My dashcam drained my battery..

dashcammer2929

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I have a 2 year old car with an A129 dashcam that I just got two days ago. I have the official Viofo hardwire kit with the voltage cutoff at the second to last switch from the left (The one that says 12v/24v). The second day the car started up perfectly with no issues, instant on. But when I went into my car today the camera was still on which seemed normal since it was on the first day but when I went to turn the car on it was just completely dead. Nothing. It had power to the lights and accessories, but when I went to turn on the ignition it just struggled just barely but couldn't push through for more than a second. The parking mode is on low bit rate recording and I also updated the software to v1.5 as per the Viofo website the day I got the cam.

I am 100% confident I installed the camera correctly. I had the ACC switch in a fuse that is on only with the car on and the battery cable plugged into a fuse with constant power. I also had an bare bolt in the fuse area perfect for a ground for the black cable. I also consulted with my friend who had a dashcam hardwired and said it was good.

I am getting a jump-start in the morning from my friend but I am not sure what happened! The battery is still pretty new only being 2 years old and this issue coincided with the dashcam install. Is something up with the hardwire kit? Has this happened to anyone else??
 
Sounds like you drained the battery. 12.0v cutoff is near 50% charge on the battery remaining. That combined with short driving distances could cause your battery to be unable to replenish itself to >80%. You could try to increase the cutoff to 12.4v.
 
Sounds like you drained the battery. 12.0v cutoff is near 50% charge on the battery remaining. That combined with short driving distances could cause your battery to be unable to replenish itself to >80%. You could try to increase the cutoff to 12.4v.

Gotcha, I was under the impression that 12.0V would be fine. But thinking how I dont drive often and the cold weather can have adverse effects on battery I'll crank it up to the max at 12.4v and see how long the cam records
 
Everything that you described here is same in my situation. Everything. Apart from that my car start as usual. Is a 2 yo car, A129 mounted with hardwire connected to cam not to GPS mount, the cotoff switch set to 12 V. Lately, got confident and not used the car for 2 or 3 days just to see the result. After each use I've changed the settings from 5fps to low res and now I'm on 1fps.

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I also posted here some info about that.

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index.php?posts/447039



In my city nowadays are mostly negative temperatures in the night however battery kicked in good.
One more thing that might be a bit important : is a battery designed for S&S (stop & start system) but I guess your car has it also being 2 yo.

And finally, did you leave the WiFi on?

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I have a 2 year old car with an A129 dashcam that I just got two days ago. I have the official Viofo hardwire kit with the voltage cutoff at the second to last switch from the left (The one that says 12v/24v). The second day the car started up perfectly with no issues, instant on. But when I went into my car today the camera was still on which seemed normal since it was on the first day but when I went to turn the car on it was just completely dead. Nothing. It had power to the lights and accessories, but when I went to turn on the ignition it just struggled just barely but couldn't push through for more than a second. The parking mode is on low bit rate recording and I also updated the software to v1.5 as per the Viofo website the day I got the cam.

I am 100% confident I installed the camera correctly. I had the ACC switch in a fuse that is on only with the car on and the battery cable plugged into a fuse with constant power. I also had an bare bolt in the fuse area perfect for a ground for the black cable. I also consulted with my friend who had a dashcam hardwired and said it was good.

I am getting a jump-start in the morning from my friend but I am not sure what happened! The battery is still pretty new only being 2 years old and this issue coincided with the dashcam install. Is something up with the hardwire kit? Has this happened to anyone else??
Normally a 12.0v battery will start a car without difficulty, either the camera hadn't turned off until below 12.0v, or it was very cold, or the battery is faulty. Seems unlikely the battery is faulty, if it was then the camera probably wouldn't still have been recording.

We need some more information. What was the temperature, what was the actual battery voltage, and what type of battery is it?

You can measure battery voltage either with a multimeter, or with an OBD reader...
 
Normally a 12.0v battery will start a car without difficulty, either the camera hadn't turned off until below 12.0v, or it was very cold, or the battery is faulty. Seems unlikely the battery is faulty, if it was then the camera probably wouldn't still have been recording.

We need some more information. What was the temperature, what was the actual battery voltage, and what type of battery is it?

You can measure battery voltage either with a multimeter, or with an OBD reader...


It was probably the cold. It was the day after we got some snow. But heres the kicker, i turned my car on the day of the snow storm and left it running with the heat up while i cleaned it for maybe 30-40 minutes. But then the next day it was dead.
 
I also posted here some info about that.

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index.php?posts/447039



In my city nowadays are mostly negative temperatures in the night however battery kicked in good.
One more thing that might be a bit important : is a battery designed for S&S (stop & start system) but I guess your car has it also being 2 yo.

And finally, did you leave the WiFi on?

