Battery Life

[Gary Edstrom]

I have had my DR900X 2CH for about a year now and have just made a discovery that I SHOULD have learned long ago: Leaving the WiFi ON reduces battery life! I have my dash-cam on 24/7. Besides for recording my driving, it is also a "Poor Man's" security camera in my condo complex. My parking space has an excellent view of our secured garage. So, with the permission of our condo association, I record activities in the garage 24/7 when my car is home. I use both a B-124 battery pack plus one extender pack to power the dash-cam. On a fully charged battery, I have found that it will power the system for around 36 hours. Since I normally do not do enough daily driving to recharge the battery pack, I plug it in to an external charger every morning for an hour or so. Normally, when I attach the charger, the battery pack still has maybe 8-10 hours left in it. Still, on irregular occasions, the battery pack would be dead when I came down in the morning. I didn't figure it out until yesterday, although I should have. If I the WiFi is accidentally left ON, it produces enough of an extra current drain to discharge the battery pack before I can get down to recharging it in the morning. WiFi OFF draws about 0.35 amps, while WiFi ON draws 0.45 amps. I do have the DR900X programmed to turn the appropriate indicator light on when WiFi is ON, but my camera is mounted behind my rear view mirror, so I can't see it form the normal driver's position. I will have to add a check to my daily routine that the light is OFF. I wish there were an option to have the WiFi AUTOMATICALLY turn itself off if it hasn't connected to anything in 5 minutes or so.

 

[KANNINA 2.0]

Turn off the Cloud Service in the "Cloud" firmware section and the WiFi auto turn off option/slider in the "Wi-Fi" firmware section will un-grey and you'll be able to toggle it on.

If you have the Cloud Service enabled, BV presumes that wifi must be on to access it, so the firmware won't let you turn it off.

 

[Gary Edstrom]

Turn off the Cloud Service in the "Cloud" firmware section and the WiFi auto turn off option/slider in the "Wi-Fi" firmware section will un-grey and you'll be able to toggle it on.

If you have the Cloud Service enabled, BV presumes that wifi must be on to access it, so the firmware won't let you turn it off.

Thank you for your response. I checked the items you suggested and Cloud Service was already disabled and the auto turn off was already set. I think it was a simple case of me not manually turning the WiFi off after downloading an event from the camera. Here I have had the camera for a full year and am still learning new things. At least now I will have it filed in the back of my mind to occasionally check the WiFi LED on the camera to make sure it is turned off. Apparently, the extra battery drain from having the WiFi on all the time is enough to bring the battery below the 24 hours of life level if I haven't run the car all day long. I like having the camera running 24/7 even when parked in the garage as a general security measure, which means that on a daily basis, I need to plug in my external charger. Normally I do it first thing in the morning after getting up and getting dressed. If the WiFi is not running, that should be more than enough charge to get it through the next 24 hours.

I just got back from a trip from Los Angeles to Oklahoma to visit my sister. 4 days/3 nights on the road each way. Of course, on the travel days, there was far more than enough to charge the battery. Even when I stopped for 2 weeks in Oklahoma, I did enough daily driving around there to keep the battery fully charged, so I never had to plug in my external charger.

 

[KANNINA 2.0]

No worries, I learn new things and relearn old things all the time.

You definitely won't get 24 hours out of your cam if you leave it running constantly, not without additional power sources.

I dont drive nearly as much as i used to, so like you I leave my car on a battery charger in the garage most of the time. Nice to not have to worry about it much.