Viofo A329S & A329T Testing

[Vortex Radar]

Yesterday I received my new A329S and A329T. I've been eager looking forward to testing these out and installing them in the car. Over the next few weeks I wanna work on a series of videos as I test different aspects of the dashcams, and I can share my findings and videos here as I go.

First up is a general overview video of the two models.

To help put things into context, I also ran through Viofo's evolution of 4K flagships starting with the A129 Pro.

Here's the unboxing:

Here's a look at the A329S interior fisheye cam and how it compares to some other options:

Here’s a look at the A329T’s telephoto:

This isn't specific to the A329S/T, but it goes over the benefits (or not) of 60 fps:

Here's a look at the multiplexing features:

Here's how to use an A139 Pro front/rear cable with the A329x series:

Here's a look at the new low power impact detection parking mode capabilities:

Here's a look at the HK6 hardwire cable and how it works:

This is how to update the firmware, as well as how you can switch between the A329S & A329T in software:

and here's the final review:

The A229 Ultra has since been released so here's a comparison between those two models:

 

[lufa6977]

Excellent video, dude, you are the king of videos. 👍

 

[Vortex Radar]

Excellent video, dude, you are the king of videos. 👍

lol thank you! This one was fun to put the pieces together on.

 

[Vortex Radar]

Just finished shooting an unboxing and taking a look at the new menu options. I noticed the new parking mode options for hybrid parking mode and low power impact detection weren't there, even after I updated to the latest fw on their website. Any idea how to use those features?

 

[Chuck McCoy]

I noticed the new parking mode options for hybrid parking mode and low power impact detection weren't there, even after I updated to the latest fw on their website.

I’m also having an issue with the Firmware on the official Viofo Website.
I’m trying to update my A329T with A329WW firmware to no avail.
I tried several times with Viofo Brand SD cards in different sizes, (64GB-512GB).
I haven’t gotten to testing parking modes yet.
I will confirm & verify your issue on my camera.

 

[rcg530]

I’m also having an issue with the Firmware on the official Viofo Website.
I’m trying to update my A329T with A329WW firmware to no avail.
I tried several times with Viofo Brand SD cards in different sizes, (64GB-512GB).
I haven’t gotten to testing parking modes yet.

Can you see if you can install the official A329WW firmware in your A329T?
And I will confirm & verify your issue on my camera.

I answered Ariel's question in another thread. If powered by the CLA, only the original parking modes are valid options. If powered by a HK4, the new parking mode options will be presented as well.

The "trick" to changing a "S" firmware to a "T" or "WW" firmware is there needs to be a LD98530A.bin file installed for the type of firmware you want to install. The boot loader looks for only one firmware filename. That's why you must update the loader to the one that looks for the "S", "T", or "WW" firmware file. I obtained those files from VIOFO during my testing period. I'm not sure how VIOFO is going to handle this issue when a person buys an A329S 1-channel and then buys the telephoto camera. They'll need to install the "T" loader file and the FWA329T.bin firmware file.

 

[Chuck McCoy]

I answered Ariel's question in another thread. If powered by the CLA, only the original parking modes are valid options. If powered by a HK4, the new parking mode options will be presented as well.

You're always ten steps ahead of me. lol

I noticed the new parking mode options for hybrid parking mode and low power impact detection weren't there, even after I updated to the latest fw on their website. Any idea how to use those features?

Just got back to the keyboard from my garage doing this.

 

[rcg530]

You're always ten steps ahead of me. lol

Just got back to the keyboard from my garage doing this.

I need tech support to explain your explanation. lol
How is a below average intelligence person such as myself going to update the firmware.
All I have is Chromebook, and iPhone.
Why can't we just have OTA firmware updates already, (I know, I know be patient).
Wait, why do we need 3 different firmwares in the first place.
Why can't we just have one firmware, and the customer selects which remote cameras are connected in the menu settings.
Again, asking for non-techy people like me.

I don't know if there were limitations forcing the splitting of the firmware into three variants.

