Montana Actual
New Member
I've had the A139 3ch, although I have been using 2Ch for 60FPS, and during parking mode auto detect on low motion detection, it picks up vehicles almost 200+ feet away! I have the dashcam aimed down as much as possible. Unfortunately, on my Subaru Crosstrek w/ eyesight, I have to mount to the side of the eyeballs (the cameras for eyesight), which means it's not centered. I don't think it would matter much anyways, and there is no option to center mount no matter what. The rear view is in the way, the black dots to dissipate sunlight are in the way, and eyesight gets triggered by it being anywhere else. I have seen the A129 mounted behind the rear view with eyesight. Anyways... why is this happening? I tested with just the front and the rear and no matter what the slightest thing would turn it on with both cameras. I have no way to park where I live that would stop this, but it even does it when parked at work. I work across from an airfield, and airplanes on the strip hundred of feet away also trigger it. I did update the firmware, and still does it. I factory reset, still did it... so I updated again.
Another issue is fairly specific to my vehicle and just something I am concerned about. Having a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, I suspect everything is CAN-BUS, so should I not be using parking mode? I have it set to 4 hours. I have tried time lapse which puts all the videos in a fast forward awkwardness for some reason, and low bitrate - which means recording all the time, right? I don't have any issues with low bitrate, but I'd rather not kill my battery prematurely. Getting a battery pack right now is not an option due to cost, but when BlackBoxMyCar releases their new version I may consider it sometime later this year or around tax return time. So my concern is battery drain. I drive about 20-30 minutes to and from work, usually with a bunch of stuff on like air/heat and the other gadgets, as well as headlights. Average speed is around 50mph. I have the voltage cutoff set to 12.2... but I'd really rather not have it that low. So is 12.4 okay? Is parking mode in general okay with my Crosstrek? I honestly don't need parking mode at home, but at work I definitely do. Would be nice to have a quick on/off option without having to connect to my phone every time. But if I could get the motion detection lowered then it wouldn't be an issue. I am about to move and my new house has a nice car port that is NOT facing the highway, so that will help too. Still would rather not have this thing go off unless someone is actually close to my vehicle, not just parking across the aisle. I guess that's the trade off though? But, 200+ feet while on low? C'mon now.
At first I was using WDR mode, which looked terrible, and even the polarized lens looked terrible (yep, installed correctly). They both just made everything too dark. The polarized lens did look okay in some situations, but I'd rather deal with reflections for better image quality and that is what my tests have shown me, so kinda sucks I can't use that. I do suspect that being centered more would aide the polarized lens quality - but not an option. So now I am in Vanilla mode and it looks great, just need to work out the kinks in the software and hope I can get this parking mode figured out.
The final issue is with filenames, and timestamps. GPS works fine, sometimes it seems. For whatever reason I get future dates randomly and timestamps that are AM when it's PM, and PM when it's AM. I have also synced to my phone and seems okay. Just kind of random. File names are TERRIBLE though. There is zero organization. I had a $30 dashcam that organized files better. I have resulted to sorting by date but it's still random as hell. I hope this gets fixed. It's nice to have different folders though! That's a plus! But the file names are terrible!
Thanks for all the help here. I am new to dashcams, and Subaru's. I can tell there are tons of people who have been doing both for a while so I figured I'd ask here. I asked on the Crosstrek Forums but some people there should probably just avoid the internet all together, so here I am. I am sure I will have more questions and concerns I just can't remember them all right now. Overall happy with my purchase, but I think the A129 4k would have been a better option for me. I just wanted a 3ch and easy app connection. I don't need a screen and I don't want one. Maybe The redesign was a bit pointless. The vertical layout was an awesome design. Since it's already a done deal, I am NOT uninstalling all this stuff, lol. I will make due, but I hope to have some of my concerns addressed so I can at least compromise where needed.
Another issue is fairly specific to my vehicle and just something I am concerned about. Having a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, I suspect everything is CAN-BUS, so should I not be using parking mode? I have it set to 4 hours. I have tried time lapse which puts all the videos in a fast forward awkwardness for some reason, and low bitrate - which means recording all the time, right? I don't have any issues with low bitrate, but I'd rather not kill my battery prematurely. Getting a battery pack right now is not an option due to cost, but when BlackBoxMyCar releases their new version I may consider it sometime later this year or around tax return time. So my concern is battery drain. I drive about 20-30 minutes to and from work, usually with a bunch of stuff on like air/heat and the other gadgets, as well as headlights. Average speed is around 50mph. I have the voltage cutoff set to 12.2... but I'd really rather not have it that low. So is 12.4 okay? Is parking mode in general okay with my Crosstrek? I honestly don't need parking mode at home, but at work I definitely do. Would be nice to have a quick on/off option without having to connect to my phone every time. But if I could get the motion detection lowered then it wouldn't be an issue. I am about to move and my new house has a nice car port that is NOT facing the highway, so that will help too. Still would rather not have this thing go off unless someone is actually close to my vehicle, not just parking across the aisle. I guess that's the trade off though? But, 200+ feet while on low? C'mon now.
At first I was using WDR mode, which looked terrible, and even the polarized lens looked terrible (yep, installed correctly). They both just made everything too dark. The polarized lens did look okay in some situations, but I'd rather deal with reflections for better image quality and that is what my tests have shown me, so kinda sucks I can't use that. I do suspect that being centered more would aide the polarized lens quality - but not an option. So now I am in Vanilla mode and it looks great, just need to work out the kinks in the software and hope I can get this parking mode figured out.
The final issue is with filenames, and timestamps. GPS works fine, sometimes it seems. For whatever reason I get future dates randomly and timestamps that are AM when it's PM, and PM when it's AM. I have also synced to my phone and seems okay. Just kind of random. File names are TERRIBLE though. There is zero organization. I had a $30 dashcam that organized files better. I have resulted to sorting by date but it's still random as hell. I hope this gets fixed. It's nice to have different folders though! That's a plus! But the file names are terrible!
Thanks for all the help here. I am new to dashcams, and Subaru's. I can tell there are tons of people who have been doing both for a while so I figured I'd ask here. I asked on the Crosstrek Forums but some people there should probably just avoid the internet all together, so here I am. I am sure I will have more questions and concerns I just can't remember them all right now. Overall happy with my purchase, but I think the A129 4k would have been a better option for me. I just wanted a 3ch and easy app connection. I don't need a screen and I don't want one. Maybe The redesign was a bit pointless. The vertical layout was an awesome design. Since it's already a done deal, I am NOT uninstalling all this stuff, lol. I will make due, but I hope to have some of my concerns addressed so I can at least compromise where needed.