Are Cellink NEO type batteries a necessity?

: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).

My feelings exactly! Small price to pay to do things right and prevent battery damage...all while extending parking mode times. :)
 
IMHO extending parking mode times isn't the right answer unless it's enough to cover all of your parking time. Fate seems to always strike when you're not ready- at least that's how it goes with me- so you really need to cover 100% of your parking time. More is better but it's not really enough when all can be achieved instead ;)

If the Cellink can do that for you then great, but if it can't then you are better off doing what you need to from the start by adding a RV-type battery system for your cams. It's not that hard to do and you have only one wire going to your car battery from the battery isolator and another to ground; all the rest is system-dedicated wiring and there's not a lot of that. There should be no car warranty issues as the isolator protects the car from any problems in the added system, and it's a safer bet than possibly overloading a fused car circuit at the fusebox. Which in itself can be used as an excuse to not honor your car warranty. If you read warranty details you'll discover that it becomes void when you add anything not installed by your car dealer which must also be a manufacturer-approved device, so any dashcam install has already risked that since no after-market dashcams are manufacturer-approved devices :cautious:

So really it's your choice how to do things and you may not need anything more than a 3-wire HWK to give you the parking protection you want. No single solution is going to work best for everyone- it never does.

Phil
 
IMHO extending parking mode times isn't the right answer unless it's enough to cover all of your parking time. Fate seems to always strike when you're not ready- at least that's how it goes with me- so you really need to cover 100% of your parking time. More is better but it's not really enough when all can be achieved instead ;)

If the Cellink can do that for you then great, but if it can't then you are better off doing what you need to from the start by adding a RV-type battery system for your cams. It's not that hard to do and you have only one wire going to your car battery from the battery isolator and another to ground; all the rest is system-dedicated wiring and there's not a lot of that. There should be no car warranty issues as the isolator protects the car from any problems in the added system, and it's a safer bet than possibly overloading a fused car circuit at the fusebox. Which in itself can be used as an excuse to not honor your car warranty. If you read warranty details you'll discover that it becomes void when you add anything not installed by your car dealer which must also be a manufacturer-approved device, so any dashcam install has already risked that since no after-market dashcams are manufacturer-approved devices :cautious:

So really it's your choice how to do things and you may not need anything more than a 3-wire HWK to give you the parking protection you want. No single solution is going to work best for everyone- it never does.

Phil

Very true. I was going to use just the HK3 kit, but I preferred to have a longer recording time and I had some concern of wearing out my battery faster. I ended up ordering the Cellink Neo which gives me plenty of parking mode time for my needs. The other thing I kept thinking too was that your recording is just going to loop over itself the longer you’re in parking mode. So if the device is set to motion activation or radar energy saving mode it will likely partition certain footage and loop record the rest, the partitioned files will still be very large which will fill up your memory card quickly. Using timelapse or buffered recording would extend your memory card’s usefulness a bit, but I would think it would still fill up pretty quickly especially if you’re talking about being in parking mode for a week or longer. So then you have a cam with plenty of battery power, but no memory card space left for footage
 
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.

FYI, the Cellink Neo and BlackVue Power Magic Ultra both can pull 9A @ over 14v when hardwired with an appropriate wiring harness. You can get quite a bit of charge from a 15 minute drive.
 
FYI, the Cellink Neo and BlackVue Power Magic Ultra both can pull 9A @ over 14v when hardwired with an appropriate wiring harness. You can get quite a bit of charge from a 15 minute drive.

My Cellink B is hardwired at 7A. Yesterday I had it running a single Blackvue DR590W in parking mode for about 9 hours.
On the drive home, after 17 minutes, the green full charge light came on.

I've have had cameras hardwired, but none of them lasted 9 hours on my battery with at cutoff of 12.4v
 
FYI, the Cellink Neo and BlackVue Power Magic Ultra both can pull 9A @ over 14v when hardwired with an appropriate wiring harness. You can get quite a bit of charge from a 15 minute drive.
A standard car battery can charge at 50 amps, and an AGM car battery can charge at 80 amps, the Cellink Neo's 9 amps seems quite slow...
 
I wonder why I had issues with my HK3 powering off too early then?
The first few weeks it would last > 8 hours and then it started dropping until it the A129 would only last about 5 minutes. I was driving the car about 1 hour a day at least.
 
I wonder why I had issues with my HK3 powering off too early then?
The first few weeks it would last > 8 hours and then it started dropping until it the A129 would only last about 5 minutes. I was driving the car about 1 hour a day at least.

I'm no electrician, but maybe you had the HK3 wired into a circuit which shuts off after 5 minutes?? But I guess that still doesn't explain why it used to last over 8 hours! hmmmm
 
Hey guys. Does somebody know if it is possible to run 2 dashcam from one Cellink Neo 9 unit? (in my case 2* A129 pro dual)

My other idea is to get a LiFePo4 battery like this (check picture) and set a battery isolator from the main battery (check picture 2). So the charging and the separation is solved from a 20ah (massive amount of parking time, but it can be 12ah or higher depends what i want). it can be charged up to 20A,

But how to solve the parking mode so the camera will know when the car is stopped? Is it enough to get the ACC wire(s) run to the fuse box? (in my case i have 2 dual dashcam system with 2 separate hardwire kit.
 

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Hey guys. Does somebody know if it is possible to run 2 dashcam from one Cellink Neo 9 unit? (in my case 2* A129 pro dual)
Should work, but it will have a fairly short run time due to the heavy load, probably somewhat less than half the runtime with one camera.

