U1000 causing car troubles

boolves

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Hello, new here.

About a month ago I've bought a Thinkware U1000, I had an audio guy professionally hard-wire it to my 2012 Chevy Volt Hybrid.

Now, about a week or so ago. I was driving down the freeway and got Christmas tree'd lights on my dashboard and an alert that said no engine power followed by actual no power from the gas peddle even though the car turned on.

So I towed it to my shop, they pulled the codes and said the 12v battery was dead but were perplexed because they had replaced it about a year prior. However honored the warranty and put a new one in and I threw a couple dollars on top to get a better quality battery.

The day I picked it up, I put about 100 miles on it before I get the same no engine power again. Frustratingly, I tow it back to my autoshop. They tell me the codes are saying it's a bad transmission but would need to send it out.

I explained to them that I had the dashcam for a month, and they mentioned it could be causing the issuers... So we cleared the codes and I have been driving it with the dashcam unplugged for about a week and have put about 700 miles on the car almost with zero issues.

So it makes me think 2 things. Either the hardwaring was done wrong or maybe I have some sort of settings on the camera wrong. Could it be that the camera is pulling too much voltage from the battery triggering these issues and the killed battery? I thought It protected itself from these type of things? I set the cameras default threshold to 12v. Or should I just take it back to the audio guy and have him relook at the hard-wiring?

Thanks for your help
 
Is your camera wired directly to the fusebox or is it wired using 12V cigar adaptor?
Do you have parking mode in your camera?

If it is wired straight to the fusebox, the "noise" generated from any 12V electrical device can cause errors in a car's electrical system. It happened to me when I hard wire a radar detector into the fuse panel in a BMW. It cased all sorts of lights including traction control and check engine lights. Once I splice into the 12V cigar lighter, all the warnings and christmas lights disappeared.

Hopefully this suggestion solves your problem. Good luck.
 
definitely get a batter pack like a cellink neo
BMW are known for not liking it when you hook anything directly to the fuse panel. maybe it's the same for your chevy
 
Welcome to the forum booleves.

I assume the camera is powered by the dash plug, and then that is probably live all the time, but then again the car should also charge that 12 V battery i would assume, but it might be it charge it so slow it can not keep up with XX hours of daily use if the camera is on all the time.
But it sound like yours is hardwired, but then it is "wrong" or at least using not suited fuses, if the camera is on all the time you should be able to see that on the files recorded.
In general parking guard files have a suffix to the file name like a "P", other brands might put those files in a folder named parking, if your system have a parking folder but there is nothing in it, then your camera are probably doing regular recording all the time, which will burn thru your car battery faster than being in parking guard mode.
If you are hard wired for being able to do parking guard, you should also have a low voltage cut off somewhere, this are often 11.8 - 12.0 - 12.2 - 12.4 volts you can select. most of us use 12.2 as that is said to be a 50% depleted lead acid battery.

The camera should ( not familiar with this brand / model ) give a chime when it start but also when it shut down, even the cameras i have used parking guard on, they also alert me to that change from normal to parking guard.

But yes some cars, and types of cars have been known to be problematic, electric cars , hybrids, and i assume even Hydrogen cars, and of course also some gasoline burners, not least European brands.

A solution is to use a dedicated dashcam power pack, but then again if you dont use parking guard, thats a waste of money just to get the camera powered right.
 
I very much suspect the dash cam is not related to the fault and it's coincidental, we come across strange issues from time to time and never yet has it been the actual camera causing the fault.

There is a small chance that it's been wired to an incorrect Permanent Supply but the camera only uses around 0.3a when running and we power these from the OBD plug supply if that lead is purchased i think it's unlikely.

I would get the supplies checked by the installer or see if they can swap to a different one. Keep us updated as I'm curious!
 
Hi Guys, thank you for responses. I have replied my comments below.

Is your camera wired directly to the fusebox or is it wired using 12V cigar adaptor?
Do you have parking mode in your camera?

If it is wired straight to the fusebox, the "noise" generated from any 12V electrical device can cause errors in a car's electrical system. It happened to me when I hard wire a radar detector into the fuse panel in a BMW. It cased all sorts of lights including traction control and check engine lights. Once I splice into the 12V cigar lighter, all the warnings and christmas lights disappeared.

Hopefully this suggestion solves your problem. Good luck.


This is hard-wired to the fusebox directly and parking mode is enabled on the Camera. Thank you for your tips. I will take it back to the audio shop and suggest that we move it to the 12v cigar lighter.

Welcome to the forum booleves.

