Aldi rear camera

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BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
Tried Camera today, with 32GB Samsung SD Card, in place of supplied 8GB Card. Did all of the formatting etc as previously discussed. Camera recorded for over 1 hour, no switching off. Interesting. We will see if this continues.
 

DRHysted

Guru
Location
New Forest
Lost my patience with this camera this morning. Yesterday going to work I put a blank 4gb sd card in and it shut down after 15 minutes with 2gb of space left. Coming home I put the 8gb freshly formatted and it worked all the way home 34 minutes. This morning after doing nothing it switched off after 20 minutes, coming home it lasted the whole journey time of 34 minutes.
This thing is unreliable and as such is not fit for purpose. I have just ordered a fly6.
I suppose this is a case of buy cheap buy twice.
 

Jeff-T

Regular
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
The Velcro strap mounting has been frustrating me, as on bumpy roads it seems to slide to an angle quite quickly. The Velcro seems to be wearing a bit too quickly as well, after just a couple of weeks.

I've been trying out different ways of attaching the light. I'm reluctant to cable tie it on, which would seem the sturdiest method. However, I did manage to adapt an old mudguard mounting, using a rubber o-ring band and part of the mudguard mounting that would have originally fitted on the seat stays. It seems to be more robust than the Velcro strip, but I'm not sure how long the o-ring will last being continually fastened and unfastened around the plastic retainer.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has come up with a different way of attaching the light securely.

maxtek-300x400.jpg
 

Adam4868

Guru
Id put a piece of rubber round first(old inner tube) then clamp on with 3/4 ties.

P.s im not responsible for any losses of camera !
 

InchPitch

Regular
Ive been very pleased with mine. As previous folks have said:
- 5 minute segments (of 500Mb-1Gb depending on content) in AVI format
- about 50 min on the supplied 8Gb card. (which is about 7,5Gb when formatted)
- yes it does loop, even though the Quesh website says it doesn't.
- Looking to carve up a piece of pipe insulation to put on seat stay (instead of seat post) so that the saddle bag is not in top of picture.
- I wrapped a bit of old inner tube around the seat post to help stop it rotating due to bumps.
- tilt it over and it beeps - not tried to see what happens in this mode yet.
- you must connect to a PC first off with the USB lead to charge it so that the CONFIG.TXT file (and instructions) are loaded onto the card (so you can change the time)
- nice bright light. Seems very little back scatter into the camera (hardly any in fact)
- After a 4 hour ride I still got 3 beeps (so battery seems plenty)
- I did try a larger card and found it switched itself off anywhere between 15 mins - 90 mins. Then I realised I was using a class 4 card. I suppose due to the high bandwidth of the video files it needs a good class 10 UHS1/U1 memory card at least or the internal buffer clogs up and it goes off.

It doesn't seem to be shown any more on the Aldi website - ??
 

Webbo

New Member
Hi I got one of these as a birthday present and am very happy with it. It does do loop recording. My commute is 70 mins and it overwrites about the first 5 mins automatically. I've replaced the 8gb card with a 32 but have problems not being able to play anything after about the first 10 gb, although this could be an issue with the SD card. Think the light modes are excellent and bright. You can have it on. Sort of confusing random flash that would get drivers attention. The quality is great although I agree with the strap issues, and it's hard to read number plates when their headlights re shining on you, I can generally take evasive action to things in front but can't do nothing if somebody bumps me from behind, already sent evidence to the police of a van beeping me and swearing when he wanted more room down the bus lane he shouldn't have been in. I do recommend this product bargain.
 

aegis

Senior Member
Thought I'd chip in with my experience with this.

I've been running it for a few weeks now and my commute is a rural 18km each way.

It does loop recording. Yes, the quesh website says it doesn't but it does. Pretty much take the Cycliq Fly6 manual and go off that. I've not found a feature that isn't on the Fly 6. ie. accident detection at 30deg, auto shutoff, loops etc.

If you've a slippy seatpost, coat the inside of the velcro strap with "Sock-Stop". It's like a liquid latex glue for making the bottom of your socks grippy - like Totes. Available from amazon. Also great for keeping your knee warmers up. Or just buy a rubberised strap. The Fly6 has a rubberised strap for this reason.

