General advice and park mode issue

[Mattyboyc0806s]

Ok, I just took a reading before I take it for a spin, voltage at battery was 12.10v. At fuse it was 12.14v and the led on the HWK was off.

 

[CaptureYourAction]

If the red LED in the converter box is off, then either the kit sensed voltage below the cutoff setting or there is no power at the red wire. Kit fault is always a possibility as well.

 

[Mattyboyc0806s]

Definitely power at the red wire 12.14v

 

[CaptureYourAction]

Definitely power at the red wire 12.14v

Then that would indicate that the voltage dropped below the cutoff point at some point, cutting power to camera.

 

[Teflon490]

If you have around 12.1V on the battery when idle (car locked), that is way too low. Charged battery is from 12.6V higher. However, this value slightly varies depending on the type of battery you have (flooded vs. AGM). Also, keep in mind, that simple unlocking of the car can instantly drop the voltage by as much as 0.3V. I had a problem, that even though battery had 12.4V when idle (with car locked), it dropped below 12.2V when unlocked. Therefore, I had to set the cutout voltage to 12V, because sometimes the voltage was too low for the kit to stay powered after I shut off the engine.

 

[Mattyboyc0806s]

I hope it is a battery issue to be honest as that is easy to sort out, I ran the car yesterday, not very far in the end but checked voltage on return and after 30 mins idle it read 12.45v, that is the highest it’s been but will run some tests later. Big problem I think is the car is just not getting used at the moment so battery drain is inevitable.

 

[Mattyboyc0806s]

So I ended up only doing a short journey in the car rather than the planned one, on return I let it stand for about 30 mins then took a reading at battery, this was 12.45v. Car was then left with park mode working. Today I checked it and it had recorded from 21.22 until it turned off at 23.14. The readings were 12.3v at battery, 12.21v at fuse and the HWK LED was not on so I guess it turned itself off due to voltage dropping below critical level ( this is set to 11.8v ). I understand the battery is not going to be at full charge until the car is used properly again but even with a fully charged battery will it be capable of running the camera all night?

 

[Nigel]

with a fully charged battery will it be capable of running the camera all night?

On a full charge, a normal car battery should power it for 24 hours with an 11.8V cutoff. You might get a more than that, or less, but it will vary a lot with the car and type of battery and weather conditions, etc.

To get a full charge of a lead acid battery, you need a good 6 hours of charging, the first bit of charge will be really fast, the last bit of charge is very slow, so realistically you are very rarely going to be using a full charge, and actual results will very a lot with the state, age, etc. of the battery. Only way to really know is to test it.

I'm a bit surprised that you only got 2 hours from 12.45v, it might indicate that your battery doesn't have a lot of capacity left, but give it a good test over multiple days before jumping to conclusions. If you have a battery charger and could give the car an overnight charge then it might be easier to understand the results.

Another possibility is that your car does something occasionally that uses a lot of power, and that drops the voltage temporarily and causes the hwk to turn off. Maybe it has an mobile internet connection and was making a connection from within the garage in a remote valley so needed a high power transmission to contact the phone mast... just one of many possibilities!

 

[Mattyboyc0806s]

No, nothing like WiFi but it is 6 years old now, I do have a battery charger so I can put it on charge overnight and see what the results are. I know once I go back to work the battery will get a good charging as it’s a 50mile a day commute with very little on in the summer months as I don’t particularly like air conditioning. I hope it is looking more like a battery issue than a camera issue as it’s easier to sort the battery, I’m pleased with the camera overall but was slightly bemused when I read in the destructions that the display goes off, how strange I thought but having seen it installed you can’t see it anyway because of the angle the camera sits at. Thanks for all your help so far and I’ll post up the results after a good charge.

 

[Aly_Oops]

When testing battery voltage, it need a load for short time before testing with volt meter, otherwise it will read 12 volts or higher. You be surprise how just a couple year old battery end up at 12 or less. Each time, you let your battery run down to 50 percent, ( AGM 30 percent) you are slowly shortening the life of the battery (Sulphating).

