Power Sensitivity

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Hi - We have A118's in our cars, and just before Christmas I installed a 119v3 in my daughter's 2013 Fiat Panda. The fusebox behind the glove compartment has a bank of always-on fuses, and a bank of switched fuses. We don't need parking protection, so I followed my usual practice of using a piggyback fuseholder to attach the red power wire to one of the switched fuses, and left the orange wire unconnected. The dashcam worked fine, as the A118's always have, but today we noticed a problem...

When the ignition key is turned to Acc, but the engine isn't running, the 119v3 is very sensitive to power fluctuation. For example, activating the windscreen wipers will initiate a power-down, followed by immediately powering up again. Same for various other functions, eg lights. My guess is that activating the wipers causes a momentary drop or ripple in the 12v supply. Our A118's don't do this, they seem more resilient to fluctuations, and only power-down when the key is turned completely off and withdrawn.

The Panda battery is a couple of years old and may be weaker than new spec, but it starts the car very effectively in UK winter so I don't think that replacing it would be useful. Maybe it would be worth connecting the Orange Acc supply wire to the live feed? Or is there a firmware setting where I can delay power-down by a couple of seconds? I know we can delay Boot, but not sure that's going to help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions?

 

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Mmmm - after reading some relevant posts, I wonder if I actually connected both the Red & Orange to switched live on our other cars. Which I see Viofo doesn't recommend now. I guess I'll have to move the Red piggyback to a permanently live fuse, and use a second piggyback to attach Yellow to a switched fuse. Bit annoying, because previous generations of Viofo dashcams didn't instigate power-off so aggressively, but hopefully this might fix the problem.

Still appreciate any comments or suggestions though

 

[Karagandinez]

Mmmm - after reading some relevant posts, I wonder if I actually connected both the Red & Orange to switched live on our other cars. Which I see Viofo doesn't recommend now. I guess I'll have to move the Red piggyback to a permanently live fuse, and use a second piggyback to attach Yellow to a switched fuse. Bit annoying, because previous generations of Viofo dashcams didn't instigate power-off so aggressively, but hopefully this might fix the problem.

Still appreciate any comments or suggestions though

If you connect V3 via HK3, then connect everything as expected, but do not enable parking mode in the menu if you do not need it.

 

[Splashdown]

If you connect V3 via HK3, then connect everything as expected, but do not enable parking mode in the menu if you do not need it.

Thanks. I didn't use the HK3 power supply, just bought a generic 2.5A wiring kit from Amazon.

 

[Karagandinez]

Thanks. I didn't use the HK3 power supply, just bought a generic 2.5A wiring kit from Amazon.

HK3 copes better with voltage surges in the vehicle network.
This is from personal experience.

 

[Splashdown]

HK3 copes better with voltage surges in the vehicle network.
This is from personal experience.

Thanks - from what I'd casually seen, eg this, the HK3 kit didn't seem better than the generic stuff. Certainly the 119v3 is a lot more voltage sensitive than our 118's. I think I'll try adding in the Orange wire first, but maybe HK3 is the last resort.

 

[mentadent]

Are you using thick enough wires? If you're using the ones with the hard wiring kit they should be fine.

 

[Kremmen]

In my opinion, the best HWK for the V3, if you don't want parking mode, is the Nextbase one.

Just 2 wires so no permanent wire required and no voltage regulator required

My Nextbase series 1 HWK has been powering my V3 for nearly 5 years without issue

As per all my other posts, try and find a circuit that only becomes live at ignition key position 2, not ACC position 1, as they tend to lose power during starter franking

 

[Karagandinez]

My V3 has also been running for the fifth year from the НK3, mainly without parking mode,
and during all this time there has not been a single malfunction in the operation of the V3.