Installed... BUT What Voltage?

[BastardSheep]

Parking mode wasn't a required feature when I was looking for a dashcam anyway. If it was, I would have bought the battery pack thingo as well (or be looking at it now).

 

[BlackboxMyCar]

I have a PMP set to 11.8v. My last battery lasted less than 12 months before it reported needing to be replaced. This last week, 3 of 6 days it has been a little sluggish to start. I came out Saturday morning and couldn't turn the car over at all. Got a jump start and my battery tested, weaker than a 6-month old battery should be. Nearing the point of needing replacing in fact.

11.8v is DEFINITELY too low, as mine was set.

If you were already having issues at 11.8V why didn't you increase it to 12.0V?

 

[BastardSheep]

If you were already having issues at 11.8V why didn't you increase it to 12.0V?

I didn't increase it previously because I was completely unaware the settings it had were a potential problem. I fobbed the problem off as a bad battery, got it replaced, thought nothing more of it.

When it happened a second time to a second battery is when I started looking at other potential causes, and the first thing I went after was the dashcam. To completely rule the dashcam in or out, I set the PMP to kill power entirely to the dashcam when the car was off. The battery has behaved perfectly ever since.

The reason I'm not now setting it to 12.0V is because from what I've now read 12.2V is the better setting to use (a voltage not available). Also, setting the voltage higher doesn't resolve the problem that allowed my battery to go flat in the first place - something that shouldn't have happened. The PMP to my understanding SHOULD have killed power long before the voltage dropped to the point of being too low to start my car - let alone dropping to the point where it ended up.

So the PMP in my mind clearly has bugs that in certain circumstances allow battery levels to get lower than what the cutoff is set to. This has happened to me numerous times now in circumstances where the only potential drain on the battery would have been the dashcam. Too many times for me to risk it again. I'd prefer a car that starts reliably.

 

[jokiin]

11.8v is too low for some vehicles to start

 

[BastardSheep]

11.8v is fine for my car to start, with the dashcam in parking mode the PMP had cut off power plenty of times at that voltage and the car started just fine.

The ongoing problems were that the repeated drops to 11.8v seriously destroyed the life of the battery (one being replaced after a mere 12 months, and a second nearing replacement requirement after only 6 months), and the few (but too many) occasions where it didn't cut off the power at 11.8v as it was meant to - letting the battery drain to levels that left the power so low nothing would work.

 

[jokiin]

11.8v is ok occasionally, do it often enough though and you'll deplete your battery to the point where the cold cranking capability suffers, it's not really a fault of the PMP or the battery, you're asking the vehicle to do something it was never intended to do, deal with a regular parasitic power drain, it would handle it better if you have a deep cycle battery but even then it will last longer but will still suffer the same fate at some point

parking mode is a very flawed application at the best of times

 

[BastardSheep]

Personally I'd now recommend a battery kit or a third party power cutoff over a PMP any day.

 

[jokiin]

Personally I'd now recommend a battery kit or a third party power cutoff over a PMP any day.

Cellink B is probably the only product that eliminates the problem you have