Regular charging will not fix it, so it never charges to 100 percent, despite your charger think so. You would need a conditioner charger to fix it, (NOCO) assuming it not damaged too much. Perhaps the Repair option my salvage it?

A handy tool to test the life of your battery, is one of these battery analyzer tester. I used this one, great for RV batteries, I used AGM so try not to go below 50 percent before I charge up with my Honda generator, though I am good to 30 percent for AGM:

Ancel BST200 Car Battery Load Tester and diagnostics.

I have Diesel Truck, winter can get very cold and despite two batteries 80 x 2 amp hour, it is common for my battery to drop 12 volts or lower. When starting up, it heats the air intake for combustion to occur when cold, causing a load to drop to 10.8 volts, then gradually climbs to 11, 12 to 14v (This is normal), so during the night, my park mode will shut down. Especially if it happen often and doing short trips, I would charge up the battery with my NOCO G2600 battery Conditioner.

Took 8 hours recently to bring it up 100 percent, despite being 26 amp charger, it goes through several stages of optimizing. There is a stage where it uses low voltage and low amperage to bring it back to life. It does 9 stages to finish. Regular chargers don't do that. Alternators/Generators don't do that. They are good for just maintaining, not a charger. Common misunderstanding.

Regular flood/Lead battery discharge quickly and quicker still when very cold. If it sat there for 6 months or more, your fully charge battery would be below 50 percent and getting damaged. AGM slowly discharge and handle cold weather and can be stored for a year and still be mostly charged. AGM suppose to be several times quicker to charge, but I haven't seen that, not with conditioner chargers.

 

[Mattyboyc0806s]

Thank you for the information, I’m sure the workshop I use have a battery conditioner, if they do I’ll ask them to check it out.

 

[kamkar]

I have a 2012 car, a small one so the battery are also small, when i get to try parking mode this year ( though i will not use it for long time parking ) then i will also swap the battery out on my car, and go for a as large battery as i can fit in without having to modify the battery tray and also the wires that are cut pretty much to length for the original small battery.

 

[SawMaster]

Thank you for the information, I’m sure the workshop I use have a battery conditioner, if they do I’ll ask them to check it out.

A good course of action, but I would not expect very good results from a six year old battery myself. Even when treated perfectly, everything wears out eventually so I'd be preparing for a replacement or just doing that as an assurance that the battery is not going to be an issue both now and in years to come

Phil

 

[Nigel]

If you do go for a replacement battery at some point, I recommend looking into getting an AGM battery if there is one that fits your car, even if it is not standard. AGM batteries generally cost more, but they also charge significantly faster, so you get longer record times from shorter journeys. They also don't object so much to regularly being half emptied, so can be good value if you use most of their lifetime before replacing your car.

 

[Aly_Oops]

Regular batteries will sulphate when discharged to 50 percent or less and over time will damage it permanently. AGM can go to 30 percent before damaging/shortening the life of the battery.

I am aware of the claim that AGM charge up quicker, but have not seen it to be the case when using battery charger conditioner, such as NOCO Genius G2600 unit is used. They do seem to recover after use, for example, meter indicated it drop to 50 percent, but after not using it for awhile, it may recover on it own to 75 percent. This behaviour was notice with RV/Marine Deep Cycle AGM batteries, 100AH. Not in use, AGM batteries discharge very slow and low, so it can sit for months before voltage starts to drop, not so with regular batteries.

My Diesel Dodge Ram 2500 truck has regular batteries, rated 80AH x 2 units in parallel. My RV has AGM 100AH 12 volt deep cycle battery.

Alternators/Generators don't condition batteries, just maintains and works a long time, if you never exceeded below 50 precent charge for regular and 30 percent for AGM. If you have, you just shorten the life of the battery. Perhaps it can or may be fixed using battery charger conditioners.

