Smallest Ambarella Car DVR a.k.a. Mini 0801

[efoo]

...doh, and the 388 GPS version without WDR is £199.99.

Holy crap, that converts to about $360 Australian dollars. That's like three times the price I paid for my Mini 0801 with GPS

And I believe the Powerucc Panorama2 with GPS is significantly cheaper than Mio 388, plus Panorama2 has WDR and better image quality too.

 

[Lunar]

V8Rocks
LOL.. why am I not surprised at all to hear that, I've bought a lot of Samsung cards myself so know how to tell fakes (after a good read online anyway)

 

[Duke]

OK tested camera out now and when the card is full it falls over and no longer stays in loop record mode. This is with video or video plus audio. Errors are low speed card and io card error.

I reformatted the card and it works again. no errors.

The card is a samsung supplied by e-prance.

Firmware is 1026

Seems to me to be a firmware bug, and it falls over because it cant handle deleting a file or overwriting a file at the same time as recording and saving.

I'll try different loop setting to see if that makes a difference??

Has anyone got the original TS firmware to try it out with?

Tried with no audio recording?


Regards
Duke

 

[efoo]

Tried with no audio recording?

I think Promethian has already said "This is with video or video plus audio".

 

[promethian]

Anyone got any idea what the firmware name for a camera with no GPS and no internal memory should be???

I tried all the ones on the FAQ with no luck

Im on 1026

 

[efoo]

Anyone got any idea what the firmware name for a camera with no GPS and no internal memory should be???

I tried all the ones on the FAQ with no luck

Im on 1026

Yours already the latest firmware.

 

[promethian]

I know... I want to try another version of firmware to see if that will improve the situation any

 

[V8Rocks]

I bought mini 0801 almost @ very first release date. It came with MOV firmware 20130110. I did not manage to update fw to newer versions, but honestly it never had any issue with fw it came with. I just inserted Sandisk Ultra 32GB class 10 (u1) in it and let it record over night. It is working flawlessly, old files are deleted and it has ~500MB free on average. BTW, I always disable audio in all of my dash cams, so do not know if enabling audio would cause any issue with looping.

 

[Fast.Eddie]

I think if this problem was easy to fix, like just changing firmware, it would have been fixed by now. I partitioned my 32GB card to 4GB to decrease the amount of time it takes to do the initial fall over and it's been recording video only in the house for 14 hours. I switched the audio on in addition to the video, and it's been running for 2 hours. Angel from E-PRANCE sent me the 20130913 firmware to try but it sure would be nice to have a changelog to know the difference between firmware revisions, and I always like to have a return path if the earlier firmware revision isn't as good as the version I have now.

 

[promethian]

I find it will record for a long time... but as soon as you power it off... then power it on again it will fail, even after 10 minutes .(same as stopping starting car)

 

[efoo]

I know... I want to try another version of firmware to see if that will improve the situation any

I have only tried 20130903, 20130923 and the current 20131026 firmwares. So far 20130923 and 20131026 works fine with my Samsung 8GB class 4 cards, 20130903 has caused loop recording error. All three firmwares can cause loop recording error with my Samsung 32GB class 10 card. So basically no point trying other versions of firmware now that you are running 20131026.

 

[efoo]

I partitioned my 32GB card to 4GB to decrease the amount of time it takes to do the initial fall over and it's been recording video only in the house for 14 hours. I switched the audio on in addition to the video, and it's been running for 2 hours.

Interesting. Are you saying even with your 32GB card divided into eight 4GB partitions, the Mini 0801 can recognise all partition and record into all of them? If so, I may give my 32GB card a try.

Also like promethian has said, have you switched the power off and on a few times during the recording to simulate stopping and starting the car?

 

[Fast.Eddie]

Interesting. Are you saying even with your 32GB card divided into eight 4GB partitions, the Mini 0801 can recognise all partition and record into all of them? If so, I may give my 32GB card a try.