The rubber block attached to the light is not a wedge - it's flat so doesn't do anything to change the angle. Pull it off, stick the other wedge shaped rubber bit on to get the camera facing flat instead of up at the sky. The two do not stick together well.

I've had it switch off a few times. I don't think this is a feature of the card speed, formatting or anything like that. It's possible I guess if the filesystem is fragmented from repeated use. However, I reckon the motion detection feature is not detecting motion and switches the thing off. I presume it's a simple wobbly-spring switch and timer. I've not had it switch off if I occasionally hit a lumpy piece of road or just bunny hop every now and again to wobble the spring and reset the timer. If the "feature" could be configured to be switched off then that would solve the one problem for me. I don't need auto shut-off.

It happily takes 64GB cards as long as you format them FAT32. Cards greater than 32GB usually come formatted as ExFAT.

All the guff about it not working with Macs is guff. Works perfectly. Remember to Eject it properly and that when you delete files on a Mac they go to the trashcan. The files are still on the card until you empty the trash.

I'm waiting on a firmware update. I did some brief dissecting of the Cycliq Fly6 firmware (I'm a programmer). I'm interested to see how different it is to the Maxtek firmware. The chip in the Fly6 is a Novatek NT966xx series chip (according to the firmware) which supports h.264 mpeg4, 720p or 1080p scaled and not just the pretty rubbish Motion JPEG AVI format which eats space. I'm hoping they've left some tell-tale CONFIG.TXT settings in the binary such as being able to tweak the exposure/white point, select recording mode (720p h.264 please!) and a few other things which look to be present in both the hardware itself and in the Cycliq firmware.

The Novatek chip is very common in almost every cheap dashcam or action camera and the version used in the Fly6 or I suspect the same in the Maxtek is a good few years old now and obsolete. I'm not sure Cycliq should be that miffed with Aldi when the hardware is essentially an off the shelf Chinese dashcam design that sells for under £20 often. Perhaps there's more to it, but I suspect not.
 

Jeff-T

Regular
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
The Novatek chip is very common in almost every cheap dashcam or action camera and the version used in the Fly6 or I suspect the same in the Maxtek is a good few years old now and obsolete.

That's really interesting. I notice there is a firmware update, along with instructions, for the Fly6 - if it's the same chip does that mean the firmware update for the Fly6 could be applied to the Maxtek, or is it likely it would render the device useless?

Jeff.
 

InchPitch

Regular
Be nice to see a front version. Suppose I could just blank off the lights and stick it on a light bracket.
Anyone taken one apart yet ? Would be interested to know if the LEDs are red or white behind the plastic lens (I suspect red).
 

aegis

Senior Member
That's really interesting. I notice there is a firmware update, along with instructions, for the Fly6 - if it's the same chip does that mean the firmware update for the Fly6 could be applied to the Maxtek, or is it likely it would render the device useless?

Jeff.

I wouldn't risk it. There are differences eg. Fly6 is 720p, Maxtek is 1080p even though potentially the Fly6 chip *could* do 1080p but also they may be other things that are different. The Fly6 firmware has the Novatek chip listed in some of the strings in the firmware. I've not seen the Maxtek firmware yet to compare or taken the camera apart to look at the circuit board. Also so far failed to dump the firmware from the Maxtek.

I was hoping someone on the net had taken a Fly6 apart or already hacked the firmware but so far I've not found anything. The Novatek tools for managing the firmware don't recognise the Fly6 firmware file format either so prehaps there's something else more involved going on. Some of the Novatek based cameras also allow an 'engineering mode' that lets you tweak settings. Again though, I couldn't get that to work on the Maxtek. So, waiting on quesh.co.uk to release a firmware binary file and maybe more will be revealed then.
 

Adam4868

Guru
Ok im really no expert on these cameras,went out for ride early this morning.The camera was recording switched off once after about 8/10 miles.Turned back on and when i got home 2 half hours later it got the last hour ish of my ride ?So i guess it looped over the first part ?
 

Arjimlad

Tights of Cydonia
Location
South Glos
Ok im really no expert on these cameras,went out for ride early this morning.The camera was recording switched off once after about 8/10 miles.Turned back on and when i got home 2 half hours later it got the last hour ish of my ride ?So i guess it looped over the first part ?

How full was the memory card ? Sounds like it did loop, as you say.. 8GB is not all that big - the recording is in 500mb chunks for 5 mins so that'd be about right
 
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