Battery only dashcams

[AnthonyH]

Hi
My first post so hope I am in the correct area
I need a dash cam mainly for park mode as my car is not parked near my home and I have had an issue with vandilism prevously, but my concern is if the camera has to be connected via the cigarette lighter or USB and its on all night will it drain the battery to quickly?
I have read about hard wiring the dash cam but as the car is brand new I am worried that I would breach the warranty if I hard wired the camera into the car.
I have never had a dash cam before so this is my first experience
Thank you for any help and advice

 

[kamkar]

Hola Anthony welcome to the forum.
If your in dash cigarette lighter plug are not powered all the time, then you can not do parking guard with that as a power source.

Most brands have a hard wire kit, where you piggy back on one or 2 of the cars fuses, this when remover you will never know was there, it do not require any cutting of wires or anything like that, it just piggy back on a existing circuit fuse.
So you remove the car fuse in the socket, put the adapter in there instead, then put car fuse in the lower of the 2 slots in the adapter to again fuse the cars circuit, and then you have a fuse more you can put in a fuse for the new circuit you are adding ( i use 5A fuses on my hard wire kit )
The fuses i an piggy backing off in my car are two 10 A fuses.

You of course should not piggy back on fuses / circuits for engine management and airbags ASO, but lights - heaters - seats - windows and what not should be fine to tap into.

Most hard wire kits today need 3 wires, two +12 V wires, one that are always on even when parked, and one that is only on when you start the car, and then of course the grould connection.

Of course if you have the camera running in parking mode 23 hours a day, then the drain might be larger than what you can recharge only driving one hour every day.
The hard wire kits most often have a low voltage cut off selector switch, so the system can not completely drain your battery,,,,, that would also be destroying your car battery as they are not meant to be deep discharged.
In general we say that 12.2 volts cut off are okay, and that should equal a 50 % depleted battery which should be safe to use.

I have also been victim of vandalism several times after i moved to this town i live in, i now have a CCTV camera on my parked car, this is mainly due to the car being in a dark back yard with little light, but the CCTV camera have its own IR light source and so see just fine in pitch darkness.

 

[AnthonyH]

Hola Anthony welcome to the forum.
If your in dash cigarette lighter plug are not powered all the time, then you can not do parking guard with that as a power source.

Most brands have a hard wire kit, where you piggy back on one or 2 of the cars fuses, this when remover you will never know was there, it do not require any cutting of wires or anything like that, it just piggy back on a existing circuit fuse.
So you remove the car fuse in the socket, put the adapter in there instead, then put car fuse in the lower of the 2 slots in the adapter to again fuse the cars circuit, and then you have a fuse more you can put in a fuse for the new circuit you are adding ( i use 5A fuses on my hard wire kit )
The fuses i an piggy backing off in my car are two 10 A fuses.

You of course should not piggy back on fuses / circuits for engine management and airbags ASO, but lights - heaters - seats - windows and what not should be fine to tap into.

Most hard wire kits today need 3 wires, two +12 V wires, one that are always on even when parked, and one that is only on when you start the car, and then of course the grould connection.

Of course if you have the camera running in parking mode 23 hours a day, then the drain might be larger than what you can recharge only driving one hour every day.
The hard wire kits most often have a low voltage cut off selector switch, so the system can not completely drain your battery,,,,, that would also be destroying your car battery as they are not meant to be deep discharged.
In general we say that 12.2 volts cut off are okay, and that should equal a 50 % depleted battery which should be safe to use.

I have also been victim of vandalism several times after i moved to this town i live in, i now have a CCTV camera on my parked car, this is mainly due to the car being in a dark back yard with little light, but the CCTV camera have its own IR light source and so see just fine in pitch darkness.

Thank you for your reply which is most informative. My car is brand new and I would not have a clue how or where the fuses are located nor do I really have the skills to do anything with the connections, so would have to get somebody to fit it.
I just wondered if there was a battery operated camera that was available that would be an alternative. As the car is parked within a community and not near my own property I cannot use a CCTV camera although I have them protecting my property but the distance from my property to the car makes that impossible.
My only alternative is a battery operated security camera or maybe a solar powered one as I live in a very sunny part of Spain
Thank again for your response

 

[kamkar]

The dashcams do have a build in power source, but this is just there to properly finalize the last recording in case of a catastrophic event where the regular power would be lost.
If a video file are not closed properly it can be corrupted and so not immedially playable, though often this can be fixed but then you need a PC and fancy software.

Otherwise the dashcams are very small so at best it would only have battery for 60 - 90 minutes like you will see action cameras have ( generally from a battery about 1400 mah in size )
But dashcam batteries are just 3-400 MAH as they are not meant to power the camera.
But you do not want batteries. they last shorter, and can actually be a fire hazard ( just search lipo battery fire on youtube ) Super capasitors are much better, last longer and no fire hazard,,,,, though to be honest never heard of a battery dashcam burning down a car.
But lipo batteries are no good with high heat or low temperatures, when they start to go off the will swell up

I live in a 2 floor apartment, so my CCTV camera i have just screwed onto my balcony door, it can pan tilt and zoom, which are nice as i dont always park in the exact same place, and also i am zoomed in very close to the car to be able to identify a person.
Big + in my case is i have a top down look at about 45 degrees, so nothing in the background that can trigger false events, also the camera have AI motion detect, so it only trigger if there is a human or vehicle shape within 1-2 M of my car.
Events are sent as notifications to me phone and the tablet i have on my bedside table, so of course as i value my sleep it cant trigger on a rat or a cat walking by my car.
Snow like right now, do mess up things, so this is what i see using my PC to access the system right now. ( and zoomed out )



Regarding installing a dashcam, most shops that do things like car stereo and so on should be able to do this in a couple of hours tops, i would assume a regular car mechanic maybe even your car dealership could also do it.

