Dash cam shops to help answer questions? Baltimore, MD

stevendashcam

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I have been looking to buy my first dash cam but am overwhelmed by the number of options, trade-offs, and safety concerns (car battery life). I posted once here and got a great deal of assistance that certainly helped me narrow my choices, however there are just a number of questions it raises that I feel would be best answered in person. Anyone from the Baltimore, MD area recommend somewhere to go for help answering my dash cam questions?

Thank you!
 
By safety concerns do you mean a battery exploding or something? If that is the case I recommend a cam with a capacitor rather than a battery, especially if you live in a hot climate.

I can recommend my RSC Nano with a capacitor, have had it for several months and it is great. Overnight I connect it to a large 20,000 mah battery bank and it will run for almost 3 days and not drain my car battery.


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By safety concerns do you mean a battery exploding or something? If that is the case I recommend a cam with a capacitor rather than a battery, especially if you live in a hot climate.

I can recommend my RSC Nano with a capacitor, have had it for several months and it is great. Overnight I connect it to a large 20,000 mah battery bank and it will run for almost 3 days and not drain my car battery.


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I meant draining of battery really. I am interested in the battery pack by Black Vue (https://www.blackvue.com/product/b-112/). My question here is.. If I go on vacation, will it automatically shut-off once it drains the battery too much? Say I am gone for 7 days.

Thanks,
 
I meant draining of battery really. I am interested in the battery pack by Black Vue (https://www.blackvue.com/product/b-112/). My question here is.. If I go on vacation, will it automatically shut-off once it drains the battery too much? Say I am gone for 7 days.

Thanks,

Hmm 3000 MAH, I would go for at least 10,000 mah, that would be good enough to power a 5v dashcam for about a day and a half depending on traffic for the motion sensor set on your dashcam. Once that Powerbank is dead it’s dead lol.


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The cam and how it is being used will determine how long a given powerbank will run the cam. Or how big a powerbank you'll need to get the time you want. Generally, you can use the figure of 500mA per hour to get a close estimate of powerbank size or recording time. As the powerbank ages it's capacity gets lower so if timespan is critical, allow for something bigger in a powerbank. If you are anywhere south of the Mason/Dixon line, it's probably wise to select a cam which uses super-caps instead of an internal battery as cam batteries don't stand up to high summer heat well.

Cams which pre-buffer in parking mode drawn nearly as much current then as when recording, but do the job of parking protection best. Cams using "time lapse" will draw less power, and cams which use Motion Detect less power than that, but motion detect can be very cheesy and unreliable in most cams.

Another consideration of parking mode protection is SD card capacity, and whether the firmware limits the total amount of space for 'event' files. A bad Motion Detect can fill a card with locked files quickly, and "time lapse" files can be overwritten once card capacity is reached.

Give us an idea of which cams you're considering or the features you must have in your cam and we can get a little more specific.

Phil
 
I am interested in the Blackvue 750S-2CH. I would like the to use the G-Force impact and have recording loop automatically. Parking mode would be used when at work and home (although I am not worried about damage at work, I do not have interest in manually turning it off every day while at work so it will need to last the majority of the day..) how would I make that work?? I drive about 1 1/2 - 2 hours total each day (to and from work). Parking sensor is my most concern as well as not losing battery throughout the day preventing it from recording an impact. From my understanding, GPS location viewing from another device is only viewable if your car has WiFi or the dash cam is connected to WiFi somehow?! You would use blackvue’s cloud service... but need WiFi somehow.. Am I correct with that? Curious if I can locate my car if it is stolen.

I just saw that the cloud service actually is publicly viewable online!!! Anyone can see where you are, at any given time. But that is for another discussion.

So please, how do I manage parking with this given the situation explained above? Better understanding of the limitations to GPS location would be helpful as well.

Thank you!
 
If you run off your car battery it do of course put a extra load on the battery, but its not like it will slash your car battery's lifetime from 5-6 years to 1 - 2 years.
No matter what option you go with, you still have to drive enough for the battery to get charged in relation to how much you use the battery when you are parked.
So if you only drive a hour every day and expect to use the camera in parking mode all the other hours of the day you will be in trouble i assume.

I myself are for the first time about to be able to try parking mode in a camera of mine, but i will only be using timed parking guard for 30 minutes or so after i park, that will cover all of my shopping time in car parks, and at home i dont need it as i have a CCTV camera on my car where it is parked. ( apartment car parked in back yard parking lot, CCTV camera on balcony door )
And if i should one day use a little more time as i will be parked out on the town, then i can just enter the camera and select a longer time frame for the camera to be in parking mode.

If you have a larger vehicle, like a truck, then you might be able to have a second battery installed, and have it isolated from your main car battery like the camper / RV people have.
This way you have a whole battery just for the camera alone, and isolated it can not discharge your main battery.
This setup are sort of like the new dedicated dashcam batteries also work.

This is a route i would go myself if i had a larger vehicle, but sadly this side of a lotto win i will have to live with my shoe box sized little hatchback and its one little battery.
 
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