No, I didn't partition it that far. For it to work, you have to have some files on the TF card before you partition, otherwise the 0801 will nag you to format the card. So you have a few files on the card and resize the 32GB partition to whatever size you like...the rest of the card is unallocated.

Also like promethian has said, have you switched the power off and on a few times during the recording to simulate stopping and starting the car?

Yes, and I haven't been able to make it drop out once in 24 hours, but it's not recording the audio with a 4GB partition...evidently, the partition is too small. The filesize changes, too...it runs about 100MB for video + audio, 80MB for video only, and this last run the files are 60MB [???] but no audio.

[???] = 60MB filesize must be a result of the VBR and lack of a detailed image (I've got the camera perched on a container facing a dark corner).

 

[MadJawa]

Be sure to film a "busy" scene when testing. I let mine run all night to reproduce the Storage IO error and it didn't happen in 12 hours. But as soon as I put it in the car it stopped working, because when testing it was recording a very dark scene (= less data)

 

[Reyalp]

I finally received my camera from eprance a couple of weeks ago, had it on test ever since. Disassembled the camera (8gb + GPS) and changed the internal card for a 32gb class 6(samsung) leaving the external card slot free. No problems to report. Audio enabled. 1026 firmware. Fyi (I've seen people ask for this) the internal battery is 3.7v 330mha, looks exact same as in my toy-town remote controlled helli !!

 

[efoo]

No, I didn't partition it that far. For it to work, you have to have some files on the TF card before you partition, otherwise the 0801 will nag you to format the card. So you have a few files on the card and resize the 32GB partition to whatever size you like...the rest of the card is unallocated.

I see. So you only formatted your 32GB card into 4GB for Mini 0801 to record on. Why did you do that? Isn't it a waste of a 32GB card to be virtually used as a 4GB card?

 

[Fast.Eddie]

I see. So you only formatted your 32GB card into 4GB for Mini 0801 to record on. Why did you do that? Isn't it a waste of a 32GB card to be virtually used as a 4GB card?

Well, at 100MB for 1 minute of video + audio, it would take about 300 minutes to fill a freshly formatted card, and I didn't want to wait that long to fill the card up only to have it fail on the fall over. 4GB = about 40 minutes for the initial fill. If you format the card in the cam it destroys the 4GB partition and you are back to 32GB.

 

[Fast.Eddie]

Which, while we are on the subject of TF cards, has anyone done a speed comparison between the cards that are working in the cams vs those that are not, using something like CrystalDiskMark?


[E_PRANCE "Samsung 32GB CL10" as supplied with cam]

 

[efoo]

Well, at 100MB for 1 minute of video + audio, it would take about 300 minutes to fill a freshly formatted card, and I didn't want to wait that long to fill the card up only to have it fail on the fall over.

I see. Though if your 4GB partition does not show loop recording error, can you be sure it will not exhibit error when you reformat it back to 32GB? There will always be doubt there until you have properly tested the card in its native 32GB, in your car, with start and stop driving sequences.

To let you know of my experience, I have tested my Samsung 32GB class 10 card in my bedroom, when the card is filled and in loop recording mode, I have unplugged and plugged in the USB power cable, and it has not exhibited any error sometimes. But when I brought it into my car later on, the card showed error. What say?

 

[Fast.Eddie]

I was interested in finding out if the size of the card had any impact, in particular the location of the partition boundary (I noticed after a fall over failure that there was 555MB of free space left on the card and that all of the files except for the last one was 100MB...maybe increasing or decreasing the amount of free space available would have an effect on the failure). But of course we are all just guessing as to the nature of the problem, and undoubtedly the factory people are struggling with making this work as well.

I did write the JADO seller (estore009) on eBay to ask them what their experience had been with their version of the 0810, but they replied that their version was new to the market and they didn't have enough of them out in the field to make an assessment...so it is still very much buyer beware...BUT...they do offer a 60-day return privilege (buyer pays return shipping, about $45 from the US as near as I can tell.)