Strange issue with 4-ch setup

Tozz

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Hello all!

I have a 4-channel setup in my car, consisting of 2x BlackVue 750 2CH's (front, left side and the other one is rear, right side, . I have some issues with _both_ camera's that I am unable to resolve because I dont know where to start looking.

The primary issue is that the camera's stop recording after some time
and when that happens do not come back online until I remove/reinsert
power. The funny thing is, both camera's stop functioning in about the
same time. They differ only a few seconds to a minute from each other
judging from the timestamp of the last recording

The issue seems to start when the camera is switching modes. eg from driving mode to parking mode or vice versa.

When this happens there are some other issues as well:

- I can connect to the camera over WiFI, I can retrieve a list of
recordings, but I cannot view recordings. I also cannot open "live
video". It returns an error.

- IF Cloud says its connected, but same as with over Wifi I can retrieve
a list of files, but not view any recordings nor live streaming.

- The reset button doesn't work when the camera is in this state. I
can press the button for seconds to minutes, nothing happens.

When I remove power and reinsert it +/- 1 minute later everything
works as expected for +/- 24 hours and the issue comes back again.

I have done the following:
- Reset settings
- Format SD card (using the reset/format button)
- Upgrade firmware using WiFi

My car is a Tesla Model S, so this is a bit different than any regular car regarding 12V power. The battery does not have to "start" the engine or anything.
Also, the 12V voltage level shouldn't drop that much because it is charged automatically from the high voltage battery. From the 12V perspective, there isn't really that much different driving vs parked. The battery is charged both when driving and when parked from the high voltage battery (as long as the HV pack has enough charge, but that is the case).

Because both camera's exhibit the exact same failure I am guessing that it is not the camera itself at fault, although I've read here that I shouldn't do upgrades over WiFi.
The camera's are hardwired to the car's 12V and do not use any battery pack accessories.

I have not heard back from the installer yet, but he has done lots of BlackVue installations in Tesla's

Does anybody recognize this issue and perhaps have a solution? Could this be due to the firmware upgrade by WiFi? Could I have the misfortune or having 2 faulty units? (they are installed same day, so probably same batch)
 
I don't know what's happening but i would suggest to try to use an intermediate battery for powering one of the blackvue units. I imagine that having the electrical car, maybe things are different in the 12V line... (some spikes, some noise, some short drops... i don't know... .). Maybe you have a colleague or friend with a dashcam with external battery for parking mode, who can help you for a couple of days. (it's expensive to buy the black vue powet magic)

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 
Thanks for the tips. i was kinda hoping for another solution instead of fiddling with power. The device is hardwired in the car and I have to remove lots of trim pieces to get to the power supply. Since I havent installed it myself I dont know where all the clips in the car are and I dont want to break anything (car is just a week old). So I'll hold off for that just for now. it is also difficult to imagine that the voltage would be too low, because my battery shouldn't get drained that much.

I did reinstall the firmware using SD card and I've formatted the SD card using the desktop app. We'll see how it goes from there. It that doesn't help, i'll see if I can perhaps hookup a voltage reading thingie that keeps track of the voltage over a couple of days.

I'll update once I have more information, perhaps this is of use for someone else in the future :)
 
There was a thread somewhere talking about Teslas and issues similar to what you're talking about. The theory was that because the Tesla has built-in WiFi, plus does a *lot* of stuff that generates RF, that the camera is getting interference. But if your installer has experience with Blackvues and Teslas and hasn't seen that, then that eliminates the theory.
 
Be sure to set different Wifi SSIDs on both cameras.. If they are both called Dashcam1 - do change one of them to Dashcam2 and so on.
 
What are the specifications of the SD cards that you are using?
 
Love that you are doing 4-ch. Would love to see a screenshot of all four images side-by-side. I would guess that you get a 360 degrere and the only blind spots would be standing very close to the car on a couple of the corners.

Here are my ideas to the problem you described:

You can remove one of the main cameras from the mount easily. Just disconnect the cables and pull in the opposite direction to where the cables were connected. Then connect to a cigarette outlet on a traditional car. You may need to buy a suitable power cable to do that as what shipped with your dash cam was probably used already. Blackvue sell them. This will answer the question about if the issue is power related or not.

