Parking mode; what's setting it off?

[AudiCraig]

So I finally got my SGZC12RC hard wired in today and enabled motion detection, parked the car in my work's car park and carried on my business.
I've just got home and plugged the memory card into the computer hoping to see a few videos snapped across a 3 hour period to actually find a video every 2 minutes without fail.
Admittedly nearly all the videos had a car driving past the screen, but there's a few where nothing seems to be going on... is there a sensitivity setting somewhere i can adjust?

The videos are 200mb each so not something i can upload here, but perhaps someone can advise how sensitive the motion detector is? I'm parked in front of some trees... could the light swaying of branches set it off?

Anyone else experience false-positive recordings with the motion detector enabled?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

Can you test again in a parking garage or regular garage? Try turning motion off and back on again as well.

 

[AudiCraig]

I've parked the car up differently at home so i'll check tomorrow morning and hopefully will see some gaps in the recordings (before the battery device shuts it down).

 

[russ331]

... there's a few where nothing seems to be going on... is there a sensitivity setting somewhere i can adjust?

Motion Detection is on or off, that's all the choice you get. I've never had a clip where nothing was going on ... something triggered the recording ... leaves waving in the breeze, a bird flying by, raindrops rolling down the windscreen, etc.



Clips triggered by a single event are usually around 50 seconds long. A succession of 2 minute clips indicate a number of trigger events, e.g. swaying tree branches.

 

[albertson]

Congrats on the SGZC12RC. Agree with russ331. As experiment, put a towel over the windshield/camera area for 20 minutes and you should see no new recordings for that time. Just proves the motion detect is working (not recording when no motion)

My motion detect works really well, but that means it records every motion (wind blowing leaves or tree branches, birds, planes, pedestrians, rain, even motion that is 2 blocks away and very hard to see. This expands the planning to include battery protection and large capacity memory cards. My camera is recording most of the time while outdoors. It's a good thing. Generally just ignore it. If you find damage to your vehicle, then you can search the files to find the evidence, if it happened in front of the camera.

 

[AudiCraig]

It seems to be working as you are describing it, it's just sensitive i'm guessing.
Not ideal as when i'm at work it's constantly recording and thusly draining the battery such that when i do want it to record if i go into town at lunch or whatever, the batter protector device is turning the camera off.
After having it all hard wired in, i'm having to manually turn it off now

 

[mcaf123]

It seems to be working as you are describing it, it's just sensitive i'm guessing.
Not ideal as when i'm at work it's constantly recording and thusly draining the battery such that when i do want it to record if i go into town at lunch or whatever, the batter protector device is turning the camera off.
After having it all hard wired in, i'm having to manually turn it off now

Are you finding the battery cutoff happening alot?

 

[russ331]

... when i'm at work it's constantly recording and thusly draining the battery such that when i do want it to record if i go into town at lunch or whatever, the batter protector device is turning the camera off.

When parked, you could use a Power Bank plugged into the 5V Service Port. That's what I do. Then you've no worries about your car battery.

 

[Street Guardian USA]

The same amount of power is being used regardless if it's in prebuffer stand by for several hours vs actively recording.

You shouldn't have to manually turn anything off if you have battery discharge prevention in your hard wire setup.

 

[jokiin]

It seems to be working as you are describing it, it's just sensitive i'm guessing.
Not ideal as when i'm at work it's constantly recording and thusly draining the battery such that when i do want it to record if i go into town at lunch or whatever, the batter protector device is turning the camera off.
After having it all hard wired in, i'm having to manually turn it off now

in motion detect it uses the same amount of power whether it's recording or not, your battery would go off at the same time regardless

 

[albertson]

My battery (3 years old) lasts a full day and more in motion detect. This cam does not draw much more than the car remote lock system.
With both the remote unlock and the cam operating, mine begins to crank slow after about 2 days, but still starts the car.
I am guessing you do not have the battery cut-off yet. Just worried the battery is draining fast. Is the engine cranking slow?
If you are getting only a few hours, then consider if the battery is weaker than normal. Is it several years old?
If you find the battery needs replacement, then there is some info in thread:
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/new-car-battery.15847/

 

[jokiin]

The camera draws 190mAh which is reasonably low compared to some other models