Alternative CellLink B

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Mark2457

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Hi All

Just ordered the F770 with rear camera and hardwire kit for my 2014 BMW F10 (has stop n go mode).

Spent quite a bit more than I planned on the dash cam (buddy sent me email saying 'look you can get one for under $100" then the research started... :) ). I've never used a dash cam and had never heard of parking mode until a few days ago. It sounds pretty useful though. I can't bring myself to spend another 50% of the cost of the gear on a battery, especially as I'm not sure how much i'll use parking mode. I would like to try it out extensively though.

Has anyone successfully *used* something alternate to CellLink B?

I drive about 40 mins twice a day. Car is garaged overnight so don't need parking mode then. Would like it in parking mode while parked 10-12 hours at work (and pretty cold here in Chicago). Was thinking about a sealed car/motorcycle battery if I only had to recharge with external charger each weekend (30 secs to plug -in). trunk space not an issue. other option is one of these powerbanks with pass thru when powered, so car powers cams when car is on and powerbank powers them when car off

Idea would be to run cam off the battery full time and just an accessory line to a switched circuit for car on/off detection

I may end up ultimate buying CellLink B in a few months but want to prove it out first

thoughts?

mark
 
I've been looking at alternatives too cos the cellink is damn expensive,
but have not really found anything that can charge as fast and lasts as long,
especially not a a considerably lower price.
 
egonvdv said:
I've been looking at alternatives too cos the cellink is damn expensive,
but have not really found anything that can charge as fast and lasts as long,
especially not a a considerably lower price.
Click to expand...
thanks for reply. let me know if you do find anything
 
I talked to the guys a BBMC and they told me the parking mode in the Thinkware cameras only works if it's hardwired, not with a 12V plug. He did say that you could splice the 12V output cable on the Cellink and hardwire the camera directly to it but I'm not sure if that means you'll still have the female 12V plug or not.
 
Cellink B battery packs work fine with the Thinkware cameras. Thinkware will have their own version of a battery pack very soon although i don't think it will be cheaper. It's an expensive job getting a large capacity Li-on battery to charge very quickly without overheating or catching fire so i would be very cautious if i did see an alternative that's a lot cheaper!
 
anfof said:
I talked to the guys a BBMC and they told me the parking mode in the Thinkware cameras only works if it's hardwired, not with a 12V plug. .
Click to expand...

That is complete an utter garbage. 12v is 12v no matter where it comes from.
 
Mark2457 said:
That is complete an utter garbage. 12v is 12v no matter where it comes from.
Click to expand...

The Thinkware does need to be hardwired to get the proper parking mode running as that cable will sense the ignition going off and make the camera go to motion / shock detection / timelapse recording.

If you were to power the dashcam from the Cellink B via cigar plug yes the camera would keep running when parked but it would be going in normal driving mode so after about 4 hours it would overwrite the memory card, the shock sensor would be the normal driving setting rather than the Parking shock setting which you make more sensitive.
 
I've thought of an alternative using a 12v sealed lead acid battery. A solar panel battery charger controller and a battery saver thing to stop the car battery from going to low.

Sent from my XT1580 using Tapatalk
 
You could try hardwiring it to your car's battery via the fuse box and see if your two 40 min trips per day is enough to keep the battery charged up. One of those basic voltage displays that plug into your cigarette lighter socket would allow you to keep tabs on the voltage. I'm guessing you'll have a fairly powerful and large AGM battery in the car like mine.

I was running two cams from my F30 battery and it took a while before the car warned of a low battery but I was only doing two five minute commutes each day.
 
So had my F770 for about 6 weeks. Weired thing is the only time I get the battery discharge warning is after charging battery. I was in vegas for a week and left my car on the charger. when i got back, the first two mornings, I got battery discharge warning on the dash. Since then, no warnings. All I can assume is that the battery voltage was pretty high after the charge and dropped more than a specific percentage, so the warning came on and no the battery is lower that it it can;t drop by that much anymore. Pure speculation, but only logical reasoning I can see.

