If car battery life and SD card life/space were not a concern, is parking mode on various dashcams that support it much better than letting it continuously record? I own a Tesla and prefer to have a dedicated and reliable dashcam that includes audio. Tesla has their own dashcam, and when that's active, it maintains power to the 5V/12V preventing them from entering parking mode. I believe on Blackvue you can manually enable parking mode, but not Thinkware. But ultimately, I'm trying to figure out is parking mode a bandaid to reduce battery usage and to save storage space when parked, or something else. It'll help me select a new dashcam (to replace a Viofo that died a few months out of warranty) if I could get some of your guys' insights on this. Thanks.
How useful is parking mode?
- Thread starter xilex
- Start date
Nigel
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 16,748
- Reaction score
- 8,740
- Location
- Wales
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Dash Cam
- Gitup F1+G3ꞈꞈꞈꞈꞈ Viofo A229ꞈꞈꞈꞈꞈ Blueskysea B4K
On most dashcams, it doesn't save much power, only on ones that go to sleep and don't record unless they detect movement.
The main reason for parking mode is to save memory space, because without it recordings from the beginning of the parking will be overwritten before you get back to the car. Even with a very large card, most will not store a full weekend of parking if recording continuously at normal bitrate.
When parked you do not need a high bitrate to get good video quality, so low bitrate parking mode will record everything, including audio for a long time.
Timlapse mode generally doesn't have audio and can miss important frames.
Any mode that does not record continuously, or uses a buffer, is reliant on accurately detecting events, which no dashcam really achieves.
What went wrong with it?
And are you sure it is dead and can't be repaired?
It would run 8-12 hours during a workday, so hopefully a 1080p will be adequate, but I'll worry about this detail later. So from what you have explained to me, it looks like the primary benefit would be saving space on the SD card, and that parking modes generally may not catch everything, therefore just letting it continuously record is the best bet. I don't leave Tesla's sentry mode on at work (and even then it's glitchy and can miss the crucial few seconds), so the purpose of the dashcam would be to record and get plates/evidence if someone were to do something ridiculous like rear end the car.
I noticed the Viofo no longer powered on (no display, no lights, no sound) when entering the car, so verified with different power sources and cables. I also contacted support and did some general troubleshooting but they ultimately didn't offer to ship in for repairs, and since it's out of warranty, they said we can give you $20 off another camera. So I'm going to ask for recommendations in the other subforum once I do some more dashcam research. I had an old Aukey DR01 in another car before it was stolen and it was even cheaper but lasted even longer than that.
Nigel
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 16,748
- Reaction score
- 8,740
- Location
- Wales
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Dash Cam
- Gitup F1+G3ꞈꞈꞈꞈꞈ Viofo A229ꞈꞈꞈꞈꞈ Blueskysea B4K
Low bitrate parking mode is a good option, if only that it means that you can look back through a few days of video when a ticket arrives in the post or you find a dent that was made a couple of days ago but you didn't see at the time. Other forms of parking mode do have disadvantages if you want to be certain of recording everything.
The $20 sound very reasonable if you are going for one of the cheaper cameras such as the A119 V3.
It only applies to the A129 Duo, they'd probably give less for A119, but I'm going to opt for a different brand, don't like to deal with this again.
