SD card corruption (?) & camera failure

anthillmob

anthillmob

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Hi all, has anyone experienced anything like this, and can maybe steer me in the right direction..?

Background: I have 2 x Mobius in my car, pointing fore & aft, wired to two different switched lives. The cameras start up with the car, and shut down 10 secs after the car is switched off. This arrangement has worked great for a year.

Just recently, when I've been driving along, the cameras have been simultaneously shutting down / locking up. They can't be restarted on the button. The only way to revive them is to connect them to a laptop with the (excellent) msetup program & do an in-camera format, after which all is well again until next time. It happens every 2 - 3 days.

But the weird thing is, when this happens, the cards are not actually corrupted - I can take them out & play the recordings off them no problem. But the cameras won't work again until I've done an in-camera format.

I'm pretty confident that the culprit is my car's electrical system - otherwise why would the (separately wired) cameras fail simultaneously? On a couple of occasions when the cameras crashed out, I also saw the car's dash lights flicker at the exact same time. So I think there's something flakey about my supply from the car, and I'm looking for what - but it's proving tricky.

So far I've eliminated the aircon kicking in & out as the cause - the problem still occurred with the aircon kept off for a few days. I believe my alternator and battery are good (according to my multimeter), but I'm going to scrutinise them both again...

Anyhoo - if anyone has had these symptoms before I'd be grateful to hear about your experience. I'm not sure if I'm looking for a voltage spike, dip, or what, to upset the Mobiuses in this way.

cheers, S

[edit: d'oh! Looks like I should've posted this in that massive sticky thread at the top. It's been ages since I visited the site. Apologies...]
 
I'm sure you're right, it's got to be a power fluctuation hasn't it - what's weird is that the two cameras are on different feeds (through separate fuses in the car's fusebox), separate 12v > 5v USB adaptors (good quality). Common sense suggests there's some electrical irregularity upstream from where the two supplies branch, but I'm damned if I can find it. I suspect the alternator, but don't know how to test it for such an intermittent problem. Every time I've checked it, all seems well. But I wonder if it occasionally 'blips'?

From what you described Mac, your problem was caused by a lack of power (as opposed to a spike)?
 
I've had odd problems with some cams if the cable isn't thick enough for the distance it has to carry the power (24AWG is about right up to about 11-13ft, 28AWG can cause problems with too much voltage drop over just 3-4feet distance).

The other cause of odd problems I've had is the cam's internal battery being too degraded (heat?) to kick in when there's a power fluctuation, but it's less likely if both your cams are misbehaving.

Even with everything running perfectly, I occasionally see flickers in some cam date/time/speed stamps which I presume are power fluctuations associated with various electronics within the car. For example: upon putting the key in the ignition, I find it best to wait until after my cars integrated satnav has initialised (and glow plugs pre-heated), otherwise there seems to be insufficient power to the 12v socket for some cams to work properly - they just shut down shortly after startup due to the voltage dropping sufficiently that they think it's time to turn off. The 12v socket is part of the satnav/stereo/radio system.
 
One of the main culprits when you see power drops or surges in any car is the ground lead between engine and frame- it moves around a lot. If the main power is taken from the starter then check the positive leads there too. Also check that the alternator mounting bolts are tight; many ground through the case itself so a loose mount gives the same symptoms. Give all your fuses a good wiggle- some will probably be under the hood and maybe under a cover there. With both Mobii behaving the same with different power inputs this has to be a car problem.

If you can't do this yourself, any shop can do it in under ten minutes so it won't cost much. But do get it done ASAP because if it is a loose connection you might get a power surge that can fry the car's computers, which gets very expensive very fast.

Phil
 
Cheers Phil, that's good counsel. I've already unbolted, cleaned & Vaseline'd all the earth (ground) point in the engine bay, but maybe it's time to put the car over my Dad's pit, and investigate the more obscure points with a printout of the wiring diagram in one hand! Maybe undo those alternator bolts, wire brush & Vaseline them too...
 
Have you tried selecting POWER ON 'DELAY' in the Mobius Manager settings which is found in the basic settings tab, I believe this has helped owners of diesel cars that were suffering grief on start-up?

Perhaps power one of the cameras using an external power pack to establish whether the Mobius camera is faulty or the power supply - I assume you purchased both of the cameras at the same time.
 
Hi richcam, thanks for your reply. My problem doesn't relate to the diesel startup delay (though that is a problem I battled with, and fixed). My cameras lock out whilst driving along, and can only be fixed by connecting a laptop for an in-camera reformat with the msetup.exe software. The cameras are not the same age - the second was bought about 6 months after the first.

I will try your suggestion of running one off a powerbank. I wouldn't expect a failure, but if the battery pack powered camera DID fail, that would be very interesting...

Both cameras failed again on the way home tonight, but for the first time they didn't fail simultaneously - there was a few minutes between them. The plot thickens!
 
anthillmob said:
Hi richcam, thanks for your reply. My problem doesn't relate to the diesel startup delay (though that is a problem I battled with, and fixed). My cameras lock out whilst driving along, and can only be fixed by connecting a laptop for an in-camera reformat with the msetup.exe software. The cameras are not the same age - the second was bought about 6 months after the first.