You can also disconnect the power for one dashcam and see if the problem persists for the camera that remains powered up and vice-versa.

Did the service that installed also install a li-ion Balckvue battery and wire both cameras to it? If so, that battery it may not be rated for multiple cameras.

Are the cameras overheating and powering off for this reason?

The installer may need to verify their work as it may be as simple as a dry splice. The cameras have a super-capacitor, so that they can perform a graceful power-off.

Also, I agree on the comment regarding the power source of the car potentially being to blame. Who knows what's going on in a Tesla.

The cameras monitor the voltage and makes a decision to initiate power off. I don't know what the voltage parameters are that trigger this other than 0V will cause the camera to power down.
 
I went back to the installer, and we have probably found the issue. We replaced 1 camera together with 1 SD-card. Note that these cards are official BlackVue SD-cards. (To answer Taqi's question).
We also rewired ground to another location, just to be safe. We left the other camera as it was, so we could rule out it if it was the power supply or the bad camera/SD-card.

The new camera with the new SD card haven't failed once yet. The camera that we did not replace is still showing the same issues (proof that it is not a power issue).

So I believe I have either 2 faulty camera's or 2 faulty SD-cards. These camera's are from the same order so probably from the same batch.

The installer had my camera in his test setup and he informed me that the camera started complaining about "Check SD Card" a few hours after it was plugged in. I never heard that phrase in the car, but that is not surprisingly as it usually failed when parked (and thus i'm not in the car).

To assist someone else who might have the same issue, we tested some other things:
- Camera did not respond to WiFi on/off button
- Camera did not respond to proximity sensor
- Camera did not say 'Shutting down' when pulling power. It would just go off.
- I measured voltage, it was 13.85V. Perfectly fine. Again, notice that in a Tesla the 12V battery _cannot_ drain. It is automatically charged by the high voltage pack. So you basically have 75 kWh or 100 kWh available to replenish the 12V battery. That can run the camera for about 10 months before it is drained. Because of this I do not need a separate Li-Ion battery for the camera's and thus I do not have that installed.

It seems like the camera just crashes when you have a bad SD-card instead of telling you 'Hey your SD card is bad, i'm going to stop using it and keep notifying you of this issue'. I think this is a design flaw. If this would happen after say 6 months I wouldn't notice this until I actually need the footage.

I went to a local store to get an SD-card for the rear camera as well, but they only had no-name brands so I didn't believe it would work. I tried it anyway, but it didn't work (camera failed again after some hours). I'm now waiting for a replacement BlackVue SD-card. If that solves the rear camera as well, I apparantly had 2 faulty SD cards from 2 brand new cameras

I am disappointed by the lack of notification from the camera's. It should enter some kind of error mode and keep alerting me (like beeping, or whatever) that my card is faulty. It seems to just crash and hang.

I'll update this thread once I have replaced the rear camera's card as well.
 
Thanks for the update and info on the battery. Not sure the battery will last long enough for the dash cam storage though :D.

Interesting that you have two bad cameras/SD cards.

I'd say swap the SD cards but I'm not sure if there is any unique info required on the card, e.g. serial number.

Sounds like you have a quality installer service though as took the time to bench test the equipment.
 
So, I now have tested 2 additional SD-cards in my rear camera.

- 1 new card, officially from BlackVue
- The card I removed from the - now working, after replaced - front camera

None of the cards work. The camera crashes at the exact same time. It goes like this:

- BlackVue for your service voiceprompt
- "Starting normal recording" is never announced
- Camera connects to cloud
- As soon as I open any video stream (live or recorded) the camera crashes. The white security LED in the front of the camera either goes off or stays on (it does not blink anymore)

So it is starting to look like I had 2 bad camera's instead of 2 bad SD-cards.

I'm afraid I have to go pickup a new camera from the installer :)
 
Did this ever get resolved?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 
Did this ever get resolved?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

I had a problem with this with the later firmware (1.007).

Downgrading to 1.005 was my resolution and have not had this issue for 3+ weeks now. (I have not tried 1.009)
 
Yes, this issue is resolved. Both camera's have been replaced, no problems since.

My cameras crashed after about 4 weeks on 1.005.

I have also since replaced them and loaded 1.010. *Crosses fingers*

I wonder if there was a bad batch somewhere
 
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