Car battery drain..?

I have had the pmp parking mode switched off but the green light is still on, is that right?
I'll check on mine later.
LATER:
With 12V to the Yellow wire (Batt +) and the PMP switched OFF and ignition OFF. NO GREEN LIGHT NO PWR TO CAM
With 12V to the Yellow wire (Batt +) and the PMP switched ON and ignition OFF. GREEN LIGHT ON, PWR TO CAM
With 12V to the Yellow wire (Batt +) and the PMP switched OFF and ignition ON. GREEN LIGHT ON, PWR to Cam. Green light and power to cam go off about 5 seconds after switching off the ignition.
With 12V to the Yellow wire (Batt +) and the PMP switched ON and ignition ON. GREEN LIGHT ON, PWR to Cam. Green light and power to cam stay on until voltage threshold or timeout is reached after switching off the ignition.
if I just use the dash cam powered by the cars power outlet and totally bypass the pmp as I understand it the dash cam will power down when the ignition is off so shouldn’t be drawing any current, is that correct?
Yes, of course providing the power outlet is switched off with the ignition. The camera should announce that it is shutting down (If that is set in the settings).
 
Last edited:
Right, have just been out to check, car is on charge
had a look through the car window and the cam record light is flashing the pmp light is on, even though the park mode was off..could it be that the pmp is faulty?
 
had a look through the car window and the cam record light is flashing the pmp light is on, even though the park mode was off..could it be that the pmp is faulty?
Always possible, but not very likely.
Are you absolutely certain that the red wire is connected to an ignition switched supply? Because if the red wire is at a permanent 12V, the PMP will think the ignition is on and switch the 12V to the camera permanently.
To test this possibility, disconnect the red wire, switch the PMP Off (0). If the green LED was on, it should go off after about 5 seconds or less.
Note: When the PMP green light is on, the camera is being supplied with 12V. No green light, no 12V to cam.
 
I will have to check at the weekend, it was installed by a “ professional “ but I guess that doesn’t mean anything
I’ll let yo7 know what I find
 
I will have to check at the weekend, it was installed by a “ professional “ but I guess that doesn’t mean anything
I’ll let yo7 know what I find

Professional is subjective. People often purport themselves to be knowledgeable even if they may lack experience with certain devices. Would you want a General Practitioner doing brain or open heart surgery? I mean a General Practitioner is a doctor, but often don't specialize in surgery.
 
I have corrected a couple of omissions in Post #21. The corrections are in bold italics.
 
I bought the iRoad x10 dashcam that has front and rear camera. They also have some scanning LED for theft and the motion and the parking settings. I set the voltage to turn it off at 12.3 volts via the cam's software. I find it will shutdown at around midnight due to the 12.3 volt setting. It lasted longer at 12.0 volts, but still switched off by AM plus dealing with the car complaining about the extra drain on the dash display.

The car, 2020 Kia Hybrd EX, throws up the car's computer warning about "Some electrical device draining the 12 volt battery." Looking at the car's 12 volt battery label shows it to be a Group 34, 600 CCA battery of 68 AH capacity.

My plan of attack will be to get a larger Group 34 battery with more CCA. Some Group 34, Odyseey and Northstar (Made by Odyssey?), are around 850 CCA so a lot more capacity than the stock 600 CCA OEM battery. While looking, the Odyssey warranty isn't that great and stubborn to deal with given some Amazon reviews where "You must buy it from an Odyssey dealer" - and Amazon isn't one even though they sell it, just no warranty. I'll have to find some local dealer.

Casey-
 
A larger battery may not fix your problem with the car giving battery drain warning messages, the camera is still going to draw the same power so the computer is still going to detect the same drop
 
Right. . had a bit of an investigation today managed to get the light on the pmp to extinguish, but now it won’t switch on again, checked the voltage
yellow wire which as I understand it is the permanent live, I have 11.6 v at the plug to the pmp
red wire. used for parking mode. 11.6 v with ignition on ( the low voltage would indicate I need to charge the battery)
so my conclusion is the power magic pro is faulty, I have emailed blackvue for a replacement so I will wait and see
atm the camera is powered by the power point in the car, so no parking mode at the moment
 
A larger battery may not fix your problem with the car giving battery drain warning messages, the camera is still going to draw the same power so the computer is still going to detect the same drop

Installed a Northstar AGM battery (~$310) with 905 CCA (Advertised to be 880 CCA, but guy said they were a bit more.) who also tested it on the install along with car's charging voltage (~14.5 volts.). I thought it should be a lot better lasting than the OEM sulfuric acid battery which tested at 600 CCA. Aside, it has a free replacement 4 year warranty per the dealer so maybe one good thing. Fwiw, Odyssey and Northstar were same at one time, but two owners split up and one took the Odyssey brand and other took the Northstar one per conversation with battery dealer.

However, this AM it was OFF again as Parking and Monitor scanning LED's were off on front and rear cameras. Grrrr!!!

