better for me although saying that I had another idea where I'm going to drop the height of my headlights (I do have them angled right up at the top of the legal limit) to see how that affects numberplate reading. If I can improve that and keep high brightness it could be a no brainer.
 
reverend said:
Plus my privacy glass confuses it too!!
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My privacy glass on a 2013 Rav 4 seems to help it

reverend said:
WDR doesn't affect angle - it's wide dynamic range.
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Legacy habit from my Navman, turning off WRD also reduced the angle.

reverend said:
I might go and relocate the rear camera down the back window a bit
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Has anyone tried running the rear camera beside the front one for a side by side comparison test?
 
Yeah Niko and AlexSoll have, the rear camera is a darker image than the front
 
I've just ripped off the Mini dashcam mount to see if it makes any difference to how the X2 performs in my car - I've been meaning to do it since xmas.

I might try the 0806 in the rear or relocate in the front - I'm undecided at the minute.
 
I can't remember if I've reported this happening before, but my car was left outside for about 27 hours just now without being used. I have the voltage and the parking time both set to off. When I got in the car and checked the camera, it would only allow me to change the camera view, not access the settings. There was also no count of motion and G-sensor triggers visible.
I took the power cable out, rebooted and found that no parking files had been saved since more than 27 hours ago, which seemed the be the last time my wife took the car out.... So essentially all parking files that should have been saved within the last 27 hours have magically disappeared
 
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