I will try your suggestion of running one off a powerbank. I wouldn't expect a failure, but if the battery pack powered camera DID fail, that would be very interesting...

Both cameras failed again on the way home tonight, but for the first time they didn't fail simultaneously - there was a few minutes between them. The plot thickens!
Click to expand...

Interesting. Begin to think @SawMaster could be right being a car problem. Maybe you can hookup a scanner to circuits supplying power to your cameras to see if there's power interruption.
 
Yes, the plot does thicken, but it gives new clues. You didn't mention it but are these super-cap or battery versions? If the latter, you can look at the red LED on cam start-up to see how well the battery is charging. But I'm thinking you're running caps, and that the issue is a voltage drop with one cam having batter capacitors than the other (manufacturing tolerances) so the better one was able to run just a little longer. I guess that could happen with batteries too but you would have probably mentioned that already.

Many of today's cars regulate the alternator via the main computer, unlike the old days when the regulator was discrete or built into the alternator. And on these cars, the dash instruments are also operated by the main computer, so you can't really trust the built-in gauges to behave accurately and consistently as you could in the old days. So it is possible that you have a car computer problem, which can be verified by rigging a voltmeter temporarily and seeing if it shows proper operation.

I had a Buick with an old battery and the charging dropped out at idle causing the car to shut off from low voltage at night when I stopped at a traffic signal. I had to turn the headlights off to have enough juice to start it again :eek: The dash gauge showed the drop but it read just over 12 volts which should have been OK. I replaced the battery but it began happening again a few months later. I had the alternator bench and car tested, and it was good. On a separate voltmeter plugged into the lighter the truth came out- when the voltage dropped I was actually seeing 11 volts, not 12, which could cause a shut-down. That was when I delved into the wiring schematics and discovered the gauge-alternator-computer relationship. I chanced across a used computer cheap and swapped them out but the problem persisted :mad: I finally discovered the culprit in a dirty ground connection for the computer hidden under the door sill molding. The problem went away after cleaning that and a cross-check with my discrete voltmeter showed the dash gauge as accurate, but it never saw lower than 12.5 volts now so it may have still been off at lower voltages. The charging problem never resurfaced. Until that headache happened I loved that car, but now I love my 32 year old van better- it cannot misbehave that badly by design, and it is easier to figure out and fix when anything goes wrong. Plus any fix needed is far cheaper to do than the Buick. Newer is not always better!

Phil
 
Hi Phil, thanks for your thoughts. I never thought to mention it, but my two cameras are battery powered - I never bothered with capacitors as I don't have any real worries about the car being dangerously hot up here in the frozen North of England. The two cameras are running the same firmware, but interestingly they do have slightly different characteristics: if I'm careless enough to stall the car, and restart promptly, the younger of the two cameras can usually deal with it, and will carry on running. The older camera will always shut down & need restarting on the button. (For that reason I use the older camera up front, where I can reach it).

Anyway, I'm convinced your theory is right, and I need to eliminate all the potential bad earths next. I've done the 'easy' ones around the engine bay, but now it's time to tackle the harder ones over my father's inspection pit this weekend. I have all the wiring schematics and can see some potential candidates under the chassis, plus there's the loom itself & connections around the alternator to check out.

Despite being a pessimist at heart, I'm very hopeful it will turn about be something mundane like an earth, a dodgy connector, or a corroded lead with high resistance, rather than a failing ECU (that would be very bad news!). A plague on these new-fangled technologies and embedded computer systems! Bring back the dynamo!

I'll report back...
 
How are the camera set? Are they both set to power on battery and external? Power "off" set to immediate? Can try setting "off" to delay as a test.
 
They power on with external power or button. Shutdown is set to 10 secs after disconnection of power.

Come to think of it, I might try them on 'immediate' shutdown when power is disconnected... wonder if that might stop the SD card corruption when the power dips..? Never thought of that...
 
anthillmob said:
They power on with external power or button. Shutdown is set to 10 secs after disconnection of power.

Come to think of it, I might try them on 'immediate' shutdown when power is disconnected... wonder if that might stop the SD card corruption when the power dips..? Never thought of that...
Click to expand...

I suspect it may be from setup. I'd try that first.
Also the adapter/transformer supplying the 5V to your cameras. These are known to fail too.
FYI, mine's set up "power on" to both. "power off" immediate. I had set it to "power off" delay before. no difference.
 
anthillmob said:
.......I never bothered with capacitors as I don't have any real worries about the car being dangerously hot up here in the frozen North of England....
Click to expand...

UK summers are enough to have caused me problems with cam/battery overheating (so the cam shuts down then powers up again maybe 10-20 minutes later) and battery failure issues (so the cam misbehaves, switches on-off until the battery is dead, or doesn't save the first and last files properly).
I don't intend to buy any more battery cams. On the plus side, that means it's easy for me to make a shortlist.

Even in the shaded parts of my car it can exceed 50'C on a summer day and probably much more in the sunbaked parts.
With the black-coloured cam powered up in a sunny windscreen for hours on end, it can get pretty hot, and being high up is far away from the air/blower vents.
Even at this time of the year a freshly ejected sd card often feels extremely hot to touch (although it's so small that before you realise how hot it is, it has already dumped its heat on your finger).
 
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