Battery Life... What Battery Life....!

[darrenjuggins]

Good Evening,

Purchased the 522GW last Thursday with the Rear View Camera, the unit works great (all be it the IOS app, but I'll park that for the moment).

The issue I have is the appalling battery life on the unit, when not plugged into power.

I've taken Tiffany's advice from an earlier post of placing the unit on charge (she mentioned 2 hours), I charged it for a full 12 hours from early evening to early morning, with the parking sensor turn off.

I have then immediately placed the unit in the car and turned on.. all is well, the camera records and it does everything great, until I want to turn the car off and look at the footage.... within less than a minute the plug into power warning comes up and within 30 Seconds it shuts down... Much much less than the 15 minutes I've be told to expect from a battery that has been fully charged and then recharged.

I'm giving it one last go this evening on the mains and then I'll see how long it lasts, but surely a new unit's battery should be much more substantial, it's had less than a weeks worth of use.... I knew the Apple Phone Batteries where crummy, but come on Next Base, I expect to be able to at least disconnect from the power and make adjustments and watch the videos for more than 1m 30sec.

Tiffany, if you think that there is something wrong with the units battery, can you advice me, should I return to Halfords and request a replacement based on these results (as they are legally the first port of call with any issues), happy to provide serial numbers in case it's a batch issue or something with it being a new product, please let me know.

Kindest Regards
Darren

 

[Simcor]

To be honest I haven't been able to charge mine up in the house. I've tried several different USB plugs and the PC. The blue light is on for charging but seems to stop charging after a short while and isn't full of charge.

Something else I've been meaning to mention so it may well be a trip back to Halfords for exchange to see if a replacement unit fairs better.

 

[darrenjuggins]

Hi Simcor,

If you have the parking mode to OFF then it will charge, strangely for it to charge it has to be physically working with the screen visible, where as on other products it normally charges faster and more efficiently when the unit is off, but I got told this is how I need to ensure it gets a full charge from support. It's possible that you have parking mode on, which is why the blue light goes off.

So it does charge, well at least I get my 1m 30sec out of it from 12 hours worth of electricity

I'm sure Support will be along soon with some advice.

Other than the battery and the IOS app (whoops mentioned it again), the camera seems to work great.

Cheers
Darren

 

[Simcor]

Parking mode is off unit is on charge whilst turned off.

 

[darrenjuggins]

Update:

I'm experimenting to see if I can find why it seems after the dash cam has been in the car being used connected directly to the car, that the battery power seems to be so low...

So i've just connected the unit to the mains in the house (Unit left turned on as recommended) for the last couple of hours (put on charge about 10pm), i've just managed to get 11 mins use out of the unit before it chose to shut down.

It will be interesting when I head down to London on Thursday which will be a several hour journey, just how much charge is left after the journey... I have my suspicions that when being charged through the front magnetic connector, the unit is getting enough power to run, but not insufficient to charge up the battery in the camera ?

I'll ensure it's been fully charged at home first and then run the camera down to London connected on the mount, if my suspicions are proved correct, when I remove the unit to run it on the battery, the charge will have dissipated leaving a very low level of charge after being run connected to the care through the mount...

watch this space...

 

[jokiin]

the results could be an indication that the problem is the in car charger rather than the camera/battery

 

[darrenjuggins]

Yes indeed - I've just been hunting around and found another thread, where someone had a similar issue, charged from mains, seemed fine, charged in car using the supplied 12V Cig adaptor, fine, charged via a hardwire kit, worked fine, but lost charge ?

In the disucssion, it was originally in a 7.5A piggy back, he's since moved it to a 15A (Switched Live) which seems to have solved the problem....

So thinking about that, does the unit actually require only up to 5A to work, where as it actually required a 12A or higher feed such as a 15A (as there doesn't seem to be many 12A fuses) to actually operate and Charge ?

Hmmmm... interesting....

 

[jokiin]

5A circuit is plenty, perhaps the other guy didn't terminate the cables correctly, moving it to a higher rated fuse won't make any difference so must have been something else at play

are you using the included power supply?

 

[M8TJT]

Misunderstanding of current requirements never fails to amuse me.
Here's a couple of facts.
A device will draw as much current (A) as it needs, which is dependent on its resistance (R) to current flow. The size of the fuse is irrelevant as the supply voltage (V) is the same regardless of the size of fuse, so the current drawn will be identical. (I=V/R. Ohm's law) The purpose of the fuse is to protect the supply circuit from a fault in the device and to prevent the possibility of a fire in case of a device fault.