 

[kamkar]

To power a camera with a battery, lets say for just 8 - 10 hours, the battery alone would have to be the size of 3 packs of cigarettes if not more, and it would be quite heavy.
So the whole dashcam would be quite large and easy to see on your windscreen, and ideally we like dashcams to not be seen, so small and installed stealthy on top of the windscreen, where they often just come off as another sensor camera.

There are dedicated battery power packs for dashcams, which they will then use when parked instead of the car battery, and these can be powered / charged while drivning from the 12 V socket in the dash / console,,,,, but these are not cheap and will essentially double the cost of the system.
But the overall is the same, so you will of course have to drive some every day to keep what ever battery charged
The cars own battery charge pretty fast to start with at least ( just like a phone will ) this charge rate can be 30 - 40 Amps
The dedicated dashcam power packs, will charge with 10 - 15 Amps if hardwired to a fuse. but on the 12 V socket they will charge at a lower rate like 7 Amps, as you can not load that 12 V socket too hard.

 

[AnthonyH]

Thanks again for you help and advice, I guess its either hard wired or a dedicated battery pack as my property is not within viewing distance of my parked car, I will have to check with the car company as my car is a long term lease and they might have rules about doing anything to the car other than their approved maintenance.
But will look at a dedicated battery pack and a camera, so many on the market and its so confusing to a novice like me but again many thanks and much appreciated

 

[kamkar]

Yes the market are huge, though most are brands you are best off ignoring.
Parking mode in itself are also a problem, as in what kind of parking guard to do.

There is motion detect, most often this is too sensitive and so record all the time.
Then you have G-sensor, and this are also fine for a major event, but i think if someone key the side of your car it will not detect that as it is not much of a G-force event.
Then you have a few modes of conserving power / generating as little heat as possible, common for these are they are on all the time.
So this is time lapse recording, usually you can choose how many FPS this is dont with, and i think 15 FPS are the max.
Then you have my favorite which are low bitrate recording, this use a low bitrate so the camera need less compute power to encode this, and it also take up less space on the memory card a + is you can most often have G-sensor on while doing this, this mean that at least bigger events the G-sensor will go off and if nothing else act like a time maker for when something actually happened.

If you use time lapse or low bitrate, well the camera record all the time, so if something happen there are no way to know other than seeing that on the car when you return to it, and then you still have to figure out when it happened, and even if you go thru the footage at 2 X speed, well t hen looking over 8 hours of recordings will still take 4 hours to do.

Using the G-sensor alone, is also a problem even if the event are big enough to trigger it, cuz the camera are off or in a low power state, so take a few seconds to wake up.
This are some times alleviated by having a buffer, which are often 20 seconds before the actual triggering event, so in that case you should have it all.

Add to all of that, you still need to be parked somewhere with light, cuz no light the camera will not see anything, this dont have to be A LOT of light, but a street light above or very near the parked car are a must.
There are some cameras that claim " night vision" but these you should walk away from, first of all it could just be a claim, others actually have IR lights on the camera, but those will just reflect in the windscreen and blind the camera itself, and they are weak so even if the glass was not there, they only have a range of 1 - 2 M


All of this is the reason i have the IP camera on my car, there are light in the back yard with a PIR sensor that make it come on, but where my car are parked that light will just backlight anyone approaching my car.
But i do use parking guard but just on a 3 hour timer, this cover all my shopping and conserve the little battery in my little car when i park at home.

Also though probably not a big issue in Spain, but if you have rain on the windscreen, or snow / whatever, well it can block the view for the camera, and so to some degree render it useless.

The parking guard itself, well with a 3 wire kit, it work by sensing power on the ACC wire, some / many can also do 2 wire, this mean it must be on a always on power source, the camera then change to parking guard after some minutes of the G-sensor not detecting any movement.
This mean the 2 wire able cameras, well some use those with a 20.000 MAH / BIG USB power bank, but then you have to plug that in instead of the regular power source, CUZ these power banks often can not handle charging and powering something at the same time, so people often have 2 of those power banks, so when one are in use the other one they charge at home.
But i personally feel this is a temporary fix to a problem.


Sorry to be a buzz kill like that, but just like driving with a dashcam it do not mean you will capture the plate on that car that just tore off your wing mirror, and that surely will not happen in low light.
Then parking guard also have its limitations / challenges.

I must inform you so you can make informed decisions.

There are no stupid questions in here, but there are some that hav been asked many times.

 

[AnthonyH]

Wow thanks again for that very comprehensive explanation and I guess after reading this, that for my purpose of just stopping my car from being vandalised (we think we know who is doing it and they live near me) maybe I'll just take my chances and leave the car where its parked without any camera's.
The more I look into it the more I am confused but I guess that's an age thing
Thanks again for all your help and advice it really is much appreciated

 

[kamkar]

I am no spring chick myself, from 1966