Somebody had problems with Liquid Image cameras?

[Shirou]

I'm having some problems with my Liq Ego 727 camera, on my last trip I tought it ran out of battery because the camera just got 8 minutes of video on an almost empty 8GB C4 card. Last week I went out riding and the camera again, stopped after 15 minutes, it was out of sight so I didn't notice the dead camera until I got home and started watching the footage.
Today I tried to capture my commute driving my dad's truck and the camera again, died after 20 minutes just when I got back home, it beeped 3 times and turned itself off. It had a full battery.
So I decided to test it, I inserted an empty 32GB C10 card on the camera, threw it outside and left it recording, to find out, after 10~20 minutes that the camera was off again. After that, I tried to record again and the same thing happens. Just works for a few minutes and turns itself off.

Any of you have this camera? What are your experiences with it? I think it's pretty useless if you cannot keep it rolling more than 20 minutes. Also it's not a proper camera to motovlog because of the lack of external mic but it seemed pretty nice and compact to capture multiangle video.
I'll be bummed if the camera is crappy because I got 2 of them, the other one is sitting unopened on the shelf because of the lack of a memory card for it. I tought about giving them to my friends when we go ride our dirtbikes to the trails to the mountains and getting a video from each rider.

 

[XXX526]

A good friend of mine has one, and in fact I've been playing with it (the camera) a little this past week. Agree, the lack of an external mic is a hassle, but you can make do with a recorder. The CMOS isn't up to GoPro quality, then again not many are. It does make for a nice chin-bar mount camera, that's how I've been using it. Unfortunately, I have not been in a very good video-making mood all summer and thus have not put anything up (part lazy/part depressed). :lol:

Anyhow, he's had this camera all spring/summer/fall and no issues at all. I actually like it, overall, but as I mentioned, you'll need a recorder for voice.

 

[Shirou]

You can mod the camera to add an external mic but you'll lose USB connectivity. The camera will charge from USB but no data connection will be made if used with a computer. Not that somebody uses it over USB anyways. Reading the card directly on the computer is faster.
It bothers me that the camera runs so hot whenever it's being used (45°C) and some reviews say it records up to 30 minutes then stops, others say it'll record 30 minutes and then the camera automatically starts recording another 30 minute segment.
I have this camera for a while now but never used it with a big memory card, that's why I never noticed that it stops after 30 minutes which is kinda pointless. I like my cameras to roll until they run out of card, there's no point in stopping each 30 minutes. That will mean cheching every once in a while if the camera is still recording on longer rides and if you forget you can miss key moments.
The exact same thing happens with my crappy JVC pocket camera which uses, no surprise here, the same Ambarella chip as the liq camera.

 

[Shirou]

Alright, the camera kept overheating so I opened it up.
What a piece of crap!
It has a heatsink that isn't even in contact with the video processor. It has poor thermal performance, the processor gets up to 46°C when working, all that heat is put in direct contact with the battery.
Totally a piece of sh*t, I don't recommend anyone to buy this camera.
Will rant about it on some video coming up.

 

[Shirou]

Who was the f***ing genius who did this?
Everyone here has a PC right? You know what the PC does when you don't get the CPU to contact the heatsink? It shuts off mid-work or overheats and dies. That's exactly what's happening with this camera.

The heatsink, blue part here, has a little blob of thermal compound and it isn't even touching the video processor, that's the part that gets hot inside the camera. It has another little heatsink on the other side with the same stuff, blob of TIM and no actual thermal contact with the heatsink.

This camera SUCKS!, no surprise why nobody bought it.

 

[ham]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Shirou]

This camera is the gopro's little sister, even the disassembling tools for gopro firmware works with the Liq firmware.
And it runs linux.

Oh, crap!, the history of my life repeats. Stupid camera go away!, I don't want to get into electronics again!
>Computer / ee nerd
>Get pissed with computers
>Try to get away from them
>Buy a bike
>Try new things
>Do a motovlog
>Success!
>Wild faulty camera appears
>Start hacking again
Dammit!