Vantrue E1 Pro S User Manual & Troubleshooting Guide

Vantrue E1 Pro S acting up? Lost the booklet? No stress.

The E1 Pro S packs a punch with a 4K Sony STARVIS 2 sensor into a body small enough to hide behind the mirror, but that tiny 1.54" screen means a lot of settings are buried a few menus deep. Below you'll find the official manual, a cheat sheet for the buttons and lights, a plain English rundown of all six parking modes, and the handful of settings you need to change for Australian roads.

Don't have one yet? The Vantrue E1 Pro S dash cam is available from The Dash Cam Guys team. Coming from the original E1 Pro? Its guide is here: Vantrue E1 Pro user manual and troubleshooting guide.

Quick Setup for Australian Roads

The E1 Pro S ships set up for the Chinese market. Change these five things before your first drive or your footage timestamps will be wrong, which is the last thing you want when it ends up in front of an insurer.

Setting	Factory Default	Change It To
Time Zone Advanced Settings > Time & Date	GMT+08:00 Beijing	Your local zone, e.g. GMT+10:00 for Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane. See the daylight saving note below.
Date Format	YY/MM/DD	DD/MM/YY
Speed Unit Advanced Settings > GPS Settings	Check yours	KMH
Frequency	Check yours	50 Hz (stops LED street lights and signs flickering in your footage)
Number Plate	Off	Optional. Stamps your rego on every clip, handy if you run cameras in more than one car.

Daylight saving: the ST/WT Auto Switch only works in the US and Europe, and the manual warns that turning it on elsewhere can throw the clock out. Leave it off. The easiest fix is to connect the Vantrue App over Wi-Fi with Automatic Time Sync on (it's on by default), which pulls the time zone from your phone. Otherwise, bump the time zone forward an hour in October and back again in April. Queensland, WA and the NT can set it once and forget it.

For the rest of the menu, our dash cam settings guide for Australian conditions has the values we'd start with.

Buttons, Lights and Screen Messages

Four buttons do all the work, and each one does something different on a short press versus a long press. Here's the cheat sheet.

Button	Short Press (while recording)	Long Press
Orange Power / Event button	Locks the current clip and takes a photo. Press again for more photos.	Turns the camera on or off
OK button	Stops recording and goes to standby. Confirms in menus, plays/pauses in playback.	Turns the screen off (keeps recording)
Down / Mic button	Mic on or off. Next option in menus.	Jumps straight into Parking Mode
Menu / Wi-Fi button	Opens the menu (from standby, so press OK first)	Wi-Fi on or off

What You See	What It Means	The Fix
Green light, flashing	Recording	All good, drive on.
Green light, steady	Standby, NOT recording	Short press OK to start recording. If it keeps dropping back to standby, check the card.
"Card Error" or "Please Format the SD Card"	The camera can't write to the card and may stop recording	Format it in the camera (System Setup > Format). If it comes back, the card is too slow or worn out.
"Card Full!"	Loop Recording has been switched off	Turn Loop Recording back on (Basic Settings > Loop Recording) so old clips get overwritten.
GPS icon animating	Still searching for satellites	Normally locks within a minute. Check the GPS mount is seated properly and you're not in a car park or tunnel.
"Device Not Found" in the app	Your phone is on a different Wi-Fi network to the model you picked	Join the E1ProS_VANTRUE_XXXX network, then pick E1 PRO S in the app.
Shield icon on screen	Privacy Mode is on	Clips are being kept short-term and auto-deleted. Turn it off in Basic Settings if footage is going missing.

The Six Parking Modes, Explained

This is where the E1 Pro S earns its keep, and also where most of the questions come from. Here's what each mode actually does and where the files end up.

Mode	How It Records	Best For
AOV Collision Detection	Screen off, low power. A bump locks the 30 second clip it lands in, plus the clip before or after if the hit falls near the edge. Files end in E.	Long stays where you want event footage without flattening the battery
AOV Time Lapse	Records non-stop at 1 frame per second (or 1 per 2 seconds). Files end in T. Bumps do NOT lock clips in this mode.	Seeing everything that happened around the car, start to finish
Collision Detection	Sleeps until it feels a hit, then records 30 seconds. Files end in E.	Hot summer days (see the heat note below)
Motion Detection	Triggers when it spots a person. Saves 36 seconds: 6 before plus 30 after. Files end in P.	Driveways and quiet streets
Low Bitrate	Continuous at 1080P or 720P, 15fps, in 3 minute clips. Files end in P.	Real-time footage while using less card space
Low Frame Rate	Continuous at 1, 5 (default), 10 or 15fps, in 1 minute clips. Files end in P.	Squeezing as many hours as possible onto the card

How it knows you've parked

Under Basic Settings > Parking Monitor Settings > Entry/Exit Mode you get four choices. Auto (the default) uses the ACC wire if your hardwire kit has one, switching to Parking Mode when the ignition goes off and back again when it comes on. Without ACC it waits for 5 minutes of no movement, then exits after two bumps in a row. ACC and G-Sensor force one method or the other, and Manual means you long press the Down button to go in and press any button to come out.