I assume the camera is powered by the dash plug, and then that is probably live all the time, but then again the car should also charge that 12 V battery i would assume, but it might be it charge it so slow it can not keep up with XX hours of daily use if the camera is on all the time.
But it sound like yours is hardwired, but then it is "wrong" or at least using not suited fuses, if the camera is on all the time you should be able to see that on the files recorded.
In general parking guard files have a suffix to the file name like a "P", other brands might put those files in a folder named parking, if your system have a parking folder but there is nothing in it, then your camera are probably doing regular recording all the time, which will burn thru your car battery faster than being in parking guard mode.
If you are hard wired for being able to do parking guard, you should also have a low voltage cut off somewhere, this are often 11.8 - 12.0 - 12.2 - 12.4 volts you can select. most of us use 12.2 as that is said to be a 50% depleted lead acid battery.

The camera should ( not familiar with this brand / model ) give a chime when it start but also when it shut down, even the cameras i have used parking guard on, they also alert me to that change from normal to parking guard.

But yes some cars, and types of cars have been known to be problematic, electric cars , hybrids, and i assume even Hydrogen cars, and of course also some gasoline burners, not least European brands.

A solution is to use a dedicated dashcam power pack, but then again if you dont use parking guard, thats a waste of money just to get the camera powered right.

Yes correct, always on with parking mode. I had my autos hop test for any parasitic drains, but they couldn't find any on the car. The camera would also correctly shift between driving mode and parking mode by alerting me between parking and driving.

I believe my Voltage cutoff was at the 12.0 setting but I will test it at 12.2 per your suggestion.

I really do hope I can get this figured out as I love the camera and put a lot of money behind its installation. However, I am a bit nervous playing with it as I don't want to get stranded on the side of the road again on a workday.

I very much suspect the dash cam is not related to the fault and it's coincidental, we come across strange issues from time to time and never yet has it been the actual camera causing the fault.

There is a small chance that it's been wired to an incorrect Permanent Supply but the camera only uses around 0.3a when running and we power these from the OBD plug supply if that lead is purchased i think it's unlikely.

I would get the supplies checked by the installer or see if they can swap to a different one. Keep us updated as I'm curious!

This is what I am hoping as well. Overall I've loved the camera for the month that it was running great. I just can't afford to keep testing/towing my car back to the shop haha. I believe the shop used the supplied hardwiring kit with the product.
 
The hard wire kit might also be faulty, at least in regard to the cut off value.
People testing them have seen some inconsistencies, but in the order of 0.1 Volts, if it completely drain your battery something are fishy for sure.

You can always disable parking guard, and then only experiment with it when you are home in the weekend and i assume have a charger at hand, it would be a good idea to keep close taps on it for sure, completely draining lead acid batteries are not good at all for them as thats not really how they should be used.
 
Good luck. Hopefully moving it to the 12v cigar plug will solve your problem.

Nevertheless, like many have said electrical issues are always really challenging to solve. Nevertheless, the feeling of accomplishment will render the stress insignificant.
 
The hard wire kit might also be faulty, at least in regard to the cut off value.
People testing them have seen some inconsistencies, but in the order of 0.1 Volts, if it completely drain your battery something are fishy for sure.

You can always disable parking guard, and then only experiment with it when you are home in the weekend and i assume have a charger at hand, it would be a good idea to keep close taps on it for sure, completely draining lead acid batteries are not good at all for them as thats not really how they should be used.

I will definitely have to do some testing. For some reason it's tripping something in the engine codes that renders the engine completely useless with "zero power" and I have to pay the shop to electronically clear them.
 
Hi Guys,

I haven't had a chance to get back to the audio shop yet. But I did happen to review the video of my car at the shop when they were first looking at the car troubles. It looks like the voltages were dipping down to 10.9-11v I had the camera setting to cut off at 12v. Could this be an indication of anything?

Also, by chance what does ACC_Off Mean?

 
ACC OFF means the camera has detected the Ignition being turned off, i think that stays on the screen for 30 or so seconds. When you Turn the ignition on you should see the ACC ON instead. If the voltage was that low that sounds like the camera isn't going into parking mode as when it's in Driving mode it ignores the Battery voltage as it thinks you're driving.

Or it may be getting some 'random' voltage down the ignition wire for a split second which is making it jump out of parking mode to normal for a second. SO the camera has shutdown due to low battery but a voltage spike will wake the camera up and it will then be a minute or so before it goes back to parking mode and the Voltage has to remain below the Cut Off voltage for 5 minutes before it would shut down again. If it was doing that every few minutes it would eventually still flatten the battery.

I would be very surprised if it is a Camera fault, we have been Distributing TW for about 6 years now and i have never come across a Fault with any model of camera that causes it to drain after the Battery shut down has been reached. It's always been a wiring issue!
 
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