Rebooting and shutting down

ermax18

ermax18

New Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2024
Messages
7
Reaction score
2
Location
Jacksonville, FL
Country
United States
Is it normal for the A229 Plus to restart the second you plug in an SD card? I wiped two known good cards and the second I plug them in, the camera reboots and eventually tells me the card needs to be formatted. Once formatted it records fine but randomly the camera shuts down and I have to press the menu button to turn it back on. I haven't installed it in the car yet but I've tried two cables and two different high quality charging blocks. It seems a little more stable when WiFi is disabled but I was really looking forward to putting it in station mode and programmatically downloading video at night after pulling into the garage. I was able to do this with the A129 Duo but it was CRAZY slow. After getting the A229 I noticed they brag that it takes 20secs to download a 1min 2K video. When you consider there are two 2K cameras, that number becomes 40secs. So it's practically real time which is kind of comical. Also, I can't even get the A229 Plus to go into station mode so it's looking like pulling video will be significantly more convoluted.

My last Viofo A129 Duo died and went into a reboot loop. I'm thinking I should have learned my lesson on the first camera that only lasted exactly 12 months.
 
ermax18 said:
Is it normal for the A229 Plus to restart the second you plug in an SD card? I wiped two known good cards and the second I plug them in, the camera reboots and eventually tells me the card needs to be formatted. Once formatted it records fine but randomly the camera shuts down and I have to press the menu button to turn it back on. I haven't installed it in the car yet but I've tried two cables and two different high quality charging blocks. It seems a little more stable when WiFi is disabled but I was really looking forward to putting it in station mode and programmatically downloading video at night after pulling into the garage. I was able to do this with the A129 Duo but it was CRAZY slow. After getting the A229 I noticed they brag that it takes 20secs to download a 1min 2K video. When you consider there are two 2K cameras, that number becomes 40secs. So it's practically real time which is kind of comical. Also, I can't even get the A229 Plus to go into station mode so it's looking like pulling video will be significantly more convoluted.

My last Viofo A129 Duo died and went into a reboot loop. I'm thinking I should have learned my lesson on the first camera that only lasted exactly 12 months.
Click to expand...
Connect the A229 Plus in the car to the cigarette lighter using the converter and the long cable from the kit and see how it works.
The fact that your memory cards worked in other devices is also not an indicator. Perhaps they are not compatible with this Viofo model.
 
Memory cards can be funny, i remember way back in the old days when 32 GB was the norm, i had 3 exactly same Kingston cards, but one of them just would not work in a particular system, the 2 other did work just fine in that system, and the "strange " card also worked just fine in several other systems, just not that particular one.

It is not my experience that viofo systems are memory card fussy, most often they will work with at least 12 of the 15 memory cards i have in my test suite.

These new ones i can not say CUZ i have not been given access, but i doubt they have changed paradigm on memory cards, and i do not think newer SOCs have thrown a spanner in the works.
At least not a huge spanner.

Also do not go creative on power sources, well at least if you see funny stuff happening at once try the provided stuff just to rule out that potential issue ( power starvation )
 
Last edited:
ermax18 said:
Is it normal for the A229 Plus to restart the second you plug in an SD card?...
Click to expand...
The way that question is worded it sounds like you have the camera powered on when inserting the card - that's not what you should be doing. Whenever inserting or removing the card the camera should be powered off.
 
ermax18 said:
Is it normal for the A229 Plus to restart the second you plug in an SD card? I wiped two known good cards and the second I plug them in, the camera reboots and eventually tells me the card needs to be formatted. Once formatted it records fine but randomly the camera shuts down and I have to press the menu button to turn it back on. I haven't installed it in the car yet but I've tried two cables and two different high quality charging blocks. It seems a little more stable when WiFi is disabled but I was really looking forward to putting it in station mode and programmatically downloading video at night after pulling into the garage. I was able to do this with the A129 Duo but it was CRAZY slow. After getting the A229 I noticed they brag that it takes 20secs to download a 1min 2K video. When you consider there are two 2K cameras, that number becomes 40secs. So it's practically real time which is kind of comical. Also, I can't even get the A229 Plus to go into station mode so it's looking like pulling video will be significantly more convoluted.

My last Viofo A129 Duo died and went into a reboot loop. I'm thinking I should have learned my lesson on the first camera that only lasted exactly 12 months.
Click to expand...
The camera will restart if you insert the card when it is on. It is better to insert or remove the card when the camera is off. For the second issue, please use the original car charger that came with the camera and plug it into your cigarette lighter to test. That kind of issue is mainly related to the unstable power supply.
 
Turns out it was the first three PSUs that I tried that were the issue. All 3 that didn't work were all 12W+ PSUs. I also tried a USB-C PD charger but it doesn't seem to be compatible with PD chargers. So, I was able to get it in STA mode and connected to my home wifi and wrote an app to pull the files off the camera and then delete them. I'm a little bummed that it's so slow, but I figure I will just let it run all night. I am excited that the rear camera can point out the back window but will also roll all the way forward so it can record my steering input and shifts. This will be handy on racetracks. I read a lot of reviews and could never really confirm the range of rotation on the rear camera. I think it would be worth adding this to the marketing material and product description because I can't be the only one interested in getting ****pit recording while on track but also want to record out the back when not on track.

So I was all excited to have everything sorted out but this morning on my way to work, it shifted out of parking mode and said it was recording but the front camera only recorded for 36 seconds and the rear only recorded for 32 seconds. It didn't beep or have any voice notifications leading me to believe it restarted or anything like that. When I completed my drive to work and turned off the car, it went into parking mode and started to record again. I'm going to assume it was in a strange state due to me hammering the crap out of the web interface for a few hours last night as I wrote my app to archive the video. Before I drive home, I'm going to power cycle it and cross my fingers that it actually records my whole ride home.

BTW, I am powering it via the HK4 hardwire kit, and it's tapped into the same locations that I used to hardwire my old A129. So I don't think power delivery is an issue. I also solder and heat shrink all my interconnects so that shouldn't be an issue either.

I'll also make a point to power it down before removing/inserting the SD card. I had parking mode disabled on my old A129 so it powered down automatically. On the A229 I was simply stopping the recording before touching the card, but I guess that isn't the best practice.

Thanks everyone for the responses!
 
So I got in the car, long held the menu button to turn off the camera. Inserted my SD card and then pressed the menu button to turn it back on. I then heard it tell me it's recording. Start driving and when I get home I find out it only recorded for 44 seconds.

This is the card I have which worked fine on my A129 Duo:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B09WB1857W
 
ermax18 said:
Dropping to 1080 fixed my issue. I guess my card is too slow for 2k.
Click to expand...
You could try performing a low-level format using SDFormatter from the SD Card Association. I had a card a few years ago that was performing well below specs and doing that corrected the issue.
 
The card you are using is not recommended. I use a SanDisk Max Endurance 256 in an A229 Pro without any issues

Viofo Recommended Memory Cards

Screenshot 2025-07-11 at 06.22.15.webp
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top