Are Cellink NEO type batteries a necessity?

Kicker0927

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If I have a Viofo Pro 4K Duo cam setup which is directly wired, how necessary is it to put out another $300 for a Cellink battery? I have a new car so my battery is in mint condition. I do not live in a climate where it ever drops below 45-50 degrees F. I typically drive my vehicle everyday. A handful of times a year I will leave my vehicle at an airport for 3-4 days, but I understand the battery drain protection would kick in and I’m okay with the unit’s parking mode turning off in that case. Must I buy a battery to run the cam through? Is the auto-shutoff battery protection in the hardwire kit enough to keep me from having to worry about randomly returning to a dead battery? If so, what would you recommend I set the shut off Voltage at...11.8, 12, 12.2, 12.4?
Thanks for your feedback!
 
Personally i would never go below 12.2 volts for the cut off, but when i get to try the parking stuff i will not need to go that low as i just need 1 hour of parking guard while i shop.
Thinking back to when i got my car in 2012 i cant think of a single time where i have been in a situation where i would need hour upon hour of parking guard, but then again never say never.
 
Personally i would never go below 12.2 volts for the cut off, but when i get to try the parking stuff i will not need to go that low as i just need 1 hour of parking guard while i shop.
Thinking back to when i got my car in 2012 i cant think of a single time where i have been in a situation where i would need hour upon hour of parking guard, but then again never say never.

Understood. Honestly, if parked for days at a time it wouldn’t matter anyways because the footage will just loop record over itself anyways. I just want to make sure after being parked for 8 hours as work or 10 hours overnight that I’m not coming out to a dead battery. Maybe this isn’t the case with the battery protection available these days, but before I have my cam installed I wanted to be sure an extra battery wasn’t a complete necessity as I don’t really want the added expense or the battery issues right now.
 
you can always start with the highest cut off, and then see how much time that buy you, and then work your way down the voltages if that is needed.
Its only doing the limbo you have to go as low as you can :)
 
I just did some testing on two A129 Pro Duo's I installed recently. On my wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee with the voltage cut-off set at 12.4 volts she's getting 15 hours of parking mode. But keep in mind that it's a Hemi and I think probably has a bigger battery than most vehicles. It's an 80 amp-hour battery with 750 CCA. I think it's reserve capacity is like 140 minutes. Although the battery is older.

For me, 15 hours is perfect. That basically covers the longest time she'd park somewhere outside of our garage. 12.4 volts gives me confidence we're not being hard on the battery. It also gives me confidence that here in Michigan where temps can go below 0 F that there will be plenty of energy left in the battery to start the vehicle.

Keep in mind that a lead acid car battery is fully charged at 12.7 volts. It's 75% charged at 12.4 volts. It's 50% charged at 12.2 volts. It's 25% charged at 12.0 volts. So running a low cut-off like 12.0 volts, in my opinion is going to shorten the battery life by deep cycling it on a daily basis. Also if you are running it down to 12.0 volts (25%) and are only driving short trips, there's a good chance the battery never comes all the way back up to full charge.

Anyway if we do a little math here... My Wife's battery is 80 amp-hour. But it's older so let's call it 60 amp-hour. At 12.4 volts we've used 25% of the capacity or 15 amp-hour. If the camera uses 1 amp in parking mode that seems pretty spot on with what I'm observing. The camera would runs in parking mode for 15 hours at 1 amp or 15 amp-hours before I hit the 12.4 volt cut off.

So if you look up the amp-hour rating of your car's battery you can probably estimate the time it will run at each voltage cut off using a similar formula. Or you can just do some testing by parking the car and checking on it every hour.

Doc
 
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I just did some testing on two A129 Pro Duo's I installed recently. On my wife's Jeep Grand Cherokee with the voltage cut-off set at 12.4 volts she's getting 15 hours of parking mode. But keep in mind that it's a Hemi and I think probably has a bigger battery than most vehicles. It's an 80 amp-hour battery with 750 CCA. I think it's reserve capacity is like 140 minutes. Although the battery is older.

For me, 15 hours is perfect. That basically covers the longest time she'd park somewhere outside of our garage. 12.4 volts gives me confidence we're not being hard on the battery. It also gives me confidence that here in Michigan where temps can go below 0 F that there will be plenty of energy left in the battery to start the vehicle.

Keep in mind that a lead acid car battery is fully charged at 12.7 volts. It's 75% charged at 12.4 volts. It's 50% charged at 12.2 volts. It's 25% charged at 12.0 volts. So running a low cut-off like 12.0 volts, in my opinion is going to shorten the battery life by deep cycling it on a daily basis. Also if you are running it down to 12.0 volts (25%) and are only driving short trips, there's a good chance the battery never comes all the way back up to full charge.