Sent from my
emoji637.png
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emoji642.png
using Tapatalk Pro[/QUOTE
Everything that you described here is same in my situation. Everything. Apart from that my car start as usual. Is a 2 yo car, A129 mounted with hardwire connected to cam not to GPS mount, the cotoff switch set to 12 V. Lately, got confident and not used the car for 2 or 3 days just to see the result. After each use I've changed the settings from 5fps to low res and now I'm on 1fps.

Sent from my [emoji637] [emoji809] [emoji642] using Tapatalk Pro


Your car startedup just fine? Even in cold? My wifi is off. And by start and stop you mean push button start then no mine uses a key ignition still.
 
It's the cold weather, that on its own drains batteries, unplug it if your leaving it on your driveway.
 
Today, after 4 days of rest, went to my car and I finally found the cam stopped. I don't know when it happened in these days but, anyway, the car started right away as well as the camera. Guess the voltage reached the 12 V cut off setting. So, till now, no complaints about the camera. [emoji1303][emoji328]
7b69e0b6740b96059026c9c6839700a7.jpg


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I'm having the same issues with a relatively new car and a Viofo A129 which I hardwired recently.

I'm using this hardwire kid:
mini-0801a119a119sa119-proa118a118ca118c2b40wr1-car-camera-hardwire-kit_800x.jpg
s-l400-6.jpg

It cuts the power off at 11.6 volt but but to quote this article:

11.6 volt might be way too low. :(
 
I'm having the same issues with a relatively new car and a Viofo A129 which I hardwired recently.

I'm using this hardwire kid:
View attachment 45500
View attachment 45499

It cuts the power off at 11.6 volt but but to quote this article:

11.6 volt might be way too low. :(

11.6 is way too low. Their 3 wire kit has a range from 11.8 to 12.4.
 
The question then is, why is this kit then sold with the Viofo A129, when it's too low?
 
The question then is, why is this kit then sold with the Viofo A129, when it's too low?
If it’s being sold bundled with the A129, then it the seller who is doing this, not Viofo themselves. I haven’t seen Viofo selling it bundled. There is nothing wrong with using the 2-wire kit with the A129, or any other dash camera, you just can’t rely on the voltage cutoff to prevent the battery from draining. Most of the cheaper kits have these low cutoff points and should only be used to power cameras when used with an accessory fuse.
 
Hi guys,

Please consider two factors-memory card limitation and power consumption.

Even 256GB memory card will last for 56h of low-bitrate recording (A129DUO).
If you are using low-bitrate recording it's pointless to leave camera recording for longer time than memory card can save.

A129DUO+GPS consumes about 6Ah/day (24hours). It doesn't mean that if you have 60Ah battery you can power your camera for 10 days, because battery rarely is charged to the 100% of capacity and emptying battery to the 0% wil destroy you battery. Ultimately, you need energy for crank...

While analyzing parking mode, you have to consider your car specification (diesel/petrol, battery size etc), climate zone, average daily time of driving and average daily time of parking mode ON.

In my Honda CR-V I have A129DUO+GPS. Car is equipped with start-stop system. And I don't have any problems with starting engine.
Because:
It's petrol (needs less energy than diesel to start)
Average daily time of driving is about 40mins (enough time to recharge battery)
Average time of parking mode is about 9hours/day. Parking mode is switched off while my car is parking at home, at closed garage.

I'm using Black Vue Power Magic Pro. It's features consists timer protection. After set duration (from 6 hours to infinity) kit is switching parking mode off (I use low bitrate recording and 128GB memory card, and, as I mentioned - it's pointless to leave camera recording for longer time than memory card can save)...

I'm not going to say, that if you car is diesel, time of driving is short etc. you canot use your camera in parking mode. You can. But you have to consider another power solutions...
 
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I'm currently looking for a good solution with the A129 without buying one oft those pricy battery packs.
My memory card file size is only 64 GB.
90% of my time I'm parking in busy ares, also at home because I'm not owning a garage.

But I think for me it's still the best option to use "automatic event detection" then on a rainy or stormy day the camera is recording non stop but anyway I prefer that over the 5/10/15 fps mode as well as the low quality recording.

In my petrol car (also Honda) has a 60aH battery, for the worst case I have a power bank with starter cables to jump a dead battery.
At the moment I'm using this Honda app (myhonda) where I can check on the voltage of the car starter battery every time I want. Even after very short driving the battery has 12.7 volt and then goes slightly down to 12.2 volt.
 
Hi guys,

Please consider two factors-memory card limitation and power consumption.

Even 256GB memory card will last for 56h of low-bitrate recording (A129DUO).
If you are using low-bitrate recording it's pointless to leave camera recording for longer time than memory card can save.
...
I might have some of this inaccurate since I don't have an A129 with parking mode, but I think there is a very good point in doing so - if someone collides with your car then the current low bitrate file will become locked by the g-sensor, and assuming you are using 3 minute loop recording you will then have at least 1.5 minutes of pre-collision recording and at least 1.5 minutes of post-collision recording safely saved in the RO folder which will not get overwritten when the card loops.
 
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