Turn off Dashcam/Parking Mode when at home

Skittles

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Alberta
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One thing I didn't like about the out of the box BlackVue functionality is there is no mechanism to have Parking Mode off when at home. I actually don't think parking mode works that well overall, so I'm not going to use it. I'm going to be using a battery pack to power my dashcams as my car has a lithium ion battery and I didn't want to risk damaging it so what I want is max runtime off the battery pack when I actually need it and not have the camera draining it while parked in my secure garage. So I needed a way to know I was at home, then disconnect the BlackVue camera from the battery pack and a manual switch wouldn't cut it, I know I'd forget.

What I came up with is a 12V WiFI relay, flashed w/ Tasmota and utilizing their firmware level rules engine so it is all self contained.

Hardware:
Sonof SV WiFI relay. This board is low power consumption so I can run it off the B-124X (5v or 12v) for at least 3 days, hopefully longer.
FT232RL USB/Serial Adapter for Flashing

I'm not going to cover the flashing, plenty of tutorials out there but you'll want to flash the firmware with Tasmota or ESPHome. I used Tasmota as it's what I'm familiar with. Once you've got the board flashed, configure Tasmota to connect to your home WiFi etc, then you can use the integrated rules engine with something like this.

PowerOnState 1
Rule1 ON wifi#connected DO Power1 0 ENDON ON wifi#disconnected DO Power1 1 ENDON
Rule1 1

That is telling the device to power up with the relay ON (Dashcam On).
If connected to WiFi, turn relay/dashcam off
If WiFi disconnected, turn relay/dashcam on

So far it's only been bench tested but it's working perfectly.
 
I have four Garmin 56 cameras & stuck in a switch to turn off all cameras while in the garage or when the car is being serviced.
IMG_20210328_081305922.jpg
 
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