Dashmellow
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2013
- Messages
- 18,377
- Reaction score
- 19,007
- Location
- Uncanny Valley (●_●)
- Country
- United States
- Dash Cam
- Umpteen
I really like the GT680W I bought a few months ago now that it is working well. It started out with some issues and glitches that were resolved when I updated the firmware to v2.7G and since then I've been impressed with how well this little cam functions, how well it seems to be made and the value it provides considering what it cost. It is my first GPS camera and I love the functionality it adds to the dash cam experience. It makes a good companion to the Mobius I'm currently running as a rear cam.
The one major concern with the camera, as most are aware, is the tiny anemic 110mAh battery it comes with. Unfortunately, in order to make the camera so small and so thin the designers decided to make this compromise. I think I would have been happier with a thicker camera with the same height and width dimensions and a bigger battery but we've got what they've given us. Then again, as we know, Li-Po batteries are a problem in dash cams no matter what size they are.
Another concern for me is that I bought this camera just before the release of the all black version with no logos and I really dislike how all the white lettering draws attention to the device when mounted in the windshield. Even though the all black - no logo version is a huge improvement, to my mind the glossy black plastic around the lens and sides and the silver buttons are still a big problem.
So, I decided I would try to modify the GT680W to address these two major complaints. The first order of business was to replace the battery with a super-capacitor and the second part of the plan was to “stealthify” the camera with an all flat black finish. Of course, there were two challenges to overcome. There is no room inside the shell for even the smallest available super-capacitors and the camera is coated with a silicone rubber finish that doesn't hold paint very well.
Shopping around I discovered that it is very difficult to find very small super-capacitors with the required capacity but I finally found a supplier who sells 2.7 volt 10F units that measure 20mm long x 12.5mm wide. I knew going into this project that the only way to run the GT680W with super-capacitors was to “Think Outside The Box”.....literally! My first plan was to simply glue the capacitors to the front of the camera and wire them to the board inside. After that I was going to simply paint the whole camera, capacitors and all, but not long after I started working on this idea I abandoned this approach as being unworkable for several reasons, mostly having to do with the size and shape of the capacitors being just a little to big to fit the front of the camera and the fact that the whole thing would have looked really ugly.
Of course, before I could proceed here the one big question that needed to be answered was whether or not the GT680W would even work with super-capacitors. So, I fabricated two caps into a 5V/20F “cell” as seen in the photos using some fine wire, heat shrink tubing, electrical tape and a thin piece of copper and connected it to the camera's circuit board to see what would happen. At first nothing happened at all when I switched on the camera but happily I quickly realized that I was just being too impatient. I found that I needed to wait for at least a good seven minutes or so until the capacitors charged up to their rated capacity for the first time. So now I tried it again and this time the camera worked great! It locks GPS, it holds the date and time when switched off and it saves the last file after the power supply is removed. I was in business!
So after some head scratching I finally decided the best location for the capacitors would be away from the camera - on the back of the mount itself, attached with Dual-Lok tape so the capacitors are quite secure but the camera can still be removed from the mount. This has proved to be a viable and more elegant solution than gluing the caps to the front of the camera. And since I have no use for the LED emitter included on this camera I removed the small oval diffusion lens on the front of the case which provided for easy access to wire the super-caps to the circuit board without having to modify or drill the shell in any way. The little LED lens is simply attached with two small screws and is therefore very easy to remove.
OK, so now the problem of applying a flat black finish. The GT680W is coated with a flat black rubberized silicone coating that has a colored enamel logo and white lettering applied. This type of rubberized coating is very difficult to paint because it will not allow any finish that is applied to it to adhere well. When I first got this camera I tried various solvents to see if I could remove just the logos but nothing really worked as I'd hoped so I knew I would need to paint the whole camera if I wanted it all black. Of course, I knew already that this might be impossible because it is coated with that rubberized silicone, so I used pure acetone solvent to dissolve and completely remove the rubber coating from the front shell piece down to the plastic surface. This is a messy job, not for the faint of heart as it takes a fair amount of rubbing with acetone and as you expose the plastic below the rubberized coating the surface of shell itself will begin to melt! One needs to be very careful or you could ruin the casing. Nevertheless, I was able to remove the rubber coating with the shell not looking too worse for wear but it did end up with some subtle ripples and an ugly “embossed” fingerprint that had to be dealt with.
The next step was to sand down the case with very fine emory cloth to clean up the mess I'd made of everything with the acetone. Once the case was smooth again I used #00000 grade steel wool to polish away any sanding scratches and swirls before painting. Once that was done, I blew off all the dust with compressed air and then wiped it down well with denatured alcohol and let it dry before applying the black paint....two coats. In addition, I also masked off the exposed camera circuit board and ports so I could paint the shiny black plastic sides of the camera itself along with those silver buttons. I used Rust-Oleum Ultra-Flat Specialty Camouflage paint which is the most durable, most non-reflective flat black paint I have found. This paint will dry to the touch in 20 minutes and will fully dry in 24 hours on most surfaces but when applied to plastic they recommend waiting 5-7 days for maximum adhesion and durability. Excellent stuff for this purpose.