Battery Conditioner Charges come in variety prices and capabilities, I used units under 80.00 and unit priced over 200.00. The cheaper units tend to be erratic in results or claim to support AGM, but they don't. You can get a rough idea of health with the cheaper units.

If you want VIOFO to monitor during park mode, then battery health is a must, otherwise it will shut off, after a few hours or longer, depending on current health of your battery and capacity. Also your voltage cut off setting on VIOFO will change how long it operates.

 

[Nigel]

I am aware of the claim that AGM charge up quicker, but have not seen it to be the case when using battery charger conditioner, such as NOCO Genius G2600 unit is used.

That will be because the charger can't supply enough current to make a difference, charge the battery using your car alternator at maybe 80 amps and there will be a difference.

The cheaper units tend to be erratic in results or claim to support AGM, but they don't.

You don't need a special charger for AGM, unless what you have is a high voltage racing battery, which would be no good in a normal car since it wouldn't charge from the normal alternator!

Regular batteries will sulphate when discharged to 50 percent or less and over time will damage it permanently. AGM can go to 30 percent before damaging/shortening the life of the battery.

These numbers are only general guidelines, some AGM batteries will happily go down to 10%, some regular batteries will struggle with 75%.

Important to remember that any use of a battery wears it out, discharging it to lower levels will wear it out more, mainly because it has done more work. So the guideline should be not to discharge it more than required for your requirement, if you don't need 24 hour coverage, set it to a higher cutoff voltage, if you do need 24/7 coverage, you will have to set it lower, and when the battery wears out you will have to replace it, which of course you will have to do anyway at some point, very few car batteries last more than 10 years, many only last 5.

An occasional charge, eg every 3 months, to 100.00% full is a good idea for a long life since it will clean the sulphation off the plates.

 

[Aly_Oops]

Not correct: That will be because the charger can't supply enough current to make a difference, charge the battery using your car alternator at maybe 80 amps and there will be a difference.

Car alternator is not a charger or conditioner. The unit is 30 amp smart charger/conditioner.

Not correct: You don't need a special charger for AGM, unless what you have is a high voltage racing battery, which would be no good in a normal car since it wouldn't charge from the normal alternator!

AGM batteries have different characteristic for charging, generally speaking in a vehicle, as long as you don't discharge to 30 percent, you get away with it. There is a lot of misinformation on AGM charging requirements.

Yes, you can abuse batteries, but slowly damaging it. Regular batteries best not to bring below 50 percent and 30 percent for AGM. There is a lot of misinformation online.

 

[Nigel]

Car alternator is not a charger or conditioner. The unit is 30 amp smart charger/conditioner.

Of course the car alternator is a charger, it is what normally charges your car battery, and most can supply around 80 amps, more than twice the power that your Genius G2600 can, some can supply 4x the amount. And you don't need a special car/alternator for an AGM battery, they are interchangable.

 

[Aly_Oops]

Yes, they charge/maintain, mostly dumb charge with exception of newer vehicles, but can't correct sulphated batteries for example, which happen when charge of battery is below 50 percent and 30 percent for AGM, as stipulated by battery manufactures. This is where conditioner battery charger come in. AGM batteries have different requirements, unless newer vehicle are setup for it and come with AGM from factory. I am aware lots of people make the claims you are, but dig deep and you will see charging characteristic are different for AGM, can handle lower discharges in comparison to regular batteries.

There are two camps on this and I let each do their own research or conclusions. I have no interest in debating. Let the reader decide and/or do their own research. Remember the internet is full of opinions and errors too... so discretion is required when researching.

 

[Nigel]

charging characteristic are different for AGM

Only limitations I know of are that you shouldn't maintain a high float charge, but vehicles from this century do not do so anyway, and neither do modern chargers, largely because "maintenance free" batteries, as used in most cars have the same limitation if they are to stay maintenance free. If you have a vehicle or charger from the 1980s or before then yes, be careful.