The size of fuse in a device circuit is entirely dependent on the current drawn by the device which is generally proportional to the voltage applied to it (Ohm's law again), and as the voltage is substantially constant in a car, the current will be the same regardless of fuse rating. The only way of getting more current into a device is by increasing the voltage applied, but as most devices these days are fed through a switch mode power supply (SMPS) the supply voltage is also irrelevant (within reason).

As dashcams seem to draw somewhere between 500ma to 2A (max) the supply fuse should be in the order of 3A to 7.5A (No higher to prevent the cable/device going on fire under fault conditions)

The only proviso for the above is that the fuse rating should be the lowest value capable of passing the current drawn by the device under non-fault conditions as a larger value fuse will not make the device draw more current (i.e. charge it quicker.)

There is also another proviso that devices such as the dashcam secondary battery supplies do take a lot more current to charge them that a bog standard dashcam and must be fused accordingly.

 

[darrenjuggins]

Hi,

Thanks to both of you I was doing research and was just expressing it as a possibility.

As the second poster has confirmed, it doesn’t seem to be a factor as they’ve explained.

I’m using the nextbase permanent fitting kit for the car.

I’ll keep an eye on things and see how it performs this week.

Kindest Regards
Darren

 

[Spiffman-Space]

Same experience here. Rear view module attached. (Using 12V Car power cable, connected to mount) parking sensor off. 30 seconds battery life

 

[Nextbase Support]

@darrenjuggins regarding the app from our chat on Sunday - new app release coming to fix the bug you had with app connecting. Should be 48 hours.

 

[darrenjuggins]

Hi,

IOS app is available NOW on the apps store.. get it whilst it’s hot.

Kindest Regards
Darren

Next Base Support, thanks you for the heads up.

 

[Simcor]

I tried my camera out of thr car seems to charge up OK on pc when turned on addly. Although it had fully charged itself in the car anyway.

On battery not recording it lasted 18 minutes plus and was still showing one bar of battery. But I needed to go to bed so couldn't wait any longer.

 

[Kremmen]

I thought the idea of the battery was just to allow the unit to finish recording should the ignition power be cut due to an incident ?

Therefore only 3 or 5 minutes max depending on your file size preference.

 

[Spuds]

I thought the idea of the battery was just to allow the unit to finish recording should the ignition power be cut due to an incident ?

Therefore only 3 or 5 minutes max depending on your file size preference.

That was my understanding too, the battery was just there to close an open file when the ignition was turned off. It was never meant to operate the camera on inbuilt battery power. Apologies if I have this wrong.

 

[mdovey]

That was my understanding too, the battery was just there to close an open file when the ignition was turned off. It was never meant to operate the camera on inbuilt battery power. Apologies if I have this wrong.

That and also when in standby for Park Mode.

However, there is a reason you might what longer battery life. We all know it is illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving. Also it is clear that if you are in the driving seat and the car is moving you are driving, and if you aren't in the driving seat you clearly aren't driving. However, there is a bit of a grey area if you are in the driving seat and the car is stationary. There are reports of people getting points for using a mobile whilst parked because the engine was running, or even because the keys were in the ignition.

So current advice is to switch off the engine, and (unless you have keyless ignition) remove the key. However, if you are using the app to access\download videos, then that means you are relying on the dashcam's battery!

Matthew

 

[Spuds]

That and also when in standby for Park Mode.

However, there is a reason you might what longer battery life. We all know it is illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving. Also it is clear that if you are in the driving seat and the car is moving you are driving, and if you aren't in the driving seat you clearly aren't driving. However, there is a bit of a grey area if you are in the driving seat and the car is stationary. There are reports of people getting points for using a mobile whilst parked because the engine was running, or even because the keys were in the ignition.

So current advice is to switch off the engine, and (unless you have keyless ignition) remove the key. However, if you are using the app to access\download videos, then that means you are relying on the dashcam's battery!

Matthew

A fair point Matthew and to add to that I was stopped in traffic today for a good few minutes. The stop/start engaged and cut the power to the camera which caused the camera to shut down stopping the recordings. First time I have noticed this happening and I wasn't even aware that the accessory socket cut off with the stop/start. More investigation needed on my part.