A129 Connectivity Observations

BigBillSD

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Oct 13, 2021
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It was very difficult to get useful information on the A129's connectivity options and configuration prior to purchasing one.


I bought one, and was stunned to figure out how its implemented.


There is no Bluetooth, which would is how electronics have connected around the world for a long time now. My A129, appears to only have WiFi and for some strange reason, its implemented in Station Mode, meaning the A129 "cannot" connect to hotspots or WiFi that almost everyone has now, lots of new cars come with a WiFi AP in the car to connect to the Internet from your tablet/phone/laptop. This really seems like the developers were not up to speed with respect to industry norms.


What Viofo has done is made the A129 an Access Point. So you configure your phone to connect to it as an access point, not something with access to the internet that you usually want/need. I have not seen any WiFi implementations on a phone/Tablet/Laptop that allow more than one WiFi connection at a time so you could access the Dashcam and the internet at the same time allowing uploading your video to something in the cloud without re-configuring you device again. I know my phone and laptops (Apple) have almost no extra storage on board due to Apples exorbitant storage cost model.


Having been a network engineer for a huge multinational for the last 25 years I have an idea how this should/could have been implemented. Our devices would have implemented Bluetooth to allow device configuration from you phone or laptops. Probably also using the same for downloading of the videos. We would have configured WiFi so you could connect to an access point with Internet Access. Which would also allow a DVR to use RTSP to record video to a larger storage device. 256GB seems pretty small on the non Pro version I have, I wonder how many hours of 4K video could be stored before it gets over written on the Pro version.
 

VIOFO-Support

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Hello,

The Bluetooth technologies that can be used on a dashcam are different from those on a PC. So we didn't add this function to the dashcam. We made the Wi-Fi station mode to help people monitor their vehicles at home.

We do have plans to achieve a Wi-Fi internet connection in the future. But it won't be realized shortly as this involves some business things. Expect your understanding!

To calculate the hours, it is essential to know the bitrate you use. I recommend this link that can help to know the recording hour of your A129 Duo. Please remember to turn on loop recording that can avoid the dashcam stops recording owing to the not overwrittened files.
 

BigBillSD

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Oct 13, 2021
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I use BT on my phones and tablets to connect to all sorts of things on my motorhome. A BT leveling system from LevelMate Pro a BT Battery Monitoring system from Victron Energy, a Tank Monitoring system from Garnet Technologies, a tempature monitoring system. 3 different Victron Energy solar controllers, all of which my phone and tablet can configure each controller via BT or update firmware via BT, also look at real time or over a time frame of energy levels. Not sure why you mention a PC's BT connection? Do you even have an app that runs on a pc to look at the A129? I only see them for Android and iPhones/iPads. Bluetooth was the real way to impliment phone connectivity. PC's would use WiFi primarily. Your response is somewhat confusing. -Bill
 

VIOFO-Support

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Sorry for the confusion caused by my bad English expression. Using Bluetooth on a dashcam would limit some functions of the dashcam. We don't plan to apply it to the product at present. Expect your understanding!
 
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