Seen this mentioned before and found a few things when searching but I thought I'd post in case someone knew the exact root cause.
My F770 has been in place since late 2017, it has worked fine for all of that duration until recently (last few months really), I've noticed it's turning on only intermittently. Sometimes it turns on with the car engine as it should, other times it doesn't (and won't turn on no matter how long I hold the power button). If it turns on at all I've noticed it will sometimes randomly shut itself off without any warning (I mean, if the voltage dips it makes one frantic beep before shutting itself off but it quite often doesn't even do that). I do have it set to shut down at 12.3v in parking mode but it rarely seems to run much more than five minutes after engine switch off before announcing it is shutting down due to low battery (and yet car battery is generally around 12.5v when I've checked it).
Most suspicious of all is I noticed the videos it has recorded recently all state the battery voltage being in the 11v region! Which is clearly wrong since I did wonder if maybe the cable was flaking out or perhaps a fuse had gone or something but I tested the plug for the dashcam and it was showing 13.8v so normal voltage for a running car going to the cam, so where it's getting 11v I don't know, not only that but it should surely turn off at such a low voltage but it obviously hasn't and the videos have kept going.
I've seen people suggest failing to power on like this can be just because the heat/cold changes in the car can and do eventually kill the device, makes sense, I expect solder joints and what not crack and break and other components can fail. Note that it definitely isn't the SD card. I've tried two different working ones, it won't turn on regardless of what car is in it (or indeed if no card is in it at all). I don't have the issue some have with it constantly asking to reformat the card either BTW so the internal clock batter is probably still good, although even if it wasn't I doubt that would stop it actually powering on.
I suppose the only reason I'm asking this is more so because I want anyone's opinions on if I should even bother trying to fix it. Although this F770 has served me fairly well up until now I've never been particularly happy with it, I feel I got ripped off and definitely don't think it's been worth the 260 quid I paid for it, mainly due to some of the annoying aspects of it's operation and settings being non-existent or too draconian and good god is that android app atrocious. Biggest pain in the arse out of all of it has been the SD card compatibility minefield prevalent with this model. I lucked out and managed to get a 128gb card that actually worked right off the bat but I've always lived in fear of when that card eventually bites the bullet and I end up having to fish around for another decently sized card that works.
I'm thinking I'll just drop Thinkware altogether and get a new better unit. Unless of course fixing this thing is actually going to be a relatively simple process (even if it involves minor solder work I'd probably opt to do that than spend another load of dosh on an upgrade, unless the upgrades just going to be head and shoulders above it).
Edit: I forgot I posted this. I see no one ever bothered to chime in, so on the off-chance anyone ever comes across this post with similar issues I'll explain what I think happened. Needless to say it ended up failing to turn on at all one day and never recovered.
After a while of it being totally dead, I removed it and attempted to open the thing up to take a look at it, but ended up breaking it because of how stupidly it's put together and how vague any instructions I could find about taking it apart were. I checked it out anyway and the PCB looked OK at any rate, I could see no immediate issues, all solder joints looked fine, no burn marks or scorched chips. I suspected perhaps a cap was failing or something similar. However when I put the memory card in my computer to have a look at the videos that had last been recorded I discovered that most of the more recently ones were utterly trashed. Like, the video was corrupted, rainbow colours, static, the works. So, whatever happened to it, I think it ended up getting bricked anyway.
I'm not buying another Thinkware again that's for sure.
My F770 has been in place since late 2017, it has worked fine for all of that duration until recently (last few months really), I've noticed it's turning on only intermittently. Sometimes it turns on with the car engine as it should, other times it doesn't (and won't turn on no matter how long I hold the power button). If it turns on at all I've noticed it will sometimes randomly shut itself off without any warning (I mean, if the voltage dips it makes one frantic beep before shutting itself off but it quite often doesn't even do that). I do have it set to shut down at 12.3v in parking mode but it rarely seems to run much more than five minutes after engine switch off before announcing it is shutting down due to low battery (and yet car battery is generally around 12.5v when I've checked it).
Most suspicious of all is I noticed the videos it has recorded recently all state the battery voltage being in the 11v region! Which is clearly wrong since I did wonder if maybe the cable was flaking out or perhaps a fuse had gone or something but I tested the plug for the dashcam and it was showing 13.8v so normal voltage for a running car going to the cam, so where it's getting 11v I don't know, not only that but it should surely turn off at such a low voltage but it obviously hasn't and the videos have kept going.
I've seen people suggest failing to power on like this can be just because the heat/cold changes in the car can and do eventually kill the device, makes sense, I expect solder joints and what not crack and break and other components can fail. Note that it definitely isn't the SD card. I've tried two different working ones, it won't turn on regardless of what car is in it (or indeed if no card is in it at all). I don't have the issue some have with it constantly asking to reformat the card either BTW so the internal clock batter is probably still good, although even if it wasn't I doubt that would stop it actually powering on.
I suppose the only reason I'm asking this is more so because I want anyone's opinions on if I should even bother trying to fix it. Although this F770 has served me fairly well up until now I've never been particularly happy with it, I feel I got ripped off and definitely don't think it's been worth the 260 quid I paid for it, mainly due to some of the annoying aspects of it's operation and settings being non-existent or too draconian and good god is that android app atrocious. Biggest pain in the arse out of all of it has been the SD card compatibility minefield prevalent with this model. I lucked out and managed to get a 128gb card that actually worked right off the bat but I've always lived in fear of when that card eventually bites the bullet and I end up having to fish around for another decently sized card that works.
I'm thinking I'll just drop Thinkware altogether and get a new better unit. Unless of course fixing this thing is actually going to be a relatively simple process (even if it involves minor solder work I'd probably opt to do that than spend another load of dosh on an upgrade, unless the upgrades just going to be head and shoulders above it).
Edit: I forgot I posted this. I see no one ever bothered to chime in, so on the off-chance anyone ever comes across this post with similar issues I'll explain what I think happened. Needless to say it ended up failing to turn on at all one day and never recovered.
After a while of it being totally dead, I removed it and attempted to open the thing up to take a look at it, but ended up breaking it because of how stupidly it's put together and how vague any instructions I could find about taking it apart were. I checked it out anyway and the PCB looked OK at any rate, I could see no immediate issues, all solder joints looked fine, no burn marks or scorched chips. I suspected perhaps a cap was failing or something similar. However when I put the memory card in my computer to have a look at the videos that had last been recorded I discovered that most of the more recently ones were utterly trashed. Like, the video was corrupted, rainbow colours, static, the works. So, whatever happened to it, I think it ended up getting bricked anyway.
I'm not buying another Thinkware again that's for sure.
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