So, for now I plan to install the GT680 full time as my front camera with one of my Mobius cams in the rear. For the first time in my several years of using dash cams both of my units will be running on super-capacitors and I no longer have to worry about battery related issues, especially now that the warm weather is on the way........and the GT680W is much more stealthy than it started out!
The case wasn't completely snapped back together in this early photo.
The one major concern with the camera, as most are aware, is the tiny anemic 110mAh battery it comes with. Unfortunately, in order to make the camera so small and so thin the designers decided to make this compromise. I think I would have been happier with a thicker camera with the same height and width dimensions and a bigger battery but we've got what they've given us. Then again, as we know, Li-Po batteries are a problem in dash cams no matter what size they are.
Another concern for me is that I bought this camera just before the release of the all black version with no logos and I really dislike how all the white lettering draws attention to the device when mounted in the windshield. Even though the all black - no logo version is a huge improvement, to my mind the glossy black plastic around the lens and sides and the silver buttons are still a big problem.
So, I decided I would try to modify the GT680W to address these two major complaints. The first order of business was to replace the battery with a super-capacitor and the second part of the plan was to “stealthify” the camera with an all flat black finish. Of course, there were two challenges to overcome. There is no room inside the shell for even the smallest available super-capacitors and the camera is coated with a silicone rubber finish that doesn't hold paint very well.
Shopping around I discovered that it is very difficult to find very small super-capacitors with the required capacity but I finally found a supplier who sells 2.7 volt 10F units that measure 20mm long x 12.5mm wide. I knew going into this project that the only way to run the GT680W with super-capacitors was to “Think Outside The Box”.....literally! My first plan was to simply glue the capacitors to the front of the camera and wire them to the board inside. After that I was going to simply paint the whole camera, capacitors and all, but not long after I started working on this idea I abandoned this approach as being unworkable for several reasons, mostly having to do with the size and shape of the capacitors being just a little to big to fit the front of the camera and the fact that the whole thing would have looked really ugly.
Of course, before I could proceed here the one big question that needed to be answered was whether or not the GT680W would even work with super-capacitors. So, I fabricated two caps into a 5V/20F “cell” as seen in the photos using some fine wire, heat shrink tubing, electrical tape and a thin piece of copper and connected it to the camera's circuit board to see what would happen. At first nothing happened at all when I switched on the camera but happily I quickly realized that I was just being too impatient. I found that I needed to wait for at least a good seven minutes or so until the capacitors charged up to their rated capacity for the first time. So now I tried it again and this time the camera worked great! It locks GPS, it holds the date and time when switched off and it saves the last file after the power supply is removed. I was in business!
So after some head scratching I finally decided the best location for the capacitors would be away from the camera - on the back of the mount itself, attached with Dual-Lok tape so the capacitors are quite secure but the camera can still be removed from the mount. This has proved to be a viable and more elegant solution than gluing the caps to the front of the camera. And since I have no use for the LED emitter included on this camera I removed the small oval diffusion lens on the front of the case which provided for easy access to wire the super-caps to the circuit board without having to modify or drill the shell in any way. The little LED lens is simply attached with two small screws and is therefore very easy to remove.
OK, so now the problem of applying a flat black finish. The GT680W is coated with a flat black rubberized silicone coating that has a colored enamel logo and white lettering applied. This type of rubberized coating is very difficult to paint because it will not allow any finish that is applied to it to adhere well. When I first got this camera I tried various solvents to see if I could remove just the logos but nothing really worked as I'd hoped so I knew I would need to paint the whole camera if I wanted it all black. Of course, I knew already that this might be impossible because it is coated with that rubberized silicone, so I used pure acetone solvent to dissolve and completely remove the rubber coating from the front shell piece down to the plastic surface. This is a messy job, not for the faint of heart as it takes a fair amount of rubbing with acetone and as you expose the plastic below the rubberized coating the surface of shell itself will begin to melt! One needs to be very careful or you could ruin the casing. Nevertheless, I was able to remove the rubber coating with the shell not looking too worse for wear but it did end up with some subtle ripples and an ugly “embossed” fingerprint that had to be dealt with.
The next step was to sand down the case with very fine emory cloth to clean up the mess I'd made of everything with the acetone. Once the case was smooth again I used #00000 grade steel wool to polish away any sanding scratches and swirls before painting. Once that was done, I blew off all the dust with compressed air and then wiped it down well with denatured alcohol and let it dry before applying the black paint....two coats. In addition, I also masked off the exposed camera circuit board and ports so I could paint the shiny black plastic sides of the camera itself along with those silver buttons. I used Rust-Oleum Ultra-Flat Specialty Camouflage paint which is the most durable, most non-reflective flat black paint I have found. This paint will dry to the touch in 20 minutes and will fully dry in 24 hours on most surfaces but when applied to plastic they recommend waiting 5-7 days for maximum adhesion and durability. Excellent stuff for this purpose.
So, for now I plan to install the GT680 full time as my front camera with one of my Mobius cams in the rear. For the first time in my several years of using dash cams both of my units will be running on super-capacitors and I no longer have to worry about battery related issues, especially now that the warm weather is on the way........and the GT680W is much more stealthy than it started out!
The case wasn't completely snapped back together in this early photo.
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