Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limiter

fieldofview

fieldofview

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Dash Cam
$60 starter cam: "Car Camcorder P9000, 720p
Hi,
I'm new to dashcams and have started out with a 1080 Cam-AP-P9000. I have a dual USB 3.1 amp cigarette lighter socket providing power to the camera through a USB cable. The power socket goes on/off with the ignition and the camera starts up and shuts down on its own so that works well and is hassle free. The dash cam also has parking/motion detection mode. I understand the voltage discharge limiters cut out below 12v but that you really want to maintain >12v on the car battery. My thought was to use a high capacity Lithium Polymer batter such as the EasyAcc (12,000 mah) or the Anker Astro Pro with 14400mAh capacity. I'm looking at the Anker at $60 CDN. The EasyAcc is about $40 USD available in the US but for some reason it's $186 CDN in Canada so not a consideration.

Most times I wouldn't use parking mode and the cam would be off when the ignition was off. But if I parked at the airport or some other place where I wanted to keep an eye on the car, I'd plug the camera into the battery pack. The advantage is (hopefully) a long run time, but independent of and at no risk of discharging the car battery or getting into a deep cycle situation.

Does anyone have experience with running a dashcam (with LCD off) off such a battery, particularly in parking mode? Decent battery life? There is this post search.php?keywords=easyacc reporting EasyACC running a mirror cam (driving mode?) for a couple of weeks, that sounds promising. For regular driving I'd plug the USB cable back into the 12v 3.1 amp cigarette lighter adapter.

I'm hooked and already looking to upgrade the dashcam to something that automatically switches between drive and parking mode and maybe with accelerometers to detect hits. With the Cam-AP-P9000 camera I have now, I have to turn motion detection on manually every time.
 
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Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

Thanks for the tips, I've seen those DIY approaches. When driving there's no problem, I have a 3.1 amp dual USB adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter giving power to the dash cam and my cell phone. The USB charger looks like this dual usb 3.1 amp 12 v charger.

So power while driving is fine, I'm looking for a power option for parking mode and am considering usb battery pack power. Wondering if anyone has considered those or if there are downsides I haven't considered. From what I've read with battery discharge limiters, they cut out at too low a voltage (under 12v) by which time your car battery is into deep cycling mode. A half charged battery is already down to 12.2 v and if the discharge limiters cut out below 12 v, that's a lot of wear and tear on the car battery.

Here's the 14,000 mah LiPo battery example of 14,000 mah LiPo battery
 
Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

Well the only advise I have is what Jokiin said here:

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=2363#p24397
"some of these battery devices automatically detect a load and will power on, many you need to press a button to power it on, may or may not work for this application depending which type it is"

The $7 battery talked about there is confirmed working automatically and cheap enough to replace often @ only $7 for 2600mAh (assuming that's enough power)
 
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Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

How long would a 200mAh give you? And if you' only enable parking mode when parked at public places, it's feasable to enable recording manually on the cam before leaving the car I think.
 
Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

cantremember said:
How long would a 200mAh give you? And if you' only enable parking mode when parked at public places, it's feasable to enable recording manually on the cam before leaving the car I think.
Click to expand...

What do you have that's only 200mAh? That's like a drop in the bucket. (hardly anything/minutes)
The $7 stick battery is 2600mAh

You're going to get bored of manually doing anything when it comes to electronics. A car DVR isn't worth using unless it's fully automatic, set it and forget it type of thing. It's not realistic to think you'll have the discipline to manually start recording every single time you park your car. (not going to happen)

So if you really want Parking Mode, make sure you buy a camera that actually supports parking mode.
 
Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

Hi,

I also thought of using a power bank but the disadvantage compared to a hardwired (e.g.) Power Magic: you would need to charge the power bank at some point if you don't drive for at least several hours to get the power bankfully charged. So unplugging, charging, plugging again every few days would be the result.

For example, the Anker® Astro E5 15000mAh needs 9-10h charging when using 5V 1.5A.

So, I'm still looking for the "right" solution...


My two cents,

JoeJoe
 
Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

I think you've misunderstood how they want to use this
 
Re: Using LiPo battery parking mode instead of voltage limit

I'm the original poster. Right, what I'm thinking of would only be practical with a camera that automatically switched between driving and parking mode based on detecting or not detecting motion. I'd just move the USB cable from the usb charger to the battery pack. This should take about a second to do and not require any fiddling with buttons on the camera. On plugging into power, the camera would figure out if the car is moving or parked and go into the desired mode. I'm only interested in doing this for longer term parking say at airport or other place where I leave the car for days in public parking. At home I wouldn't bother. Most times I'd leave the USB cable plugged into the USB charger that's always in the cigarette lighter and the camera would come on each time the car is running so that part requires no intervention.

