The F800pro and the two hidden hdmi ports usage: liveview, and?

Larry Lart

New Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2017
Messages
23
Reaction score
23
Location
Naas
Country
Ireland
Dash Cam
Thinkware F800 pro
I found the other day that under the rectangular sticker on the side were sd card slot there are two hdmi ports.

I have tried the first and is causing the camera to crash, needed to let it without power for a few minutes to be able to power it back again.

However the second port (the one beside reset) seems to provide live view, which might come in handy, the only problem is that it has a cross mark in the middle – I presume that was used for some sort of factory calibration.

I found some older chat on the use of the hdmi port on older thinkware camera, I wonder if ever since anyone found the purpose of the second hdmi?
 

Attachments

  • f800pro_2_hdmi.jpg
    f800pro_2_hdmi.jpg
    51.5 KB · Views: 65
  • f800pro_hdmi_live.jpg
    f800pro_hdmi_live.jpg
    36.5 KB · Views: 63
Also found that when the rear camera is connected you will get a feed from the rear camera instead of the front.

Interesting, in parking mode hdmi video stream is still working. Also, it seems that having an hdmi display connected will prevent the camera entering parking mode.

However it seems that when you connect an hdmi display recording stops and and stays like that even if you disconnect the hdmi – you need to reboot the camera to restart recording again.
 
It would be nice if the rear cam can double up as live view cam to use on a digital rear mirror without stopping and affecting recording. This would be especially useful for cars that does not have a clear rear view through the usual rear view mirror.

The live view feed would need to be flipped as a mirror image at source or on the digital mirror if supported or otherwise in the cam recording settings setup as mirror image and the recorded videos to be flipped when necessary.

@Larry Lart you look like someone with possibly the skills to hack it.

On a side note, has anyone opened up the Pro to see if the front cam rotating lens could be modded to rotate further so that it could point at a lower angle when mounted on an almost horizontal mounting position? Mine had to be mounted this way on the ADAS sensor cover instead of the windscreen so I could only barely capture a thin line of my bonnet.
 
It would be nice if the rear cam can double up as live view cam to use on a digital rear mirror without stopping and affecting recording. This would be especially useful for cars that does not have a clear rear view through the usual rear view mirror.

That’s something I would really like as well – you can use streaming over RTPS with an app such as tinycam, that seems to have no impact on the recording itself however there is a delayin streaming of 1-2 seconds , were hdmi seems to be pretty much realtime. Also I think streaming will be more taxing on the camera’s cpu than vout over hdmi.

The live view feed would need to be flipped as a mirror image at source or on the digital mirror if supported or otherwise in the cam recording settings setup as mirror image and the recorded videos to be flipped when necessary.

I am not sure how much software control I have over this hdmi feed. I will try to poke around with the basic camera settings as I haven’t tested yet if the mirroring specified in the settings reflects over hdmi as well.

@Larry Lart you look like someone with possibly the skills to hack it.

Time is probably the “commodity” in short supply. As much as I like pocking around with new toys, if it takes me less to put together my own platform from ground up, than trying hack a closed hardware/software makes no sense.
I will probably finish up my backup scripts/setup and I will put on the details here, and everything I found so far on this camera – and in the process, if I discover something else I will make a note.

On a side note, has anyone opened up the Pro to see if the front cam rotating lens could be modded to rotate further so that it could point at a lower angle when mounted on an almost horizontal mounting position? Mine had to be mounted this way on the ADAS sensor cover instead of the windscreen so I could only barely capture a thin line of my bonnet.

These is hardware stop and maybe be limited by the length flex cable as well (I haven’t look at this specific detail at the time), so be careful if you attempt to remove that stop as how far the lens can go without pulling the cable.
 

Attachments

  • f800pro_mainlens_1.jpg
    f800pro_mainlens_1.jpg
    62.1 KB · Views: 44
These is hardware stop and maybe be limited by the length flex cable as well (I haven’t look at this specific detail at the time), so be careful if you attempt to remove that stop as how far the lens can go without pulling the cable.

Removing no that hardware stop (or flex) would be sooooo handy for those of us who drive on thr left...
 
Back
Top