Doc

That is awesome info. THANK YOU! I have a 2019 Mazda CX-5. I'm not sure what my battery specs are. I live in a very warm climate so the cold is not a concern. It sounds like I should keep my setting at 12.2-12.4V just to be safe.
 
Looking for Mazda CX-5 batteries the different sites cough up 60 - 65 AH batteries, but physical size wise you can probably go as far as 80 AH i recon. ( you need to measure your original battery + note orientation of the 2 poles, and then go hunting for larger batteries.

My little car are just 45 AH and as i recall i found a 70 AH battery that should fit in without resorting to battery tray modification, though it would be easy for me to do if i just had a workshop / garage and access to a welder, then i could whip something up fast that will mean i need to extend the original positive and negative wire as in my little car those seem to be trimmed very much to length.

Also my little car as it have no AC the right side of the engine room have plenty of room for a #2 battery, but thats a little extreme as i dont have a need for long parking guard periods.
 
That is awesome info. THANK YOU! I have a 2019 Mazda CX-5. I'm not sure what my battery specs are. I live in a very warm climate so the cold is not a concern. It sounds like I should keep my setting at 12.2-12.4V just to be safe.

I looked up some replacement battery's for your car. None of them listed the amp-hours but with a little math using the reserve capacity I'm guessing it's a 35 - 40 amp-hour battery. So that's considerably smaller than the battery in my Wife's Jeep.

If we just go in the middle and assume it's a 37.5 amp-hour battery and in good condition, I'd probably estimate these times. These are just rough guesses and there are some variables I'm not accounting for like the fact that a lot of movements that trigger a lot of recordings could increase the camera's consumption

12.4 volts - 9.4 hours
12.2 volts - 18.8 hours
12.0 volts - 28.1 hours

If you get a chance to test how long it lasts at 12.4 volts, let us know how long it lasts.

Doc
 
I looked up some replacement battery's for your car. None of them listed the amp-hours but with a little math using the reserve capacity I'm guessing it's a 35 - 40 amp-hour battery. So that's considerably smaller than the battery in my Wife's Jeep.

If we just go in the middle and assume it's a 37.5 amp-hour battery and in good condition, I'd probably estimate these times. These are just rough guesses and there are some variables I'm not accounting for like the fact that a lot of movements that trigger a lot of recordings could increase the camera's consumption

12.4 volts - 9.4 hours
12.2 volts - 18.8 hours
12.0 volts - 28.1 hours

If you get a chance to test how long it lasts at 12.4 volts, let us know how long it lasts.

Doc

Will do...I'm not replacing my battery. It's only a few months old and I'm not looking to replace just to have a functioning dash cam. I'll let you know once installed how it does. Does anyone carry a jump box just in case or are the H3K ACC wires auto power shut off features reliable enough to not worry about coming out to a dead battery?
 
Will do...I'm not replacing my battery.

Sorry I wasn't being clear. I just looked up replacement batteries to help me figure out the capacity of your battery so I could estimate the times for each cutoff value for your car. I wasn't suggesting you replace your battery.

The Viofo 3 wire kit has been perfectly reliable on our two vehicles in the couple weeks since I've installed them. It cuts the voltage off right at 12.4 volts.

Doc
 
Sorry I wasn't being clear. I just looked up replacement batteries to help me figure out the capacity of your battery so I could estimate the times for each cutoff value for your car. I wasn't suggesting you replace your battery.

The Viofo 3 wire kit has been perfectly reliable on our two vehicles in the couple weeks since I've installed them. It cuts the voltage off right at 12.4 volts.

Doc
Thanks for info. I understood you. That’s great to hear! Makes me feel better
 
Why not wire up an extra battery in a split charging system?
I have one in my car and the starter battery will always be full and the alternator charges both batteries. When the engine stops both batteries are isolated.
My heater and dashcam runs off this battery.
This is mine under the drivers seat.
4041d8726a7b6d64e095a3797b2fc1f6.jpg



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I see someone has taken an approach similar to one I might take- a clean looking job of it too (y)

Phil
 
I have wired 2X60A batteries in parallel. Gives me a total of 120A. My cam is wired 24/7 to this setup.
It has never dropped under 60%. A 600 km drive tops it up again.
The split charger relay is a Victron Energy but you can get isolators for as little as 10 dollars.
In the winter I run the Eberspächer motor heater for an hour each day and drive about 30 km a day.


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Getting a LiFePo4 might be the best bet. You can safely double the useful amperes. A 20A battery will give you as much usable current as a 40A lead acid or AGM battery.
They are about a third of the weight and cheaper than the overpriced Blackvue batteries.
With a split charge relay you are good to go.
Just idling the car for an hour will charge up the battery from empty to full.


