Using a power bank or external battery

steevo67

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Has anyone figured out how to wire this to an auxiliary battery or power bank and still have parking mode to work?
 
Pet peeve alert! My apologies in advance.

I'll never understand why some new members don't take a little time to peruse the forum to learn where to post on the subject they're interested in or do a little searching to see if their question may have already been answered. This one especially has been covered extensively.

There's an entire prominently featured sub forum here called, "Hardwiring and Batteries". Why not post there where you are more likely to get or find an answer?
 
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Yep, searched it and found almost nothing, so I figured I'd post in the cam-specific forum. Made sense to me, sorry for triggering you. All I've found is that the B4K doesn't work with most 3 wire HKs, only the special "2 switch" variety from Blueskysea. That tells me it is looking for some signal from the kit to enter parking mode, which it won't receive from an aux batt. I thought someone here may have figured out what signal the B4K is looking for.
 
Yep, searched it and found almost nothing, so I figured I'd post in the cam-specific forum. Made sense to me, sorry for triggering you. All I've found is that the B4K doesn't work with most 3 wire HKs, only the special "2 switch" variety from Blueskysea. That tells me it is looking for some signal from the kit to enter parking mode, which it won't receive from an aux batt. I thought someone here may have figured out what signal the B4K is looking for.

OK, thanks for the explanation. Most don't search first.

Maybe a Cell link if you're inclined to spend that kind of money?
 
I'm more of a roll-your-own kind of guy, this kind of stuff is a hobby for me. I'll probably order the special HW kit to see how it works and potentially scavenge some of the internals. Maybe someone had been down this road before and has some details so I don't reinvent the wheel.
 
I'm more of a roll-your-own kind of guy

My kinda' guy. DIY is my preferred approach, especially with dash cams. The Hardwiring and Batteries forum may well be worth exploring even if you didn't find what you were initially looking for. Also, posting there or the DIY sub-forum may well bring some useful feedback.
 
is this just running the cam with manual external power?
Manually plug the dash camera into the power bank with an extra Micro USB cord for power source when parking!
 
Manually plug the dash camera into the power bank with an extra Micro USB cord for power source when parking!

OK, thanks. I thought that's what you meant. I'm not sure if that what @steevo67 has in mind but he'll see that I've tagged him and he can respond. I think he wants something automatic when the ignition is turned off.
Personally, I've been using power banks like that for years and I'm quite happy with that method but not everyone wants to bother plugging the camera into a powerbank for parking.
 
I am trying to use an external battery and still be able to trigger parking mode when I turn the car off. I don't need help finding a battery, I'm looking for a way to trigger parking mode when using a battery. If you just plug it in to the battery via USB, then it just keeps recording normally, it doesn't go into parking mode. That defeats the purpose of getting a camera with buffered recording IMO. Yes, I know that a hardwire kit will do what I want but I don't drive it every day. A HW kit will turn the camera off at a pre-determined voltage, but the other small parasitic drains, that normally aren't an issue, will continue but from the already depleted battery. This will reduce the time my car can be parked w/o getting too low to start.
 
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