The dash camera arrives with a "S", "T", or "WW" boot loader [LD98530A.bin] already installed. The boot loader only looks for one firmware filename.

• "S" version of LD98530A.bin => FWA329S.bin
• "T" version of LD98530A.bin => FWA329T.bin
• "WW" version of LD98530A.bin => FWA329WW.bin

During the dash camera boot process, there's a check to see if the LD98530A.bin file is present on the microSD card. If so, the boot loader is updated with the contents of the LD98530A.bin file.

If no LD98530A.bin file is present, the boot loader code checks for a firmware file on the microSD card. If it finds the filename it expects on the microSD card, it will attempt to load the contents of the FWA329'x'.bin.

If you want to reconfigure the camera to a different configuration ["S" to "T" for example], you first need to install the "T" version of the LD98530A.bin boot loader file. Once the "T" LD98530A.bin is installed and the camera is rebooted, the "updated" boot loader will look for the FWA329T.bin firmware file.

OTA firmware update process only pushes the firmware file to the dash camera and the dash camera reboots to load it. Switching configuration types would require the OTA logic to handle the LD98530A.bin file installation as well.

Feature specific firmware options that I'm aware of:

• S
  • Interior Camera IR LED settings
  • Interior Camera Fisheye Mode Settings
  • Interior Camera Off, On, Only While Driving, Only While Parking
  • Camera connected to "Int" connection port will have "I" filename suffix
• T
  • Telephoto Camera Off, On, Only While Driving, Only While Parking
  • Camera connected to the "Int" connection port will have "T" filename suffix
• WW
  • I haven't tried this one yet
  • One of the rear cameras will have a "1R" and the other will have a "2R" filename suffix
  • There may be more options - Have to try this configuration to see

 

[Vortex Radar]

Thanks for your help @rcg530!

Here's some still frames from the unboxing video I'm working on now.

First up is everything from the A329S 3CH unboxing:

Here's the key parts needed for wiring and install.

Here's the different add-on cams. They all look super similar.

and here's the sides that are conveniently labeled. The original A329's rear cam (bottom) isn't labeled.

 

[Vortex Radar]

Also here's some of the new settings and menu options.

First up is the resolution options in 3CH mode:

60fps is available on the front cam in 1-2CH modes when HDR is off.

The new fisheye cabin cam lets you do a full fisheye effect of slightly crop into ultra-wide mode.

Here's the new parking modes, in addition to the usual ones:

Low power impact detection is a new selectable option. If you choose hybrid parking mode, you can choose how that works and what regular mode to use before the timer/voltage threshold switches you.

To use these new modes, you do have to use a hardwire cable, lol, and you gotta choose a way to have the dashcam switch, either timer or voltage. I don't have the HK6 yet, plus I plan on using the timer either way since I use a dashcam battery pack and don't care about voltage drops either way.

You've also got the new multiplexer options:

and lastly a look at the cam running in 3CH multiplexed.

Now time to finish editing and then post the full video. 🙂

 

[Vortex Radar]

Alright, unboxing and setup video is done.

Time to start with the actual testing!

 

[Vortex Radar]

Looks like the A329's rear cam is compatible with the new models! This made it super easy to upgrade my existing A329 install to an A329T. 🙂 Reuse all the mounts and everything, swap out the front cam, and add the new telephoto.

Took a bit of work to install the telephoto in a place that doesn't show up in the front cam's view and also ensure that it's aimed straight ahead. The windshield curves and everything is magnified with a telephoto.

I've got the A329S 3CH on the bench right now to do some quick power measurements. With the low power parking mode, I'm seeing 32-35 mA @ 12.6v. @rcg530 reported 34 mA so my findings are right in line with his.

It'd be super time consuming to sit and wait for a battery pack to discharge at this rate, lol, and I wanna do more than have it sit on my desk idling for over a week, so I think I'm gonna do some Robert-like calculations here and do a spreadsheet of estimated times based on power draw rather than the usual method of charging and discharging batteries and seeing how long it takes. 🙂

 

[Vortex Radar]

So I just found out that the Fluke 117 that Robert recommended has a feature to give me the average current draw which is super convenient, given the slight fluctuations in current over time. I also used ChatGPT to help me build some formulas while getting everything punched into a spreadsheet.