On review of the microSD card, it shut down around 3:30AM so it did last longer than the old battery which shut down around midnight. The x10 cam I set to auto-reboot at 3AM so it did that fine, but 30 minutes later it turned off. Voltage to shut off I set to 12.3 volts (highest.).

The car, when being started, goes through a "System Check" on the dash. With the old OEM battery it would pop up the "External deice is draining the battery" message but the car would still start. With the new Northstar battery, the "System Check" operates as normal without the annoying "External device draining battery" message so good thing there.

What I will do is set the x10 to shut off at 12.0 volts which might make it last to the next AM and day's driving. Don't know if that will trigger the car's "System Check" error message. New cars are sure temperamental to external stuff being added.

If that fails I may shut off the Parking or Monitor mode. Maybe Monitor mode first, and then the Parking mode.

______________________________________________________

Additional added later:

I took out the microSD card and found it had about 15 hours of recordings, and it stopped at 3:30AM. It did not loop from there while in Parking mode. Might be that once the car goes into Motion again, it resumes but unsure. Still to new a system for me.

While I was looking at the card in the computer, the x10 fron cam was squaking about "No memory card inserted" which meant it did not fully turn off as I had thought. It was in some sort of standby mode.

The card was the stock 32GB the camera came with, and it showed about 15 hours of recordings. No audio, just front and rear camera video.

Since the car didn't complain about "Some other device draining the battery" message. It could be the 900 CCA Northstar battery is supplying enough current to run the thing for who knows how long if a larger memory card is in it to write video to.

I'll try a 128GB mircoSD and see what happens as that might make it run for a couple of days - maybe. If so, and the car does not complain about "External draining device" then the higher-capacity Northstar battery upgrade is working well.

C-
 
Last edited:
Right. . had a bit of an investigation today managed to get the light on the pmp to extinguish,
How?
but now it won’t switch on again, checked the voltage yellow wire which as I understand it is the permanent live, I have 11.6 v at the plug to the pmp
red wire. used for parking mode. 11.6 v with ignition on ( the low voltage would indicate I need to charge the battery)
Did you not see my big START THE ENGINE hint? in Post #3.
If you have the PMP sat to 12V then it takes 12.25(ish)V to 'start it. If the battery voltage is 11.6 and the cut off voltage is 12V, then why would you expect it to turn on the camera?
so my conclusion is the power magic pro is faulty, I have emailed blackvue for a replacement so I will wait and see
atm the camera is powered by the power point in the car, so no parking mode at the moment
And my conclusion is that it's working just the way it should.

By the way, the Red is NOT used for parking mode. It is used to switch the PMP ON/OFF with the ignition. The Only difference is that
if the parking Mode is switched OFF, the camera switches off about 5 seconds after the ignition.
if parking Mode is switched ON, then the camera stays on until either the cutoff voltage is reached OR the timeout expires.

Both conditions for switching on the camera will ONLY work if the battery voltage is 0.25V ABOVE your cutoff voltage. 11.6V just doesn't cut it, so start the engine.
Have you read THIS?
 
I noticed yesterday evening that a white light was flashing on the front of the camera, so am I correct in thinking that the dash cam was still working.? If it was down to 11.5 v then should it have switched off as it was below the cut off voltage?
 
The white light flashing means it's recording.
IF the battery voltage was 11.5V then yes it should have switched off. I.e. no white light on cam, no green light on PMP.
But WAS the battery 11.5V you have not actually said, only asked a 'what if' type question.
 
Yes I must admit I don’t know for sure the voltage wasn’t 12v , but I got the battery message again this morning
i think I’ll keep it through the power adapter for now, and see if the message appears again..
 
If by the 'power adaptor' you mean the thing that plugs into the ciggy lighter socket, then you should have absolutely no problems as the cam will only come on with the ignition (same as PMP with the ignition switched off).
If the battery monitor complains, then it ain't the cam.
 
Yes, I’ve been having a think, and yes the pmp wouldn’t come on if the voltage was at 11.5, I must have just caught it as it was just at the point of cutting off, hence the light on, then not on, if you see what I mean, so the car has been charging overnight so I will keep the cam in the cigarette socket, ( apparently it’s not called that anymore) and have it as a basic set up and see if the battery stays charged, if it doesn’t then it can’t be the camera and must be somewhere else, I’ve even completely unplugged the pmp just to make sure, I’ll report back in a few days
 
( apparently it’s not called that anymore)
No, of course it isn't. The woke snowflakes have put paid to that one. But I suspect that even the wokest, 'right on' snowflake would know exactly what I was talking about with 100% un-ambiguity. Whereas power adaptor /auxiliary socket etc. leaves plenty to the imagination.

I think that your testing routine outlined above is sound and will 'prove' one way or the other whether it is the cam causing the problem.

Are you basing all this stuff on the fact that something is really flattening the car's battery (difficulty/ non-starting problem) or the fact that the car's display is telling you that something is?
 
Back
Top