Anyway buddy bought me a Cellink B for my birthday, so installing that today
 
Maddog1974 said:
The Thinkware does need to be hardwired to get the proper parking mode running as that cable will sense the ignition going off and make the camera go to motion / shock detection / timelapse recording.

If you were to power the dashcam from the Cellink B via cigar plug yes the camera would keep running when parked but it would be going in normal driving mode so after about 4 hours it would overwrite the memory card, the shock sensor would be the normal driving setting rather than the Parking shock setting which you make more sensitive.
Click to expand...

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing sweeping statement that it needs to be hardwired to work and "will not work via a 12v plug". Again, it's garbage; mis-information; and confusing to people who are looking for information. There are two requirements for parking mode to work.
  1. It needs continuous 12v (to power it when ignition is off)
  2. A connection to a switched 12v circuit so it knows when the ignition is off and to go into parking mode.
A buddy of mine had a Mitsubishi Endeavor. This has two cigarette lighter outlets next to other: one was switched, one was always on. Using these, you could power a dash cam with parking mode without hard wiring. Of course, if the cam doesn't include adequate discharge prevention, you would want to include something like a multi-safer. Granted you would probably want to hard wire it but it is not required. The only requirement is that conditions 1 and 2 above are met.
 
The Cellink kit includes a cigar socket output power cord. To wire it to the Thinkware hardwire kit, you just cut off the cigar plug and trim the insulation a bit to find three wires that correspond to the three wires of the Thinkware cable. I crimped mine, but I recommend soldering if you can because the wires are quite small and crimping small wires is fiddly. (I crimped because I was working outside in a northern Canadian winter).
 
Mark2457 said:
I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing sweeping statement that it needs to be hardwired to work and "will not work via a 12v plug". Again, it's garbage; mis-information; and confusing to people who are looking for information. There are two requirements for parking mode to work.
  1. It needs continuous 12v (to power it when ignition is off)
  2. A connection to a switched 12v circuit so it knows when the ignition is off and to go into parking mode.
A buddy of mine had a Mitsubishi Endeavor. This has two cigarette lighter outlets next to other: one was switched, one was always on. Using these, you could power a dash cam with parking mode without hard wiring. Of course, if the cam doesn't include adequate discharge prevention, you would want to include something like a multi-safer. Granted you would probably want to hard wire it but it is not required. The only requirement is that conditions 1 and 2 above are met.
Click to expand...


Maybe you should are misinterpreting anfof's post "they told me the parking mode in the Thinkware cameras only works if it's hardwired, not with a 12V plug"
By 12V plug he is referring to the 12V Cigarette plug which parking mode will not work with.
 
Not too many battery packs out there right now, one is the Blackvue B-112 but that one only has a 12V +/- output on the cigarette socket.
You can probably make this work with a Thinkware hardwire kit by splicing the corresponding wires (constant 12V and ground) into the Blackvue's output
and just connecting the accessory wire of the hardwire kit to a separate ACC fuse in the fuse box.

This might even work with one of those portable battery packs too?
Not too sure as I haven't tried either myself but if it's a constant 12V cigarette output in theory you may be able to modify it to work.

B-112 is half the capacity and takes just as long to charge. Not really worth it to save $50 in my opinion.
 
Bit of a thread revival but I remembered this thread and recently a guy from a car forum came up with an idea which could make using a regular powerbank which does not have pass-thru workable as an alternative to using your car battery when the ignition is off:

Battery Protect would be connected as follows:

1. Switched Feed from fuse box
2. Constant power feed from powerbank

3. The powerbank would be connected to separate switched feed from the fuse box


So when the ignition is on the Battery Protect will draw power from the switched feed via the fuse box and therefore allowing the other switched feed from the fuse box to charge the powerbank because both switched feeds will be live.

When the ignition is turned off the Battery Protect will detect the loss of voltage from the switched feed from the fuse box and switch over to the constant feed which is connected to the powerbank.

The switched feed from the fuse box to the powerbank will no longer charge the powerbank because the ignition is off and therefore no pass-thru tech is needed.

So, could this work? One thing I'm thinking is the delayed shutdown before sleep that many modern cars have, but then it shouldn't because nothing is going to happen/change until the switched fuse no longer has any voltage passing through it.
 
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