POWER

[therealpitts]

Can this camera be connected via USB power adapter to the vehicle?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

No
Computer and OEM Vehicle USB ports don’t output enough power. It will result in fluctuating instability.
Better to use the SGDCHW hardwire kit as designed.

 

[kamkar]

You can try, but any misbehavior you might experience will probably be lack of power related, and you will probably get that issue so keep a close eye on your cameras performance on such a charge port.

The provided PSU / power cable you can snip off the 12 V plug that would normally go into your cigarette lighter socket in the dash or console, and then use the 2 wires exposed to tap into your fuse box for a stealthy install.
Thats the reason SG power supplies have the 12 V - > 5 V converter a bit up the cable, that way you sort of get a hard wire kit too,,,,,, that just do not support parking guard features ( for that you need the dedicated 3 wire hard wire kit )

It is Funny car makers put such weak charge ports in their cars, it will take you forever to say charge a pretty flat phone, at best you can replenish the power the phone use as you use it in the car for whatever.
I once used my 7" tablet for navigation, but even though it was plugged in to charge meanwhile and fully charged from the get go, well it slowly discharged anyway as the charger i used was too weak to both power and charge the thing.
So had i set off on a really long drive with that setup sooner or later my charging tablet would have run out of power.

 

[DT MI]

As has already been said there's no assurance using a vehicle's USB power will work - the best you can do is try but don't fault the camera if issues arise.

I've had 4 vehicles with USB outlets supplying at least 2.0A (which is enough for any camera) yet in 2 of the 4 camera performance was erratic at best, the power just wasn't stable enough - fine for charging a phone/tablet but not as a primary power source for a capacitor based camera.

Even in my current vehicle (SUV with a power operated tailgate) I've noticed that if I cycle the tailgate with the engine running something happens related to the USB that causes the camera to shut down and restart even though camera operation is normal at all other times. Using a 12V adapter that doesn't happen so I know it's somehow related to using the USB port as a power source.

 

[kamkar]

It is clearly not the USB charge ports car manufactures are spending R&D / money on