Yi Mini Dash Camera not recording video

Problem

I use a Yi Mini Dash Camera in my car, that is supposed to record video all the time the car is being driven. I knew it was working fine a couple of months ago, when I had viewed its recorded videos using its Android app. But when I tried the same today, I saw that no videos had been recorded in over a month!

Solution

I first suspected that the storage on the SD card had run out. Even if the storage is about to run out, the camera is supposed to keep going by deleting the oldest videos. In any case, I took out the SD card and analysed it on my computer. It was indeed out of space and I deleted all the files. But, even after putting back this empty SD card, the camera would still not record videos.

And then on closer inspection, I found that the camera’s tiny display was showing this message:

To optimized the performance of the memory card,
it is recommended that format the SD card.

Since this camera is designed to be discreet, it’s display is not easily visible and I must have been missing this error message for a month!

In any case, I think they should have designed the camera to indicate the error using a loud audio beeping of some sort. After all, if the formatting is required and it is not recording anything, it should indicate that in every way possible. Another minor quibble is that the message only says that it is recommended to format, while in reality the camera will not proceed unless the formatting is done.

Anyway, I pressed its power button to agree to a format and it did that. The same operation can also be done from its Android app.

After the SD card format, the camera began recording normally again.