VIOFO T130 Review

I had the same problem before I realized that the IR LEDs also have a protective film that needs to be removed.
Regarding turning on and off of the IR LEDs.
 
rcg530 said:
I revised my previous post to note that rotating the interior camera downward stopped the 6 second repeating reset cycle. Thanks again!
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You are welcome.

Making corrections in your article on my advice will help people who think it's a problem to know why they are in this cycle.
Upon my experience and detection regarding the exposure you mentioned, IR cameras experience exposure confusion when they come into contact with surfaces up to about 30 centimeters.
 
Last night, I spent some time in my car connected to the T130 over Wi-Fi for get the live view of the interior camera to test out a variety of adjustments to the aiming of the interior camera. I was able to get the interior camera aimed slightly downward so the upper edge of the view range did not include the headliner / end of the passenger side sun visor. That eliminated the 6 second cycling of the IR LEDs. Tonight, I was able to get a test drive completed with the interior camera IR LEDs behaving correctly.

After I completed tonight's test drive, I received an email from VIOFO support. I was provided an updated T130 firmware to test the IR LED "Auto" mode setting. I'll update my T130 tomorrow and test out the IR LED behavior in auto mode.
 
Dadi_T said:
I don't know why everbody looks for perfect weather to test a dashcam. Natural weather conditions involve bad weather too and a good dashcam should handle that too.
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When you do comparisons and weather is bad just a drop of rain, or some dirt, or fog in the front of just one camera will affect the comparison.
I saw comparisons where the windshield was not cleaned the same for both cameras.
It's not easy to make correct comparisons.

If you will look at the OP YouTube video where is a comparison between Viofo and BlackVue you will see that on the right part of the image the Viofo is looking better than BlackVue. This is just because the Blackvue is mounted in the center of the windshield and T130 on the right part.
 
Dadi_T said:
I don't know why everbody looks for perfect weather to test a dashcam. Natural weather conditions involve bad weather too and a good dashcam should handle that too.
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Another problem is that it is very difficult to judge the quality of a dashcam from bad weather video because it is impossible to know how dark it was. Halving the light level is almost impossible to judge, but it doubles the motion blur and makes the resulting video far worse, try a dashcam with twice the sensitivity but give it half the light and it won't look any better than the one with normal sensitivity but more light, yet it is a much better dashcam. So good conditions for testing are conditions where everyone knows how a dashcam should perform, full sunshine, city street lights in dry weather and full darkness on a country road. Anything else must have a side by side comparison with a dashcam of known performance.
 
If not in wet conditions and if the dashcams are mounted very close, a side by side comparison is always valid, no matter the moment of the day. More than that, in a cloudy day or at night you will see better which camera is better because when it is very sunny all dashcams are recording OK.
Any dashcam comparison which it is not a side by side comparison is a big fail.
 
Mtz said:
Any dashcam comparison which it is not a side by side comparison is a big fail.
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Making an absolute statement that if the dashcams not mounted next to each other it's a big fail, is not accounting for the reality of some of the situations a dashcam reviewer runs into in the real world.

I try to mount all of the dashcams I'm testing as close to each other as physically possible, so they're not blocking the line of sight (cameras and cables) of the other installed dashcam(s) , so they're not blocking any safety equipment of the vehicle and not blocking the driver's line of sight (for legal and safety reasons).

A 3-channel dashcam with the interior camera as part of the front camera unit also complicates the installation location selection puzzle. I could mount the T130 closer to center of the windshield where one of the other dashcams is located, but then the interior camera would have no line of sight of the interior of the vehicle. Installing a new dashcam for testing often means I have to remove all of the dashcams from the front windshield to find the best locations for all of the dashcams being used in the comparison.
 
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My T130 are mounted almost right in front of the driver, reason is on the dotted area in front of mirror i have 3 other cameras A139 among them, also with T130 installed there the interior camera would mostly see the back side of the mirror.
 
IR LED 6 Second Cycle During Testing of "Auto" Setting

I mentioned this issue in a previous post. I was able to adjust the interior camera downward to avoid having the sun visor / headliner at the top end of the interior camera's field of view and that prevented the 6 second repeating cycle (LEDs turn on causing image to go super bright for about 2 seconds, 2 seconds of LEDs on, 2 seconds of LEDs off). I did get an email from VIOFO support stating that the did have an updated firmware (not released yet) they wanted me to test.

The T130 test firmware version is VIOFO_T130_V1.1_1221. With this version of firmware installed, I recreated the interior camera's aiming setup that provoked the 6 second cycling of the IR LEDs and that behavior was no longer present. It would cause the image to brighten since a portion of the view area had the IR LED light being reflected back at the camera at close range. This seems like a much better and predictable manner for the IR LEDs to operate in "Auto" mode.

There is a somewhat long delay (around 60 seconds) between when the outside light level is reduced and when the IR LEDs will turn on and the interior camera switches to night (IR LED) mode. I had the interior lights of my garage on (all garage doors closed) and then I would turn off the interior garage lights with a remote. There is some light leakage at the edges of the garage doors behind my car and from the Android tablet I'm using for the live view from the camera. I've submitted my findings to VIOFO support via email and I provided them a link to the sample interior video files so they can see if this is normal or not.
 
rcg530 said:
Making an absolute statement that if the dashcams not mounted next to each other it's a big fail
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When I say side by side comparison I refer to the situation when both cameras are recording at the same time and not about exactly the same positon of the dashcam because this is impossible.
Some users have just one camera at some moment, they are recording with it at hour xx and then at hour xy they are recording again with the same camera with different settings or with another camera. Then they are putting side by side the images recorded at different times trying to make a comparison. Such comparison is not valid.

