As you can read in my WR1 failure thread, my WR1 has been having issues and recently has not been recording for the past 4 days even though I get the 3 beeps at power up and 1 beep at power down, indicating normal operation. The WR1 has a (fake) warning feature that makes the dash cam beep twice every second if it is not recording. Unfortunately, due to the lazy amateur design engineers, this fake feature was designed into the microcontroller so if the microcontroller stops working, freezes, runs away, or dies, so does the warning feature indicating the dashcam is not recording.
A first year electronics engineering student learns in the first three months that a watchdog timer is designed as a separate circuit requiring an edge triggered signal from the microprocessor to reset the timer before it times out. If it doesn't get the reset signal before the watchdog timer times out, the time out event happens, in this case beeping twice every second to indicate a problem with recording.
Edge triggering prevents a reset signal line that is stuck high or low from keeping the watchdog timer in a reset condition which would prevent a time out condition if the microprocessor freezes, runs away, or crashes.
Unfortunately due to laziness by VIOFO amateur engineers, they designed the watchdog warning circuit as part of the microcontroller so if the microcontroller fails, crashes, or freezes, so does the watchdog timer and you get no indication there is a problem. This makes the feature fake and completely useless.
VIFO should be ashamed of this product but even more so of their engineers.
A first year electronics engineering student learns in the first three months that a watchdog timer is designed as a separate circuit requiring an edge triggered signal from the microprocessor to reset the timer before it times out. If it doesn't get the reset signal before the watchdog timer times out, the time out event happens, in this case beeping twice every second to indicate a problem with recording.
Edge triggering prevents a reset signal line that is stuck high or low from keeping the watchdog timer in a reset condition which would prevent a time out condition if the microprocessor freezes, runs away, or crashes.
Unfortunately due to laziness by VIOFO amateur engineers, they designed the watchdog warning circuit as part of the microcontroller so if the microcontroller fails, crashes, or freezes, so does the watchdog timer and you get no indication there is a problem. This makes the feature fake and completely useless.
VIFO should be ashamed of this product but even more so of their engineers.