If parking mode won't kick in with a hardwire kit connected, switch to G-Sensor mode. That usually points to the ACC wire being on a fuse that stays live, and which fuse to tap for a dash cam walks through finding the right one. Newer car with no switched fuse at all? Read why parking mode fails when there's no ACC fuse.

Two more settings live in the same menu. ACC Delay (30 seconds, 1, 3 or 5 minutes) sets how long it waits after you switch off. Parking Mode Duration is Unlimited by default, with options from 2 hours up to 96. Unlimited is fine with a hardwire kit that has a low voltage cut-off, but on its own it can leave you with a flat battery after a long weekend away.

Want the full picture on why the low power modes matter? Have a read of low power parking mode explained.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What memory card does it need?
Anything from 32GB to 1TB, rated U3 (Vantrue also lists A2), formatted FAT32. Format it in the camera, not with Quick Format on a computer, and do it about once a month. There's a Format Reminder in Advanced Settings that will nag you every 15 days or month if you tend to forget. Our Vantrue SD card guide shows how many hours each size holds, or grab a Vantrue 256GB High Endurance card.

2. Why are some of my clips missing?
Normal driving clips get 70% of the card and event clips get 30%. When either share fills up, the oldest files are overwritten. Back up anything important as soon as you can. Also check Privacy Mode is off, because it's designed to keep only the last few clips and can auto-delete them after a set number of days.

3. There's a short clip ending in "B" every time I start the car. What is it?
That's TurboBoot. The camera starts recording about 1.2 seconds after power on, before the screen has even woken up, and saves a 15 second clip at default settings. Your own resolution and settings take over once it's fully booted. If you'd rather not have it, switch Power-on Settings to Standard Mode.

4. My CarPlay drops out when I use the Vantrue App.
The camera and wireless CarPlay or Android Auto both want your phone's Wi-Fi, so you can't run both at once. Change settings or download clips while parked, then disconnect from the camera so CarPlay can reconnect. Get the Vantrue App for iOS or Android.

5. I changed the Wi-Fi password and forgot it.
Restore factory settings (Basic Settings > Default Setting) and it goes back to 12345678. That wipes your other settings too, so redo the Australian setup above afterwards. When you do set a new password, forget the old network on your phone before reconnecting.

6. Should I leave PlatePix on?
PlatePix sharpens number plates in glare and at night, but it darkens the whole picture a little. Vantrue suggests off during the day and on at night, and the PlatePix Timer in Advanced Settings will do the switching for you. The timer only works with HDR on, which it is by default. More on how it works in what is Vantrue PlatePix.

7. Will it survive an Aussie summer?
It's rated to run between -20°C and 60°C. A car baking in the sun can get past that, so Vantrue recommends Collision Detection for parking on hot days, and turning the camera off if the cabin hits 60°C. Using the included electrostatic sticker and keeping the camera tucked behind the mirror helps too.

8. Can I use voice commands?
Yes, in English. Say "Lock the Video" to save the current clip and take a photo, or "Take Photo" for a still. The full list is under Basic Settings > Voice Content, and you can turn the sensitivity down if it's picking up the radio.

9. Time lapse and parking mode won't both turn on.
That's by design. Turning one on switches the other off. Time Lapse also stops the camera locking event clips while it's running, so only photos are saved when you press the event button.

How to Update the Firmware

The E1 Pro S updates over the air through the Vantrue App. There's no file to download to a computer.

1. Keep the camera powered the whole way through. If it's on the cigarette lighter, leave the car running or do it at home with a 5V wall adapter.
2. Connect your phone to the camera's Wi-Fi and open the Vantrue App. When new firmware is out, a pop-up appears.
3. Confirm, then tap Download. The app needs internet for this step, so it may use mobile data.
4. Tap Transfer to the dashcam and don't touch the app or camera while the progress bar runs.
5. Once it says the transfer was successful, the camera restarts and installs the update. Don't cut the power until it's back up and recording.

After any update: check your time zone, parking mode and G-Sensor settings are still how you left them.

Installing Your E1 Pro S

Stick the electrostatic sticker on the glass first and give it 24 hours before mounting the camera. Power it up and check the live view before you commit to a spot. The GPS mount carries the power, so the cable plugs into the mount rather than the camera.

Placement, cable routing and keeping clear of curtain airbags are all covered in our DIY dash cam installation guide. Wiring it into the fuse box for parking mode is in how to hardwire a dash cam in Australia. If you'd rather not do it yourself, you can find a local installer.

Official User Manual

Here's the full PDF straight from Vantrue. It covers every menu setting, the screen icons and the installation steps.