Viofo A139 pro // 1ch // stock-lens // focus issues // refocusing/IR-enabling

[Zackw419]

Good luck and Good Night. The children here in Germany have to go to bed now. The old children too ...

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Dashmellow]

Is there any chance I could have overheated the sensor module with the hair dryer - that’s the only thing I can think of other than a defective unit.

That is very unlikely unless you seriously cooked the thing. Hopefully, all you did was warm it up enough to soften the cement. The sensor module actually gets pretty warm all by itself when the camera is operating, as does the camera. I don't know the heat rating for the camera but it's likely good to over 150º F at least. @Panzer Platform did a lot of temperature testing on this cam, so he could tell us more definitively.

 

[Zackw419]

That is very unlikely unless you seriously cooked the thing. Hopefully, all you did was warm it up enough to soften the cement. The sensor module actually gets pretty warm all by itself when the camera is operating, as does the camera.

Good to know I can check that one off then. And yea- I just warmed it up, tried to unscrew, and repeated till it loosened things up. It got hot enough to need some cloth to handle it - but I felt like I was being fairly careful.

 

[Müller]

Hello Zackw419.

With IR-cut the material comes with natural colors. As we see the world through our eyes. Without IR-cut everything is more or less overlayed/drowned by/in that typical pinkish glow which is the videoprocessing chain´s representation of IR, invisible to our eyes (from ~700nm up). IR is basically redder than red. Imagine how that would look like. We usually think of being able to imagine the wildest, weirdest things, but here, on both opposite ends of just that simple scale from blue to red, we already fail.

With a documentation device like a dashcam you usually want an IR-cut for the obvious reason of ... natural colors. Because these are part of the overall proof. Who did what and what did who and who´s vehicle and who´s clothing look like.

So you start and usually stay with an IR-cut cam.

But without IR-cut, depending on location and time of day or night and natural or artificial sources in the scene, sometimes coarsely refered to as the "ir-weather", the sensor receives this additional light-energy which leads to shorter shuttertimes and shorter shuttertimes lead to better motionfreezing capabilities of the videodevice which usually means: a possibly nailed license plate where a VIS-only-cam might slip.

With the VIS/IR-combo-cam i can lower the exposure to minus 0,6 up to minus 1,0 compared to the standard VIS-model (lowering the exposure on a fixed-aperture-videodevice usually means shorter shutterspeeds).

If not for very special needs/operations, it doesn´t make sense to just use a standalone IR-cam for dashcam purposes. The latter only makes sense as an addition to an existing VIS-cam.

How´s your anti-Wifi-cam doing?

 

[Zackw419]

Hello Zackw419.

With IR-cut the material comes with natural colors. As we see the world through our eyes. Without IR-cut everything is more or less overlayed/drowned by/in that typical pinkish glow which is the videoprocessing chain´s representation of IR, invisible to our eyes (from ~700nm up). IR is basically redder than red. Imagine how that would look like. We usually think of being able to imagine the wildest, weirdest things, but here, on both opposite ends of just that simple scale from blue to red, we already fail.

With a documentation device like a dashcam you usually want an IR-cut for the obvious reason of ... natural colors. Because these are part of the overall proof. Who did what and what did who and who´s vehicle and who´s clothing look like.

So you start and usually stay with an IR-cut cam.

But without IR-cut, depending on location and time of day or night and natural or artificial sources in the scene, sometimes coarsely refered to as the "ir-weather", the sensor receives this additional light-energy which leads to shorter shuttertimes and shorter shuttertimes lead to better motionfreezing capabilities of the videodevice which usually means: a possibly nailed license plate where a VIS-only-cam might slip.

With the VIS/IR-combo-cam i can lower the exposure to minus 0,6 up to minus 1,0 compared to the standard VIS-model (lowering the exposure on a fixed-aperture-videodevice usually means shorter shutterspeeds).

If not for very special needs/operations, it doesn´t make sense to just use a standalone IR-cam for dashcam purposes. The latter only makes sense as an addition to an existing VIS-cam.

How´s your anti-Wifi-cam doing?

Thanks. These are the filters I got:

-and question: is UV glue the best way to attach these to the lens?



Regarding the issue I was having: I think it was power source related, but I still need to test over time and more in the car. I was using a USB cable extender because my USB-C cables are very short, but once I plugged it into a usb wall outlet directly I wasn’t having the issue. Same with when I used it in the car. But before that I also tried with the short USB-C into a wall adapter then into the wall, and that also caused issues. I think it’s because of previously using bent wall adapters that cause a bad/loose connection in the outlet from altering the connection points. But I hadn’t ever had this issue before- so I’m thinking the Viofo is finicky about those things.

But sense then I’ve set up the module for a 12mm lens.

I had bought multiple 12mm lenses and they all needed more threads on the mount to focus properly. So I had to order more m12 mounts, take the current one off, and put a longer one so that there was enough threads (distance from the sensor) to focus the lens.

It ended up being a bit of a project. The new m12 mount screw holes were slightly misaligned with the holes on the module so I had to drill one of the holes on the module bigger to make it work. Also- the new mount screws were bigger than the previous mount screws so I had to modify the I/O (or PCB) shield to allow it to fit back on.

Another thing was the new mount had trouble fitting in the plastic housing so I had to clip off two of the opposing corners so that the holes on the module that mount it to the camera body would fit.

So it ended up being a bit of a project but I’m mostly in the clear now.

 

[Zackw419]

But I’m still having to manually turn on the WiFi each time. So I’m going to have to see what’s up with that.

 

[Müller]

Nice! (even though it "only" is a partial victory). Would have been very sad that "talking" people, having invested ~250 currency-units into such a modification by the initial post(s) in this thread, would unhappy end in rendering their product a paperweight so easily and me only having been lucky to end up with a still functional device ... Oo

Also: Dr. Zack did quite a lot to the patient which i would have been hesitant to. So: honor to whom honor is due ...

UV-glue is the choice of the choices when it comes to fixation of delicate unmounted optic-elements because the chance of Cyanacrylat (superglue) not being completely polymerized is high, it, in this state, will always evaporate some excess unhardened substance (the monomeres it is made of) which get airborne, then harden/polymerize by reacting with air-moisture and accumulate on nearby surfaces and geometries and spoil their properties, in this case of optics, the delicate coatings on their surfaces which are the functional elements that let them do what they are supposed to do.

Hopefully the radio-wakeup-procedure and it´s wakeup-procedure will also wake up again and join the rest of the already woken up A139pro-towns`s working-population ... oO!

 

[Zackw419]

The UV glue I got seemed way harder and difficult to remove than the Viofo factory glue. Why might this be?

I was able to heat up the factory lens with a hair dryer and easily remove it- but the UV glue I used would not soften after heating it the same way. I had to put it in the over to get it to come off.

This is the glue I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0BCPDW7K9

 

[Dashmellow]

The UV glue I got seemed way harder and difficult to remove than the Viofo factory glue. Why might this be?

I was able to heat up the factory lens with a hair dryer and easily remove it- but the UV glue I used would not soften after heating it the same way. I had to put it in the over to get it to come off.

This is the glue I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0BCPDW7K9

Every manufacturer has a different formula for their product and stronger is generally considered a plus. I recall using the phrase "tiny dab" the other day when it comes to applying this stuff. Just how much did you use?

For future reference, it is always best to do some testing before committing to using a new product like this when you are not familiar with it, especially for a project like this. That was what I did the first time I used UV cement and it was definitely a worthwhile experiment. I glued two small squares of clear plastic together to see what would happen and how easily I could get them apart again.