Do you think this could be made to work as a battery pack?

[SawMaster]

Relays to 30A aren't hard to find, and I've seen 45A "headlight" relays meant for continuous duty.

Phil

 

[thomas-dash]

The only 30A relays I saw were ones with 10 - 12 AWG cable. I found some 120A ones with 1/4” bolts. I ended up ordering it along with some more 6AWG lugs with 1/4” holes. They should arrive by Thursday.

I did some rewiring and moved the ACC cable back to the passenger cabin fuse box. I had temporarily crimped the ACC and BATT HWK cables together when I installed the lifepo4 battery just to get the dashcam powered by the lifepo4. Parking mode is working again, as predicted by Nigel and Sawmaster, since the lifepo4 battery and starter battery are sharing a common ground now. I have the lifepo4 battery ground, both grounds on the victron charger, and the ground going to the car all connected on the same distribution block.

I’m not sure if I’m sold on the DC/DC charger thing yet, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve used it more.

 

[youngster]

For cam operation with a HWK connect "acc" to appropriate car circuit, connect "batt" to auxiliary +, connect ground to both car ground and auxiliary -. Cam will be powered only by auxiliary battery but will switch in and out of parking mode properly.

The BMS for the auxiliary battery should control it's charging with the car doing it's usual for the car battery.

On those fuses, I'd look with magnification to see if there are any scratches where a nut, washer, or terminal connected as a better indicator of new or used instead of fuse terminal color. And even if used, as long as they spec out correctly I wouldn't be worried about them; they would 'blow' to open circuit if overloaded in a past life so used or new would be the effectively the same except for product description.

Phil

Thanks Phil, will this work if the two batteries are not charging one another, ill use a 100ah auf batt just solar charged, gar is not moved much.
Thanks!

 

[youngster]

For cam operation with a HWK connect "acc" to appropriate car circuit, connect "batt" to auxiliary +, connect ground to both car ground and auxiliary -. Cam will be powered only by auxiliary battery but will switch in and out of parking mode properly.

The BMS for the auxiliary battery should control it's charging with the car doing it's usual for the car battery.

On those fuses, I'd look with magnification to see if there are any scratches where a nut, washer, or terminal connected as a better indicator of new or used instead of fuse terminal color. And even if used, as long as they spec out correctly I wouldn't be worried about them; they would 'blow' to open circuit if overloaded in a past life so used or new would be the effectively the same except for product description.

Phil

Has this worked for anyone?

 

[youngster]

Thanks Phil, will this work if the two batteries are not charging one another, ill use a 100ah auf batt just solar charged, gar is not moved much.
Thanks!

Thanks again it's working! Wired as you suggested, and ground moved away from fuse box a Bot as central locking was getting confused, had the ground there before.ground is now at cabin filter attachments, both hwk and lifepo4 neg bolted together at that point.
Camera jumps into parking mode being powered off a 100ah lifepo4 12v outlet wired to the Batt pole, cutoff set to 11.8v.
THANKS FOR SHARING THIS, REALLY APPRECIATE IT! need to get a bigger as card now ;-)

 

[raywray]

I think I’m going to buy a battery pack to get it off the main car battery and hopefully get additional parking mode coverage since I’m not driving my car as much. Additionally, I’m planning on adding a second 2-channel dash cam.

With Cellink NEO I would need to buy two of them to get around 25 hours out of each camera. This would be over $600 compared to something like below which is less than $300:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B08P5SFV4D
Due to its size, it would most likely have to go in the trunk and be strapped down really well to prevent it from becoming an eight pound projectile in the event of an accident.

An added benefit is that it would be more versatile than a regular battery pack.

I saw that and had the same question, but then I found this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0936GZ7H3It's much smaller and cheaper.I'm not sure where and how to mount it. in the car. do you think this would work for my next base 522gw?

 

[Ralph2]

I saw that and had the same question, but then I found this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0936GZ7H3It's much smaller and cheaper.I'm not sure where and how to mount it. in the car. do you think this would work for my next base 522gw?

Looks interesting, and should work if your camera is powered by a USB source. If ~12 volts, probably not.

 

[thomas-dash]

I saw that and had the same question, but then I found this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0936GZ7H3It's much smaller and cheaper.I'm not sure where and how to mount it. in the car. do you think this would work for my next base 522gw?

It looks like it might be Lithium-Ion which I've heard doesn't tolerate heat as well as Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries.

 

[dashcamateur]

Buy an AGM or gel battery or batteries to fit the available space in the car and a DC-DC charger. ... Two 26AH batteries under a seat

Installing AGM or gel batteries in the cabin (rather than in an area continuously vented to the outside, such as the engine bay, or a camper van's dedicated leisure battery compartment) is a good deal riskier than using LiFePO4: https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/17425/gases-from-car-batteries

 

[dashcamateur]

victron energy earlier this year finally released information about the importance of sizing of lifepo4 to alternator for direct charging off it no dc to dc converter needed blowing the myth out the water of alternator damage if done correctly.....

this is gospel... 12 minutes in

Just wanted to say thanks for this! For anyone else interested, here's a Victron blog post on the same topic: https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2019/10/07/careful-alternator-charging-lithium/