Parking mode for 36 hours with side + rear coverage?

[TheDogfather]

I have a question about dash cam parking mode and whether it can be useful in my situation. I live in an apartment complex with underground parking. I have had two incidents where other vehicles hit my car while it was parked and one where it was vandalized while parked. I work from home and don’t use my car every day. It is common for the car to be parked for roughly 36 hours at a time. My commute is only about 20 minutes each way on the days when I do go in to work but I take some sporadic personal trips as well throughout the week. There are security cameras in the parking garage, but they primarily cover the entrances/exits and driveways. I don’t believe I am allowed to install a security camera in the complex’s garage. I’m wondering if I can set up a dash cam that will record the sides and rear of my car while it is parked – The front faces the wall and has never been hit. If so, what brand/setup would work the best and how much would it cost? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum Dogfather.

Several of us have deployed side cameras over the years, though here we are forced to improvise as there are really no side cameras made.
This mean we have installed single cameras on each side, with the little mobius being used often, i also was there but in the end installed a dual remote system as the 2 small camera units on a wire to the central unit with the memory and processing was nice.
But while these like all dashcams are wide angle systems, then aimed strait out the side ( in my cars mounted on fixed glass in my rear doors ) this do not give full coverage up close to the car, you have to be 20 feet or so from the car before you can track a person walking around the car without loosing him transferring from one camera to another.
The general issue are mounting, you cant well out a camera on your door glass, at least not if you want to be able to roll down the window, hanging off the headliner are also a problem, CUZ if the curtain airbag go off, a camera there will be shot off towards the bottom of the car.

To me not really a huge problem as i extremely rare have people on the back seat, i did this with the single cameras, but it could mean the camera will be hard to find in the aftermath of a severe event.

Really for parking guard, and not least vandalism the down the side cameras that you see on Tesla care are probably the best, but there are very few of these kind of cameras, but thinkware do have a option for those.

Regarding what kind of duration you can expect with 4 cameras going, i cant really tell that as i have never gone that far, but i do now use parking guard on the front & rear camera, but just for 3 hours after i am parked.

 

[Harsh]

You don't drive enough for the battery packs (which you will need) to get charged up. 3 channels/cameras will use a lot of power.

 

[kamkar]

yeah.
If you can get battery capacity to cover 36 hours, you for sure also need to do a serious drive to recharge things after a that long stint of parking guard, or charge in another way like a huge power bank, but i feel this are unsustainable.

Some systems can extend the time you can do parking guard by deploying a radar unit that can wake up the system from deep sleep, but this is kind of pre-buffering and i am not big on that at all.
These also generally just have the radar on the front camera, so it only register things coming close from the front, if there is enough time to boot up the system for a car coming from the side and turning into a empty bay beside you, i am not entirely sure

 

[kamkar]

I am more inclined to think if you somehow could hide a "nanny cam" aimed at your car, maybe disguised as a PIR sensor on the wall or something else.
This of course you also need to charge / swap battery in now and then.

At least i would try to see if something like that could be used too.

I myself have CCTV on my parked car, but the car are in a back yard and my camera are on my 2 floor balcony door.

 

[Dashmellow]

@kamkar and @Harsh make some good points about side facing cameras and battery packs.

Side facing cameras are pretty much a DIY affair at this point but many of us have them and they can work very well, especially if you have a couple of fixed glass window panes on the sides of your vehicle rather than windows that open and close.

There is an old thread here on the forum that will provide lots of examples and information about side cams.

Is there such thing as a side view dashcam? (For your car doors)

Hi all, just wondering if there is such thing as a side view dash cam that will watch the sides of your car? Like the doors and stuff

dashcamtalk.com

Powering a 3 channel dash cam or even separate cameras for 36 hours is a challenge but it "might" be possible with one of the newer 50,000 mAh (or higher) power banks that are now available. You would need at least two of them which you would charge at home over night and swap with the other one on a regular basis.

Amazon.com : 50,000 mAh power bank

 

[TonyM]

Power supply will be the biggest challenge. Thankfully the car is parked underground so heat from the sun will not be a problem. Is it lit 24/7?

You could cover the rear and kind of view the sides with a 2CH setup, using an interior camera mounted neat the rear view mirror to watch both sides. It's not ideal, but might consume less power than separate rear, left and right cameras?

If you don't mind lugging a battery indoors to charge, you could run a dashcam from the 12v output of a Jackery or similar power station, which could get you 36hrs with the right model. You don't even need the 12v output. A 2.4A 5V USB will be enough for a 2CH or 3CH dashcam.

 

[thomas-dash]

I installed a 100Ah battery which I recharged while driving:

Do you think this could be made to work as a battery pack?

I think I’m going to buy a battery pack to get it off the main car battery and hopefully get additional parking mode coverage since I’m not driving my car as much. Additionally, I’m planning on adding a second 2-channel dash cam. With Cellink NEO I would need to buy two of them to get around...

dashcamtalk.com

Getting it to recharge while you're driving adds a lot of expense in materials and tools, so the cheapest way is to go the two battery route like @Dashmellow mentioned.