But how to solve the parking mode so the camera will know when the car is stopped? Is it enough to get the ACC wire(s) run to the fuse box? (in my case i have 2 dual dashcam system with 2 separate hardwire kit.
You can use the standard HK3 hardwire kits with black to your battery 0V, red to your battery +12V, and yellow to your fuse box.
It is necessary that the isolator only isolates the +ve and not the ground, the yellow does not need isolating.

I recommend making sure that the battery can not charge at temperatures below freezing. If it doesn't have a charging cutoff built in then add one, you can get cheap digital thermostats that will cut the ignition input to your isolator so that it is isolated when the ignition is off and/or when it is below freezing. No problem running the cameras from the battery at low temperature, just no charging of lithium batteries below freezing.
 
The batteries I found also liFePO4 batteries just like the Cellink or Blackvue uses. So the temperature part solved. The batteries also have quite modern BMS built in with app function. I would place the battery inside the car:)
 
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Should work, but it will have a fairly short run time due to the heavy load, probably somewhat less than half the runtime with one camera.

According to Viofo the pro duo uses about 3.6W in parking mode. That's exactly the same as what my 590W-2CH uses. I was able to run 2 of them (7.2W) for about 11 hours using my Cellink B. That is pretty much the same as the calculations (76.8Wh / 7.2W)

The Neo 9 is 115.20Wh so that should give you around 16 hours assuming the power consumption is accurate and stable.
 
According to Viofo the pro duo uses about 3.6W in parking mode. That's exactly the same as what my 590W-2CH uses. I was able to run 2 of them (7.2W) for about 11 hours using my Cellink B. That is pretty much the same as the calculations (76.8Wh / 7.2W)

The Neo 9 is 115.20Wh so that should give you around 16 hours assuming the power consumption is accurate and stable.
Yes, that is roughly what I would expect.

Note that completely emptying a battery and recharging every day will reduce the life considerably compared to say an 80% discharge that you would get with a bigger battery, and this might be worth taking into account when making the investment. The Cellink batteries should last for years anyway but they will wear out at some point.
 
You should have no problem running 2 camera systems off the cellink neo 9, but that would of course shorten the operating time with 2 / 4 cameras to run VS just 1 / 2

If i had a serious need for parking mode i would also go your own route with a second dedicated car ( AGM or other form of deep discharge battery ) or lifepo ( need its own charger too as i dont think you can charge it off the car generator ) and a insulator like you have picked out.

BUT ! i only need parking guard a hour or so when i am shopping as i have CCTV on my camera at home from my apartment, and it is very rare i park for longer elsewhere where i would like parking guard, and if so i can just up the cut off timer. & lower the cut off voltage on those rare occations.
BUT X 2 ! i have yet to receive cameras for testing and a hard wire kit, but that will arrive in a few months or so, so my plan are to upgrade the little battery in my small 2012 Suzuki, and just rely on that one car battery.

Also i dont drive much, just little shopping drive in town and only once a week a longer drive with a total drive time of 1 - 2 hours. ( early retired so my pension and other spending's don't allow for me to drive as much as i like to )

To use long time parking guard daily you of course also have to drive some to replenish what is lost while parking, but if you have some ways drive to and from work that would normally take care of that.
 
I have just fitted a 100A LiFePo4 battery with a Dc-Dc charger.
The battery should give me over 20 days of continious use without charging.
This battery is not dedicated to the cam but to my freezer and air heater.
To charge to full from 20% to 80% I just need to idle the car for 2 hours.


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I have just fitted a 100A LiFePo4 battery with a Dc-Dc charger.
The battery should give me over 20 days of continious use without charging.
This battery is not dedicated to the cam but to my freezer.
To charge to full from 20% to 80% I just need to idle the car for 2 hours.


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Hi. May I ask how the connection for the DC DC charger? How does it connect to the car? Is it to the car ACC fuse? Or direct to alternator?
 
Hi. May I ask how the connection for the DC DC charger? How does it connect to the car? Is it to the car ACC fuse? Or direct to alternator?

If you fit a smaller battery like a 30A you dont need a Dc-Dc charger. A Victron Cyrix Li-Ct VSR should do. This should charge the 30A in an hour.
This cannot be used on cars with the smart alternator.
The Dc charger is connected to the plus pole of the starter battery and triggered by the alternator current. My car has a conventional alternator. With a smart alternator you need to connect the D+ to a live ignition feed.
With the engine off, both batteries separate. The link posted below has an English version if you click around.
You can also check out the manual.
The cables used are as thin as 4mm2 for lengths under 2 meters. I used 16mm2 because of the existing cables.
My dashcam uses 4,8A per 24 hours.

f4525d03a08c9fcc838e699b147d1300.jpg

1326a7c9570b7c4124714b6f62d05535.jpg

www.votronic.de


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Today I drove 8 km and my battery charge went up from 95% to 99%.
Charging was at 13,7V and 16,9A with only the cam running off it.

931305e143dee235ae8a5d2d273394c8.jpg

0796cae4fe2927fdfa884dd9590136ec.jpg



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Charging was at 13,7V and 16,9A with only the cam running off it.
231.53 watts, that is quite fast :)

What happens in the winter, you are not supposed to charge lithium batteries below freezing, and charging at that speed should probably only be above 5 degrees C. Does it have a battery heater?
 
231.53 watts, that is quite fast :)

What happens in the winter, you are not supposed to charge lithium batteries below freezing, and charging at that speed should probably only be above 5 degrees C. Does it have a battery heater?

My battery has a heating foil and takes only 5A when under 0°C. The rest of the current is used to activate the heating foil
With the Votronic, it charges only at half strength when under zero until the battery heats up.
I could have saved 509 euros if I had bought both the same time. Then I could have bought a basic lithium battery.
This charging was done through a Victron Cyrix VSR for testing purposes. It would have been twice as fast with the Dc charger.


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