Viofo A139 3CH review

jokiin said:
ironically the voice prompts are something that Thinkware owners like to complain about
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Well, I guess it's normal as there will be lovers and haters. No matter what products.
 
Nigel said:
Also when you use the IR lights on/off button you know what you have just done when without voice you have no idea what the button does since it is only labeled with a power icon, and even if you know it is an IR button as the second function, you still can't tell from the beep if you turned the lights on or off, the voice tells you exactly what you did.
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A small visible red LED on the interior camera could let you know when the IR is activated.

Alternatively, a red LED could be used to indicate when the interior camera is recording, for the benefit of passengers. Similar to the LED next to the webcam on some laptops.
 
TonyM said:
A small visible red LED on the interior camera could let you know when the IR is activated.

Alternatively, a red LED could be used to indicate when the interior camera is recording, for the benefit of passengers. Similar to the LED next to the webcam on some laptops.
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There is an LED for the microphone on/off, but with the voice I don't need to bother checking it when I press the mic button, I can keep my eyes on the road, much better.

It is easy to overdo use of voice, but at the moment the A139 has got it about right for me.
 
I think if you have voice prompts it is also how you use them, i dont need a elaborate welcome - brand commercial - weather forecast when the camera boot, a simple sound will be fine for that.
But higher things like also mentioned i can see voice being nice as a table of 10 - 12 different beep sounds are hard to keep track off, not least if it is for features / options you do not use regularly.

I also think the people having problems with sounds / voice are people that like things very stealthy, and i can also understand that but personally i dont need a dashcam to be quiet as the grave.

I do think they could be simplified, so instead of wifi enabled / wifi disabled, it could just be wifi on / wifi off. Though i dont think i would use it much myself, ideally you should be able to customize your voice files.
So the voice files could be on the memory card named 1-2-3-4 ASO each for its own feature, so say instead of 4 being wifi on.MP4 you could make your own recording to replace wifi on.mp4.
so for the hell of it you could make wifi on be a fart sound, and wifi off could be laughter, EMG recording i might change to screeching tires sound.

I am a huge fan of empowering people to make their own choices / changes, but i must also recognize that people dont need a say in everything in the world, so if thats impossible or just not worth the trouble to implement in a dashcam i accept that.
 
Yeah i think there would be some restraints, one of which i think the should files must be fairly short or small in size.
As always i am probably oversimplifying things.
Anyways i will pick my fights as always, some i can win, some i can never win but still must fight, and others i just have to walk away from long before the first punch are thrown.
 
I want my cans to notify me visually and audibly of three things: Start-up, shut-down, and recording failure. Those events are very important and I don't care if it's voice or sound; just let me know of them. I also don't see any need for lights to indicate other than normal functioning; give me one to show if the the cam is on or off and let it blink or add another one for recording failure. And illuminate the "lock file" button so you can find it quickly at night. One LED there can do all this.
The rest doesn't matter to me personally 😎

But I can see where others may not want that (other than recording failure) so sound should otherwise be a user-choice, at least as far as on or off. My hearing is awful but the voice of the A139 is clear and loud enough for me to hear and understand it up close, which is probably the right volume level for most folks 👍Ideal would be user-choice of voice or sound or silence for each individual function but we're getting complex there and it may not be easily possible for the manufacturer, so probably the best approach would be a "mute" function in the menu that ceases all sound except recording failure notification. Lights should also be similarly in choice.

Right now with my B2W and A139 running at night, my old bus looks like it has a Christmas tree mounted on the windshield at night from behind 😱 That is NOT stealthy and I'd rather have stealthier functionality here. One light is sufficient for parking mode and it shouldn't be bright 😉 These is my only complaints with the A139's signaling.

Phil
 
If your camera suddenly stop recording mid drive, that must be either a memory card issue or power issue.
My sample have never stopped on its own, and i have even tried another memory card than the provided viofo one ( sandisk high endurance )
 
kamkar said:
If your camera suddenly stop recording mid drive, that must be either a memory card issue or power issue.
My sample have never stopped on its own, and i have ven tried another memory card than the provided viofo one ( sandisk high endurance )
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I'm using the USB C hardwire kit and 128GB Transcend High Endurance card and also used 128GB Samsung Evo Plus.

Maybe I should change to the ciggie port charger and see?
 
It would be a good idea to try, just for a day if it is regular you have that drop.

If anyone could PM me that new FW it would be nice.
 
100% reliable here. Using Samsung Evo Select 128GB, 64GB, and 32GB versions. If that's the silver Transcend card those had had issues found with them in dashcam usage.
I haven't tried the 'ciggie plug' PS, think I'll do that today. My HWK seems to function well with LV cutoff doing as it seems it should.

Phil
 
kamkar said:
It would be a good idea to try, just for a day if it is regular you have that drop.

If anyone could PM me that new FW it would be nice.
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Have PM you
 
I used the new white Sandisk high endurance, have one of the silver ones too but have not used it much.
 
Nigel said:
I don't know if that is 🤣 to Romanians, but it was to me 😆
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Oh, noooo! 😱🤣
If some indians from India will come to my country will start speaking romanian, that will be the accent for sure. I had the same feeling like when I am hearing indian, pakistani men speaking english. In my country there are gypsies (which are supposed to came from India many years ago) but their accent is very different compared to your audio file.

Coming back to A139 voices, in my opinion voice messages or voice notifications are different things compared to voice prompts. Because a voice prompt is expecting from you some command (voice or not) and the device will act in the way you decided. So A139 will do nothing based on your voice.

enjoy,
Mtz
 
Jeremy Wong said:
Hopefully will also fix the issue I got is when driving the A139 will stop recording and beeps non-stop until I restart it.
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I told you that the only plus are the voices added inside firmware. The firmware for IQ testing is something like v3.8_0803 but it does not have voices.

enjoy,
Mtz
 
English with Indian accent, thats quite enjoyable for me.

Yes no talk to camera please, i have never gotten that to work with any hardware, not in Danish and not in English.
Okay back in the day when i had the galaxy 2 phone, dictating texts to my m8 in English and then have the phone read it to me, that was pretty fun too.
Okay the ability of Android to understand are probably much better now, but back then it was often so far off that after laughing my ass off and nearly crashing i had forgotten what i dictated and reading what the phone picked up did not help.

Google translate can also be pretty WTF some times, yesterday i tried it with some French to Danish translation, and some times i was thinking " okay the guy writing clearly had a stroke"
 
Mtz said:
Coming back to A139 voices, in my opinion voice messages or voice notifications are different things compared to voice prompts. Because a voice prompt is expecting from you some command (voice or not) and the device will act in the way you decided. So A139 will do nothing based on your voice.
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A message is the camera giving you information,
A prompt is the camera suggesting you respond by taking some action,
A command is when you tell the camera it must do something.

So all the messages in the clips above are voice messages.
The one that suggests you format the memory card is a voice prompt.

There are no voice commands at the moment, and I don't expect there will be any because the best way to implement them would be via the app using Siri or Alexa, but the A1?9 wifi does not stay connected so you are not going to be talking to it while driving.

Mtz said:
If some indians from India will come to my country will start speaking romanian, that will be the accent for sure.
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Good to know that it was correct, but I don't think we need different voices implemented for different countries? Except maybe the French will not like having to listen to an English speaking camera?

Has anyone worked out what part of the world the current accent is from?
 
Personally I think "beeps" or similar is the best international solution. It could be quite tough for users who do not know the language they are hearing, and if many languages are supported some will still be missed. And I am always in favor of having as much memory and processor power as is possible devoted to camera functioning; languages waste this when "beeps" will do fine for everybody 😉

Phil
 
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