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Getting a LiFePo4 might be the best bet. You can safely double the useful amperes. A 20A battery will give you as much usable current as a 40A lead acid or AGM battery.
They are about a third of the weight and cheaper than the overpriced Blackvue batteries.
With a split charge relay you are good to go.
Just idling the car for an hour will charge up the battery from empty to full.


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What if you only drive 15 minutes to work, work for 12 hours while the camera is in parking mode, then drive 15 minutes home? The vehicles primary lead acid battery will easily recharge in that time because it sees 13.7 volts and 10 - 20 amps from the vehicles charging system. A battery like the Blackvue's is only seeing 5V at 1 - 2 amps... That's why, to me, they don't make sense. The Blackvue battery will never recharge in the 15 minute drive seeing that voltage and current.

If you are suggesting rigging up your own lithium that sees high recharging voltage and current, then that makes more sense. But you'd need to run some serious gauge wire to it. And you probably should use something like a Antigravity Lithium Motorcycle battery that has circuitry to handle charging at high voltage / amperage without fear of damaging the battery or having a fire. I certainly wouldn't try to pump 13.7 volts and 10+ amps into some generic lithium battery pack intended for charging cell phones.

Doc
 
Sure you can use a lithium motorcycle battery but go for the LiFePo4 with BMS which is safest. A lithium battery without BMS is not an option for me. You get them at 30A and that will give you a useable almost 60A as you can safely drain the lithium battery down to 80% while the lead acid battery starts to sulphate at 50%.
Lithium batteries are not good for rapid discharge so will be perfect for the dashcam.
You need a special split relay and Victron has one that costs 100 dollars in expensive Norway. Cheaper in the US. Last time I saw it was $60.
The wires need to be thicker the longer they are. The shop will advice you on the gauge. Check out the wires sold with the Andersen connections sold for this purpose. They are quite thin and about half the thickness of the wires in my setup.
With a lead acid battery only 1 volt is the difference life and death. 12.7V is a fully charged battery and 11.7V a discharged one.
Check out the Victron Energy and Battle Born websites.


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Sure you can use a lithium motorcycle battery but go for the LiFePo4 with BMS which is safest. A lithium battery without BMS is not an option for me. You get them at 30A and that will give you a useable almost 60A as you can safely drain the lithium battery down to 80% while the lead acid battery starts to sulphate at 50%.
Lithium batteries are not good for rapid discharge so will be perfect for the dashcam.
You need a special split relay and Victron has one that costs 100 dollars in expensive Norway. Cheaper in the US. Last time I saw it was $60.
The wires need to be thicker the longer they are. The shop will advice you on the gauge. Check out the wires sold with the Andersen connections sold for this purpose. They are quite thin and about half the thickness of the wires in my setup.
With a lead acid battery only 1 volt is the difference life and death. 12.7V is a fully charged battery and 11.7V a discharged one.
Check out the Victron Energy and Battle Born websites.


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I agree with you in principle, but wiring up a dependable 20 AH lithium battery in a split charging system with 10 gauge wire such that it will reliably recharge over short trips is daunting, especially in smaller vehicles. Setting up the Viofo 3 wire kit to run off the main lead acid battery down to 12.4 volts should provide at least 9 hours and up to 16 hours of parking mode coverage with very little impact to the primary battery just seems like a more realistic option for most casual dash cam users. Again I'm seeing 15 hours of parking mode on my wife's 8 year old battery in her Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 12.4 volt cut off.

The total cost of this setup was $14 for the Viofo 3 wire kit. What would the total cost be of a 20 AH lithium with 10 gauge wire and split charging system setup be and how much additional parking mode coverage would it supply? You can see why this really isn't a good solution for the casual dash cam user.

Doc
 
There is no danger of overcharging a Lithium battery with the BMS.
Of course it will be more expensive but I run the Eperpächer air heater from the same battery and just connected the dashcam to it.
With my setup, I can fill up my starter battery if it runs down by flipping a switch.


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:D I am not smart like people who make their own power supply, nor I will ever acquire their knowledge or skills because it's the kind where I just don't get it.

So for me, I like to have the cellink neo type batteries. Reasons: New vehicle, if things happen related to the battery that is covered by the warranty, sometimes dealerships would find excuses to void your warranty. I rather avoid that then waste time arguing and proving that a simple dash cam can't do **** to the battery. No need to worry about voltage cut off and would be nice not to accidentally have a dead battery in the middle of -30C outside.

Majority have it hardwired and have the voltage cut off. So you should be fine. Only when you really need an extra battery is when you consider getting it. Or if you don't mind the extra cost (this would be me).
 
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