Parking mode and battery health concerns

[Hass4592]

Hey everyone, new member in the world of dashcams here, I have recently hardwired a Viofo A129 plus Duo in my car and have set the cut-off voltage to 12.4v in parking mode.

I live in a shared home and we have to take turns to street park for a Fortnite after every month in the garage. Is it ok if I leave the cam running in auto event detection mode (motion sensing medium) until it eventually cuts off at 12.4v? and at that point how long will it require to charge back up while driving? It hasn't killed off the cam on the first two days of parking mode testing perhaps because it's only a few months old battery. Is it a bad practice? anything I can do to optimize things here?

I should add that I rarely Drive my car nowadays due to lockdown in my area and sometimes it stays parked for days at a time before I take it out for not-so-long drives.
Any insights will be welcomed here Thanks!

 

[thomas-dash]

I have a fairly new battery that was installed about 3 months ago. I've noticed it recording less and less footage before it cuts off since I installed the dash cam about a month ago. I've been working from home every other week, so my car barely gets driven when I work from home.

I ran the engine for 5 minutes on Monday and the camera recorded for at least 3 hours and 40 minutes. I have it set to auto detect parking mode, or whatever it's called, so it's possible it ran longer than that and just didn't have any motion trigger a recording. However, I doubt it ran more than an hour or two longer. Yesterday, I drove my car for about 16 minutes to get fast food . When I checked my camera today it ran for 4 hours 55 minutes before shutting off. Again, it might have ran longer, but there's no way for me to verify unless I change the setting to low bitrate mode. When I drive it to work each day, the engine runs for about 30 - 40 minutes. This usually gets me about 12 - 13 hours of parking mode.

The only thing I can think you can do is to get a battery pack or two and use them to power your camera. Either that, or install surveillance cameras at your house to monitor your car. I think there's a thread about someone asking about powering it with a solar panel. I'm not sure how effective that would be.

 

[Outbacknomad]

You have been using the car. Alternator charging at 14.4 volts. Park the car and the battery is around 13.8 volts. Dashcam draws down battery from this high voltage to 12.4 volts. The battery won't have any more AH at the high voltage.

One should really let the car battery rest for 24 hours then measure to get a more accurate voltage, and that is your starting point for voltage cutoff.

Personally I wouldn't run anything off the starter battery. Just put in an auxiliary AGM or Gel battery & DC-DC charger when driving, and a 10 watt solar panel with a diode so it doesn't drain at night to trickle charge the auxiliary battery will be the simplest option and cheapest system with far more AH per dollar.

Anyone use Solar panels to trickle charge their car battery as source of power ?

Wondering if anyone has used the in-car solar panels that trickle charge your battery, at night sure not good, but that leaves maybe 10 hrs of use of camera right off the car battery, and during the day the battery could be replensished ? Wondering if anyone has used this approach to keep their...

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