Here's how everything looks in the various 3CH parking modes, with the IR LEDs on and off, recording to the MicroSD, powered by a hypothetical 96 Wh battery. I'll run a realworld test on a 70mai battery later to see how the theoretical numbers compare.

The low power detection mode is clearly a big improvement, lol, even bigger than the jump we saw with TL 1fps Night Vision that came on the original A329.

I'd like to play around with making the chart color coded and trying some other camera combinations, maybe measuring with and SSD, and so on, but either way this is definitely making it muuuuch easier to do some parking mode measurements.

 

[rcg530]

I've got the A329S 3CH on the bench right now to do some quick power measurements. With the low power parking mode, I'm seeing 32-35 mA @ 12.6v. @rcg530 reported 34 mA so my findings are right in line with his.

One thing I observed with LPID parking mode is the first time it enters LPID parking mode [waiting for an impact event] the power draw is slightly lower than the power draw after it handles its first impact event. When it goes back to waiting for an impact event, the average power draw increased 4 mA to 6 mA compared to the first time it was waiting for an impact event.

I like using the Fluke 117's min/max/avg function for the amp draw. It makes it much easier to gather the amp draw readings.

 

[Ziradon]

I have just ordered the A329S with interior cam. My plan is to use the settings „only on in parking mode“ for the interior cam.

I wonder if 4K60 is possible during normal driving with this setting or is it necessary to unplug the interior cam for getting the 60 FPS setting?

 

[Karagandinez]

I have just ordered the A329S with interior cam. My plan is to use the settings „only on in parking mode“ for the interior cam.

I wonder if 4K60 is possible during normal driving with this setting or is it necessary to unplug the interior cam for getting the 60 FPS setting?

Post in thread 'VIOFO A329S - Testing/Review - RCG' https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/viofo-a329s-testing-review-rcg.53058/post-641948

 

[runtohell121]

Low power parking mode is a great feature from Viofo and probably will be one of the top consideration for some now.

 

[Vortex Radar]

So I installed the A329S in the other car this morning, but I've been having issues getting the interior cam to record reliably, even with the IR cam set to On. It was working initially, but I just got back after doing some cabin recording, even verifying that everything was working properly via the app, but I have no interior cam videos, just front and rear. I can hear on the audio recordings that it said that it's starting up w/ 3CH recording. I can go back out and retest the IR cam stuff, but it's a bit of a bummer to lose the testing clips from today, and I gotta figure out why it didn't record in the first place. Hopefully it was just some dumb setting on my part or something.

Additionally, I'm not sure if 60fps is working properly. When I was testing with just Front/Interior and no third rear cam yet, the dashcam shows 4K 60 at the bottom if the video footage and I see 60fps in the metadata, but it's really capturing at 30fps and duplicating every other frame. This is on firmware 1.0_20250527.

@viofo @VIOFO-Support

 

[Vortex Radar]

Since the front cam video is working fine, here's a quick demo of whacking the WS to test the wakeup time of the low power impact detection. It took right at 2s to wake up. IMO that's pretty good for a dashcam that's otherwise asleep.

Gonna go out and retry some fisheye cabin cam testing next.

 

[Nigel]

Since the front cam video is working fine, here's a quick demo of whacking the WS to test the wakeup time of the low power impact detection. It took right at 2s to wake up. IMO that's pretty good for a dashcam that's otherwise asleep.

Gonna go out and retry some fisheye cabin cam testing next.

Yes, pretty good, does it always have perfect exposure from the first frame? Quite impressive if it does.

It is a bit odd on your Youtube video, the first frame appears half way between two A229 frames, but then subsequent frames are in time with the A229 frames, presumably an inaccurate timestamp on the first frame, don't know if that will have come from the original video or got introduced in the editing. Doesn't really matter.