Dashcam for when I am not in the car

[QwertyWoohoo]

I am looking for the best dashcam that will also allow me to record what happens when I am not in the vehicle. I have an Elantra 2017.

Mostly for when my car is in a parking lot and someone decides to accidentally hit my car or open a door into my car and damage the paint. Obviously, it needs to record the sides too.

What do you guys recommend?

 

[jokiin]

there's no simple solution for what you want, some people have done DIY systems using multiple cameras, parking and side coverage adds a lot of complexity if you want it to be effective, not impossible, just not straightforward

 

[niko]

One of the main challenges is the power source/consumption.
How many hours you driver per day?

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[QwertyWoohoo]

I drive one hour. On some occasions, I drive 2. Ya, I guess no dash cam out there have a big enough battery to record that many hours.

 

[niko]

Depends on your car battery health and capacity. I have 1y old 80A Yuasa. Driving around 2h per day. This allows me to record while parked about 30h before 12.2V power cut kicks in. When it was new it gave me 32-34h. With every year battery going to get weaker.

 

[kamkar]

Yes you need to hard wire to your car to take use of parking guard features, the micro power source in dashcams ( capacitor or lipo battery ) are just there to finalize last recording in case of a violent event.
So it is your car battery that will have to take the load, and if you only drive 1 hour a day, then it will be hard to keep power for the remaining 23 hours of the day ( assuming you want to have parking guard always when not driving )
So with just 1 hour of daily driving and 23 hours of parking guard, then your car will have a hard time keeping up the charge, also since you are way up north where it get cold in the winter, this impact your car battery performance too, so for sure you do not want to use a low cut off voltage in the hard wire kit, cuz then you could run into starting problems in winter.
ALSO ! i assume you see some form of rain / snowfall and frost in winter, this will cover the windscreen / windows and block view from cameras, though they do get hot and can melt some,,,,, and so draw attention to them self.

If your problem is at home you are better off with a CCTV camera on the parked car, and then just use parking guard at work or when shopping, personally when i soon get to try parking guard out i will just use it on a 1 hour or so timer as that cover all my parking in regard to shopping, and at home i have a CCTV camera on my 2 floor balcony door aimed at my car parked down below in the back yard.
I personally don't see a need for long time parking, but if i run into it i can just turn the timer up for that one time.

You can also put a extra battery in your car that just serve the dashcam and not the cars own start / drive battery, but this still need to be charged too, and if you don't drive much then it can be a issue.

 

[StinkyCheese]

I've let my cam run 3 days continuously recently and pickup started fine. I was trying to get some footage of the hurricane that ended up not hitting us lol. I wouldn't do that very often though. Probably not even possible with a car battery. If I were you though, and wanted to do continuous recording, I'd get a couple battery banks and use those while parked. I've gotten 25-35 hours out of 25k+ MaH packs. Do get 2 or 3 of them so you always have one powering and one charging. Battery packs are cheaper than car batteries and alternators. Easier to swap out too. As far as the specific cam can't help ya there. The more cams you use the more battery packs you'll need. If it wasn't such a PITA I'd say just get another car battery and use that, but then taking the battery out to charge would suck. So yeah stick with battery packs.

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[kamkar]

Indeed but using a power pack you don't get the parking features, and so record all the time, which are not too good for the dashcam in regard to its overall lifetime expectancy.
Also using the car battery and living in a warmer climate or in the summer time you can get on fine with a lower cut off voltage, but in winter you do not want to go too low on cut off.
Also using a power pack you are best of not using one with lipo batteries but one of the more safer kind of batteries, otherwise your power pack could be a fire hazard in a car in the summer time.

Personally if i was to use long term parking mode, i would put a second deep cycle battery in my car and run the dashcams off that, and i will probably just run front / back camera in parking mode and not side cameras too.

 

[StinkyCheese]

Interesting. Never knew that, then again I'll never use parking mode, but wasn't aware parking mode doesn't work while hooked up to a battery pack. I wonder why not? I don't know what my battery packs have in them but so far they haven't burned my truck down, nor have the multiple flashlights. I always forget that it's a good possibility of that happening, I guess it'll finally sink in when something happens (I'm dumb like that). I agree the 2nd battery is the best option but taking the thing out to charge it all the time would be a pain. Not many people want to carry a battery back and forth every night. Or I guess in this case they would need 2 batteries, one in the car the other charging to swap out when they got home.

 

[kamkar]

I think on some cameras it can work, the ones that determine parking or not by G sensor activity or no activity.
But most seem to be moving to 3 wire hard wire kits these days.
And parking modes like time lapse or low bitrate regular constant recording, to minimize camera heat generation while parked, and so a better chance of enduring not least when parked in a hot place.
When i get to try parking mode in earnest i will use low bitrate constant recording as that also have sound, and record all the time, and i do think with G sensor as trigger someone can bump the side of your car with their door and not set off a event.
For sure you will want to adjust G sensor to where it is so sensitive a "GAY" Harley or other motorcycle or something else loud / big passing close buy would trigger a event.

Me and my car have a very down to earth relationship, so if it get dinged up, it hurt me far far far less than for instance seeing / hearing a Danish politician on TV, which to me is like a open wound getting smeared in a salt & chilli solution.

 

[StinkyCheese]

So constant recording creates more heat than parking modes? Well I guess my dashcam will be the one to burn my truck down and not the batteries in my truck haha. According to some of the posts on this forum my dashcam should have melted long ago :-D

 

[kamkar]

Hehe yeah nothing are for sure, some kick ass dashcams pack it in after a few months of regular use.
Constant regular recording also mean you have no " trigger" point, so say your car get dented while parked, then you have to see the dent when you get back to the car, and go over all your footage for that parking time frame to find the incident before it get overwritten.
Now with a big memory card and a hawk-eyed car owner, that's not much of a problem, but if you got that dent on the day your car was parked +4 hours in that parking lot, then you have 4 hours to look over to find the perp, but you can of course get lucky and it happened shortly after you left your car.

I am hoping with the constant recording low bitrate it is possible to get some sort of sensor trigger, maybe just to snap a picture so you have a certain point in time to go look for in among the video.
Otherwise constant recording low bitrate parking mode are just as problematic to find the actual event.
Just like i dont want to turn on / off my dashcams for every drive, then i would also like not having to walk a "dent detection" round around my car every time it have been parked.

 

[StinkyCheese]

I doubt I could use parking mode between the crap roads and the thunderstorms I've had to set my g-sensor on high with my A119S V2. So either way I think I'd end up searching through lots of footage because I'm sure a door slam does less to set off the parking sensor than wind gusts or a thunder clap. I sometimes search through my footage just to screw with my coworkers, I'm only at work 4-17 hours a day so it's not that bad.