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Parking in hot sun puts front camera out of focus

Rick Johnson

March 23, 2017 04:29

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As the temperatures climb here in Arizona, I've noticed that the video captured by a hot camera becomes severely front-focused and that it takes a good 5-10 minutes of cool-down in air-conditioning or out of sunlight for the main camera before focus returns toward infinity. The back camera seems unaffected.

Is this a characteristic of the DR650 series cameras? I've noticed spontaneous reboots when the camera is hot as well.

Here's a still example of parking mode after sitting in the sun for about 2 hours. The dash is sharp, but the cars in the distances are not. Normally, the distant objects are more in focus.

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6 comments

• 1
  
  MC May 19, 2017 21:18

  Same problem here!
  I've had the camera since july 2016, and used it approx. 7-8 hours non-stop 5 days a week, and it's only within the last week this problem occurred.
  It's quite fine in the morning but then gets worse as the temps rises.
  
  See the images attached.
  
  

  

  

  

  
  
  
  
  I've now tried re-adjusting the lens itself like in this video linked below, and it sharpened the image like new.
  https://youtu.be/lJpuPYFkjRI

  I will post some results tomorrow after I've tried to see how it acts through the day.

• 0
  
  MC June 23, 2017 20:29

  Sadly it wasn't holding up the focus. It ended up getting blurry when it was cold and then getting sharper and sharper as it got hotter. So the symptoms was just reversed. I might had loosen the lens too much (unscrewed it too much), but either way it would change when getting hot, so it wasn't going to help no matter which position it would be in, as it would change anyway when getting hot. - I got a refund from the seller anyway, and instead bought the new DR650S-2CH.
  BUT it did the exact same thing, from the first use, and my old DR650GW-2CH only started doing it after about 11 months!
  
  I don't know if it have anything to do with the microSD card I'm using, so the camera will run hotter than usual. It's a 64GB Transcend High Endurance (TS64GUSDXC10V) exactly made for dashcams, surveillance etc., and I bought it late july 2016 and have been using it ever since. It is still working without any errors etc. but I don't know if that is causing the front camera running hotter. I got a refund for the new DR650S-2CH and have bought another DR650S-2CH.
  
  I'm now on my 2nd DR650S-2CH (received it yesterday, but temps outside haven't been high enough to test whether it will expand the lens and therefore change the distance to the CMOS sensor or not (It must be the problem)). I'm using the 16GB BlackVue card that came with it (but it's a pain in the ass with only 16GB ~2hrs of recording when I have been using 64GB that gives ~8 hrs of recording. So it's all standard. If it's being normal even when temps outside is high and sunny, then I will try running it with the 64GB Transcend card. Then I'll know what is causing it.
  
  Below is some images from the 1st DR650S-2CH I got (after the DR650GW-2CH):
  
  
  10:06 (car is just parked, turned off, and went into parking mode)
  
  
  
  10:26 (started to decrease the focus length)
  
  
  10:48: (focus is at the dashboard only)
  
  
  10:53: (I started the car and turned on the air condition set to maximum)
  
  
  
  10:59: (air condition have been running at maximum since 10:53, and focus is back to normal again)
  
  
  Pay attention to all the clouds since I parked the car, so it wasn't even FULL SUN conditions and the outside temps were about 23* Celsius.
  
  
  
  And here, another example, a day it was about the same temperature, but felt a lot hotter because of the almost all blue sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I will report back when I have tested the newly installed 2nd DR650S-2CH and see if its related to the microSD card or not.

• 0
  
  Rick Johnson June 23, 2017 20:53

  I'm using the same 64GB Transcend High Endurance card. Despite that, I'm in the hot Phoenix Arizona USA desert where we've recently seen outside temperatures at 49°C (and car interior temps even hotter). Leaving WiFi on causes the unit to run even hotter. Thus, even if the card was cooler, other factors cause my unit to be out of focus when in direct sun.

• 1
  
  MC June 23, 2017 21:51

  I've disabled the WiFi in parking mode when it's sunny. So there's not any difference if you're using the BlackVue card and have disabled WiFi?

  Which other factors cause it to you then?

• 0
  
  MC December 15, 2017 22:08

  The new DR650S-2CH didn't have any problems with focus, but time will tell. Maybe in the next summer it will.
  
  I see that the new DR750S also have this problem, but people were able to fix their's. I tried that to my DR650GW, but then it was out of focus when cold and got sharper while getting hotter instead of sharp when cold and out of focus when hot. That was a pain in the ass.

• 0
  
  Heath Underwood April 09, 2018 11:16

  My DR650S-2CH won't focus at all.  Day or Night!  So pretty sure it's heat related