Thinkware 750 Development

[shunter293]

I updated my F750 with F770 firmware about two weeks ago and all function appear to work perfectly.

Only took just over a minute to complete.

 

[frostrambler]

I'm currently working on giving the camera a small bump in bit rate as well, its currently running at around 10Mbps on the front and 8 on the rear. I'm going to bump the front to 12Mbps and modify the AE levels a tad to cut down on the bonnet reflection., ive completed the changes but there is a problem compiling it that Tobi-s might be able to shed some light on.

That should keep it below the 20Mbps overall max for the chipset and hopefully reduce some of the artifacts / lighting issues it can sometimes get.

Thanks! I love my F750 but hate that the bit rate is so low. I don't even use the dual channel feature and wish the bit rate was higher on the videos. My old Marcus 3 had a higher bit rate and it made a difference on license plates being clear when there was motion. I am grateful that maybe there will now be a way to increase bit rate.

 

[Dee_82]

Thanks! I love my F750 but hate that the bit rate is so low. I don't even use the dual channel feature and wish the bit rate was higher on the videos. My old Marcus 3 had a higher bit rate and it made a difference on license plates being clear when there was motion. I am grateful that maybe there will now be a way to increase bit rate.

Tobi is on holiday just now, his the chap who made the AFT program, once he is back hopefully he can fix the problem, then we can see what we can do, the max bit rate overall is a rather low 20Mbps, unfortunately we can't circumvent that as its a hardware limitation. If your only using it in single camera mode it might be possible to push that much higher that the 12Mbps I'm looking at, the issue is I can't see which table entry relates to what data rate, ill keep you all posted

 

[TurBIce]

I am hoping we can increase the bitrate. especially for parking.

we captured this with the car parked. but was unable to read the plate.

 

[monopole]

Hi

I have had my F750 since December and last week followed the guide to firmware upgrade to the F770 - which by all accounts is working perfectly well as an F770 now as as mentioned it only takes about 1 minute to complete but it does reset settings to default which need to be set up again, but that's no bother is it

I initially ran my dashcam since new with a 64Gb Transcend Ultimate 633x card without issues and then a few months back replaced that with a 128Gb Lexar High-Performance Class 10UHS-I 633x - which again has performed flawlessly (just wish I could use more than 60% for normal recording as I pretty much only use that and Parking Mode!

I had my camera installed by a company/member on here Tim and James @ Advanced In Car Tech

I am looking forward to the progress made towards bitrate, as I feel the rear camera can be sacrificed a little bit more to improve the front camera when in motion.

Steve.

 

[cynix]

I just finished updating my firmware to F770. It appears to work fine, except that it asks me to format the SD card every time it is powered on. I did not have this problem when using F750 firmware. As a side effect, I cannot load the speed camera data into the camera anymore.

 

[Dee_82]

that's odd, I don't have that issue, did you clear the thinkware card first? Did you try hitting the format button on the camera? if that didn't help Try copying just the .bin file to the root of the SD card, leave the folders from the firmware off the card. then turn off the camera pop the SD card in and power cycle it.

 

[cynix]

that's odd, I don't have that issue, did you clear the thinkware card first? Did you try hitting the format button on the camera? if that didn't help Try copying just the .bin file to the root of the SD card, leave the folders from the firmware off the card. then turn off the camera pop the SD card in and power cycle it.

The format button appears to work correctly at first, and it will start to record video as if everything's fine, but after a power cycle it'll ask to format the card again. Luckily I never turn the camera off so it doesn't really affect me in practice, but hope they release an update soon.

 

[cynix]

Looks like the camera's support for exFAT isn't that good, even though that is the format chosen by the camera itself when you press the format button. I took the card out and formatted it as FAT32 on my computer, and now it doesn't complain anymore.

 

[jokiin]

what card are you using?

 

[cynix]

what card are you using?

SanDisk Ultra MicroSDXC 200GB

 

[jokiin]

SanDisk Ultra MicroSDXC 200GB

not an officially supported card so maybe it wouldn't have come up as an issue with a different card, as long as you have a workaround I guess is ok

 

[shunter293]

I am using a Samsung 128Gb class 10 EVO micro SDXC which appears to work perfectly straight out of the packet formatted as exFAT although I did once format it to FAT32 and that also worked fine.

When I updated the firmware to F770 the camera prompted me to format the card at first use but has not asked since although I assume that at some point it will request a format again which is no bad thing.

I really have only one complaint about this camera which is the too often repeated 'Mobile Speed Camera Zone' announcements.

Although I am generally happy with the bit rate and image quality, if there was any room to raise it a bit and retain dual camera reliability I would not object as I used to use a Mini 0806, which now in my wife's car, and the image detail is better than the F750/F770.

 

[Dee_82]

just wanted to confirm, you can update to the .03 firmware version without any issues, ill test the new speed camera features shortly, apparently we should be able to turn off "mobile speed camera zones" which I'm sure will be a welcome update from thinkware!

The update process is as follows

Convert your F750 to a F770
Format the Thinkware SD card
Download the F770 firmware from thinkware
extract the F770-pkg.bin file from the downloaded zip
copy the bin file to the SD card
Rename F770-pkg.bin to F750-pkg.bin
insert SD card and turn on the camera
Update may take a few minuets so DO NOT TURN OFF!

Update your converted F750
Format the Thinkware SD card
Download the F770 firmware from thinkware (no need to rename)
extract the contents of the downloaded zip to the root of the SD card (1 file and 2 folders)
Download the camera data for your area
replace the file in the DriveInfo folder on the SD card
insert SD card and turn on the camera
Update may take a few minuets so DO NOT TURN OFF!

I suspect that all firmware updates will work fine after this however in the interest of your own sanity I will test every firmware version and will report on here if its successful

Check the first post for details

 

[Adplaya]

I suspect that all firmware updates will work fine after this however in the interest of your own sanity I will test every firmware version and will report on here if its successful

Check the first post for details

Hahaha cheers!

 

[WA3PNT]

Dee, I'm considering buying a F750 and upgrading it to a F770 firmware wise.

My question is, since the F770 does not have the Operation Status LEDs, do they continue to operate normally on the F750 with the F770 Firmware?

RodeoGeorge

 

[Dee_82]

Dee, I'm considering buying a F750 and upgrading it to a F770 firmware wise.

My question is, since the F770 does not have the Operation Status LEDs, do they continue to operate normally on the F750 with the F770 Firmware?

RodeoGeorge

Good question, to be honest I never paid any attention to any of the LEDs but I can tell you that the GPS and WIFI LEDs work, it also has multi colour , red green blue LEDs at the bottom which flash when the SD card is removed or when it updates etc.

I haven't got a clue if it will work as you would expect because I haven't ever paid any attention to them but if you let me know what you want me to check then ill observe it and let you know if it works or not, my hunch is that it will fine

The manual record, wifi, format and power buttons work, I haven't checked the mute button, but ill check that later, again I suspect it will be fine.

 

[WA3PNT]

The LED indications on the operation LEDs that I would like to know about are

LEFT RIGHT
Continuous Record with Microphone ON
BLUE BLUE
Incident during Continuous Record
BLUE BLUE Blink
Dual Save
GREEN Blink OFF

Thanks for the information

RodeoGeorge

 

[Dee_82]

yeah, all working fine, as is the mic mute button

 

[shunter293]

I have not yet found that the Mobile Camera announcements can be turned off but the 03 update appears to address the overly repeated "Mobile Speed Camera Zone" announcements by considerably reducing the amount of times it is repeated at least that is what I have found in my area.

Everything else is still working as it should.