F800Pro - Time Lapse & Motion Detection

[samuelh_888]

Hello All,
Purchased a F800 Pro (my first dashcam) and I've spent the weekend hardwiring it and testing it out. So far so good but I do have a couple of questions I'm hoping someone could help me with (I've tried searching everywhere but can't find a definitive answer!)

I've hardwired the cam to be able to use the parking mode features, specifically the Time Lapsed mode. The instruction and the web mention that I can't use Motion Detection & Time Lapse at the same time however after the car has been in parking mode for several hours I have several files in the Motion Detection file.

Is this suggesting that it is motion triggered when in time lapse mode or does Motion & Time Lapse share a file (hence why both can't be used together)?

Secondly, a couple of time the camera has stopped recording about about 7 hours (in Time Lapse). I have the cut -off at 48 hours or 11.7v. It's wired correctly so I can't work out why it intermittently stops.

Thanks in advance
Sam

 

[Maddog1974]

You are correct it's Motion & Shock OR Time lapse & Shock. On the PC the files end up in 'Parking' but i have a hunch you are correct when using the App that the folder name might still say Motion, it's one of those things i've been into loads of times but not taken much notice! As for running time in Parking mode it's almost certainly going to be Battery Voltage shutting the camera down. if you playback the last file you have you will see the voltage level at the bottom to check that. I would say 11.7v is a bit on the low side, i'm cautious setting anything below 11.9v especially with the Winter rapidly arriving. It's that time of year when we are driving we tend to have heated screens, fans & headlights on so the battery probably won't be charging as much as in the summer so it will reduce the recording time when parked. Only way to help that would be with an external battery being fitted to power the camera in Parking mode (Cellink B, iVolt etc)

 

[samuelh_888]

Thanks for getting back to me @Maddog1974 - I’m going to look into getting a Cellink B to relieve the parking mode pressure on the battery.

I checked the car after work and it’s still recording but with a 32gb card it started overwriting itself at about 11am. I now need to do some research into a 128gb card as I know the camera can be tempermental with non-Thinkware cards.

Thanks again,
Sam

 

[Deleted member 37895]

I would just disable voltage cut off. It would take a long time for any dashcam to kill your car battery. A car battery is massive, it starts a freaking car. One time after 48 hours my car battery died because I left a Canon camcorder recording accidentally, but that's at least an order of magnitude more wattage AND my car is a hybrid with a tiny 12v battery. If someone has knowledge of Thinkware cameras draining extra fast, please correct me

 

[Maddog1974]

Personally wouldn't recommend turning off the Voltage cut off (or reducing it to minimum) to flatten the battery you are right it would take some time however you need a fair few amps left in it to crank over the engine. The F800 uses around 0.2amp in parking mode.

 

[Deleted member 37895]

Personally wouldn't recommend turning off the Voltage cut off (or reducing it to minimum) to flatten the battery you are right it would take some time however you need a fair few amps left in it to crank over the engine. The F800 uses around 0.2amp in parking mode.

Voltage readings may not be accurate though. I have a 12v splitter with a built in voltage meter and it always says 11.7V or less, as soon as I turn off the car.

0.2 amp on an 85 amp hour battery is very little though... Even after 10 hours you're at 2 amp hours out of 85! After 100 hours you're still only at 20 amp hours, which is less than 1/4 battery capacity

 

[jokiin]

I would just disable voltage cut off. It would take a long time for any dashcam to kill your car battery. A car battery is massive, it starts a freaking car.

car batteries are intended to be float charged to keep them at their correct voltage level and only have a very short but heavy discharge (starting the car) and then be immediately brought back up to correct voltage, a modern cars electrical system will have the battery at about 14v to 14.5v while running and they'll have a resting voltage of about 12.5v when the car is not running, 12v resting voltage is considered only 50% charged

a regular parasitic load like a dashcam drawing the battery down to 12v or lower each day will dramatically shorten the life of the battery, there are some batteries that handle this a bit better than others but none are really intended for this type of usage

 

[SawMaster]

I wouldn't worry about one cam and 3-4 hours, but after that I'd want as large a heavy-duty battery as my car would take. My old van fits a huge battery that runs one cam 24/7 and often 3 more for 6-8 hours at work and IMHO that's pushing things. My battery is fairly new so it will take some time to verify my thoughts, but with no cams I would get 4-5 years from a battery, and I got 4 years from the last one with one cam 24/7 for the last 2 of those years. This is not typical for most cars though. A powerbank is a lot cheaper than a new car battery

Phil

 

[jokiin]

I wouldn't worry about one cam and 3-4 hours, but after that I'd want as large a heavy-duty battery as my car would take. My old van fits a huge battery that runs one cam 24/7 and often 3 more for 6-8 hours at work and IMHO that's pushing things. My battery is fairly new so it will take some time to verify my thoughts, but with no cams I would get 4-5 years from a battery, and I got 4 years from the last one with one cam 24/7 for the last 2 of those years. This is not typical for most cars though. A powerbank is a lot cheaper than a new car battery

Phil

how much you drive has a lot to do with it also, people that drive 30 minutes each way to work and have cameras running constantly seem surprised when their car batteries die in 12 months instead of the typical 5 to 8 years

 

[SawMaster]

Battery quality has a lot to do with it too. It seems the cheap 'store brand' batteries never last while mid-grade or better ones do (even in the same 'store brand') I'm not sold on the super-batteries which perform well on paper but not always in real life. Dashcam users should at least avoid the cheap ones if using the cam(s) when parked

Phil

 

[Deleted member 37895]

I think these cameras should allow you to totally turn off the shock detection which would remove the need to continually buffer, reducing wear on the sd card and reducing power usage. Just the timelapse would be much easier on the camera, the card, and car battery

 

[jokiin]

Buffering won't cause any wear to the card, while ever it's buffering it's not writing anything to the card

 

[Deleted member 37895]

Buffering won't cause any wear to the card, while ever it's buffering it's not writing anything to the card

Are you sure? How much RAM does it have?

 

[jokiin]

Are you sure? How much RAM does it have?

buffering is not done to card