Also there are some side by side comparisons where the lens adjustment are not the same for both cameras, the horizon line is not at the same level on both cameras. Also these side by side comparisons are not OK. People can judge if the horizon level is the same when the comparison is containing the full frame of the videos and when the stacking is horizontal. Of course most of the people are doing vertical stacking comparison, this is not a big problem, people can measure if the horizon line is at the same level.

When doing comparisons at the same time between two cameras is recommended to allow more time for the horizon adjustment. I know from my experience that it is not easy but if somebody wants to create correct comparison should insist on this part.
For example there is a possibility to record with different levels of horizon for both cameras, the exposure is affected, then to crop the needed image for comparison. If exposure was affected because of different horizon line adjustment then that cropped comparisons are not OK.
 
This video contains sample nighttime footage from a VIOFO T130 3-channel dashcam.

 
rcg530 said:
This video contains sample nighttime footage from a VIOFO T130 3-channel dashcam.

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Why is there a dust storm inside the car? :unsure:

Interior image is very good on the T130, not many cameras can produce an IR image that is reasonably sharp.
Rear seems a little noisy on that T130, but it also seems rather sharper than the Blackvue, maybe a good tradeoff...
 
At the end of the video there is no dust. Maybe some window was opened?

I am curious about tests with CPL on T130 because in these videos I see too much brightness for T130 and this is affecting the image. No matter if BlackVue have CPL or not, I just want to see the difference because seems the Blackvue have better brightness adjustment.
 
Mtz said:
At the end of the video there is no dust. Maybe some window was opened?

I am curious about tests with CPL on T130 because in these videos I see too much brightness for T130 and this is affecting the image. No matter if BlackVue have CPL or not, I just want to see the difference because seems the Blackvue have better brightness adjustment.
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Yes, I think I would turn the EV down a step if I had that camera/firmware, but we don't know what the EV was set to...

Possibly that is the default setting, I think Viofo did choose to have the brightness a little high because that is what a lot of people consider good, even though it is not good for reading plates!
 
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Nigel said:
Why is there a dust storm inside the car? :unsure:

Interior image is very good on the T130, not many cameras can produce an IR image that is reasonably sharp.
Rear seems a little noisy on that T130, but it also seems rather sharper than the Blackvue, maybe a good tradeoff...
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I wanted to generated some interior footage with the new placement of the T130 on the front windshield to reduce the amount of IR reflections. Just so happens a windy storm was passing through the area along with the fact that my car is an ex-police patrol vehicle that always seems to have some amount of dust remaining in the seats/carpets no matter how many times I clean them.

VIOFO support has mentioned to me that they're working on an updated firmware for the rear camera that should help reduce "noise" in the rear camera's nighttime footage. The rear camera has firmware V1.0_0825 at the moment.

Mtz said:
I am curious about tests with CPL on T130 because in these videos I see too much brightness for T130 and this is affecting the image. No matter if BlackVue have CPL or not, I just want to see the difference because seems the Blackvue have better brightness adjustment.
Click to expand...

Most dashcam vendors recommend to not use the CPL filter at night. Although, I've found that certain CPL filters don't interfere with the brightness level too much (Blueskysea B4K is one example) but the BlackVue CPLs do tend to darken the footage quite a bit at night. I did make two test runs on 19-Dec-21 one with the T130 CPL installed and one without it installed. You can see the CPL footage has a slight brownish tint to it compared to the footage from the second trip on that route with the CPL removed. And yes, I did have the CPL alignment mark properly aligned with the mark on the T130 front camera.

t130_cpl_comparison.png

Here's screen shots from two different nights 19-Dec with CPL and 20-Dec without the CPL installed. Once again, the brightness level with the CPL installed is noticeable darker again with a brown tint, but without a great improvement of reading details in nearby objects. The CPL does reduce the reflection of the radio head unit display in the windshield.

t130_cpl_comparison_diff_nights.jpg

Nigel said:
Yes, I think I would turn the EV down a step if I had that camera/firmware, but we don't know what the EV was set to...

Possibly that is the default setting, I think Viofo did choose to have the brightness a little high because that is what a lot of people consider good, even though it is not good for reading plates!
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If I adjust any EV setting in a camera, I'll note it in the text overlay in the video. The EV values for the three cameras were all at the default 0.0 value.
 
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viofo said:
Thanks for all the feedback, please check the new testing firmware: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1n6cs5f_OZC4J9GPXCmznJrhwj1CJxsV5?usp=sharing
1. Reduced saturation for the front cam
2. Reduced noise for rear cam.
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Karagandinez said:
There is a newer firmware for the rear camera.
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threa...front-fhd-interior-fhd-rear.45303/post-557056
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Thanks for the link.

My T130 early production dashcam was shipped with V1.0_1027 (front) and V1.0_0825 (rear) firmware versions.

Those test firmware files were made available in early September 2021. I'm checking with the VIOFO support rep that reported to me that the rear V1.0_0825 firmware was the latest to see if the V1.0_0927 (I believe that is the test rear camera version number) is okay to use with the V1.0_1027 front camera firmware.
 
One screenshot shows the firmware versions that were installed on the T130 upon receipt. Another screenshot shows the firmware versions from the link that I gave above.
 

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Karagandinez said:
The latest version of the firmware for the front camera is on the Viofo site.
https://support.viofo.com/support/solutions/articles/19000131927-viofo-t130-dash-camera-firmware
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The V1.0_1027 for the front camera is the one that I have installed and it arrived with that version installed. VIOFO did provide me access to firmware V1.1_1221 for the front camera to test an IR LED logic change, but I have since reverted the firmware version back to the V1.0_1027 per VIOFO's suggestion after I provided my feedback on the IR LED logic change.
 
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