This should work for me because the USB car charger has 2 usb ports, one at 2.1 amps and one at 1 amp so I'm not losing access for power for my cell phone/gps. Using the battery pack removes the risk of killing my car battery even with a discharge limiter which I understand cuts out at too low a voltage to protect the battery from deep cycling. Cost of the battery pack is about $60-$70 CDN vs $40-$50 CDN plus wiring effort.

In reply to Joe-Joe, yeah, I'd take the battery pack in the house and make sure it's charged before I was going to leave the car parked somewhere for awhile. I wouldn't be trying to charge the battery pack in the car. It's the same as making sure the other electronics were charged before a trip: camera, cell phone, laptop, gps, etc.
 
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OP, I have been using a battery pack in the car when parked but with 'spy' type cameras that are always on (808 #16). This is for short term (4 hours or less) parking.
It works well enough with a no name brand battery pack.
 
It would be great if the battery discharging prevention (BDP) would come with an internal battery (e.g. 10.000 mAh) which would power the cam after ignition is off. After that internal battery is empty it could use the energy from the battery until it reached a certain voltage (e.g. 12 Volts).

The BDP would be connected to a fuse (1) which always has power (for providing the cam with power when internal BDP battery is empty) and at the same time it would be connected to a fuse (2) which only has power when ignition is on (so this connection acts like a switch for the BDP by "telling" it if ignition is on/car is moving).

So (2) would "tell" the BDP when off (= ignition off) to power the cam with BDP's internal battery and afterwards with the car's battery until voltage is, e.g. at 12V.
If ignition is on (2) would "tell" the BDP to power the cam with the car's battery and at the same time Charge the BDP's internal battery.

If there is already such a device, please let me know ;)
 
Hi Produkttester,
Good idea, here's a variation, running the battery pack like an uninterruptable power supply for the dash cam with the option to not use a discharge limiter (or not have a limiter at all). So when the ignition is on, the dashcam is powered direct from the cigarette lighter or switched supply in the fuse box. When the car stops, the battery pack kicks in like a UPS and powers the dashcam in parking mode until the battery pack is exhausted or until the car is started again. No discharge limiter is needed because the battery pack wouldn't be powered by the car battery when the ignition is off, so no risk to the car battery. When the car is running, the battery pack could be charging. The ideal product would allow charging by AC too. Weight in a car wouldn't be an issue, so going to 15,000 mah or higher, or even 30,000 mah is possible.

Another ideal feature for this "product" is the power supply would also offer an extra 2.1 amp USB port for the cellphone (my smartphone draws alot of current when running standalone GPS apps such as TomTom or Navigon).

From my reading, the discharge limiters cut out at 12v or some cut out in the 11v range. My understanding is car batteries need/like to be kept at 12.4 v or higher otherwise they get into deep cycling mode and die faster, that's what I want to avoid.
 
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Gurkha9 said:
OP, I have been using a battery pack in the car when parked but with 'spy' type cameras that are always on (808 #16). This is for short term (4 hours or less) parking.
It works well enough with a no name brand battery pack.
Click to expand...

Great, thanks for the confirmation.

My el cheapo dash cam is powered through a mini-USB connection, I take it yours is too. Anyone know if mini-USB is the common way dashcams are powered? I see some two-contact plug power supplies for some cameras.
 
Most 5V cameras are powered through Mini USB, a minority are Micro USB.
 
Gurkha9 said:
Most 5V cameras are powered through Mini USB, a minority are Micro USB.
Click to expand...

Thanks Gurkha9
I was looking at the Lukas LK-9000, unfortunately the power plug is a DC connector (a round plug).
 
Found this Lukas product LUKAS LK-530 UPS and battery pack. The manual is here for download http://www.lukashd.com/gnuboard4/bbs/board.php?bo_table=eng_automanual&wr_id=4 From the specs, this has a 2,2AH battery (2,200 mah), another site mentioned this will run the Lukas 7300 or 7900 cam for 7-8 hours. Extrapolating, a 14,000 mah Anker should run a similar dashcam for about 44 hours.

The Lukas LK-530 UPS battery pack is what Produckttester and I are looking for. Can run three ways, a) stand alone battery pack with 7-8 hour life, recharge time is under 2 hours 12v) or b) UPS, so when ignition is on, car battery powers dashcam, when ignition gets turned off and cigarette lighter power is off, then the battery kicks in and powers the dashcam until the battery is exhausted, or c) as discharge limiter with backup batter. Unit is supplied by always-on 12v power, when ignition is off, car battery continues to power dashcam until car battery voltage falls below preset limit (you set), then battery kicks in and powers dash cam until the battery is exhausted. Maximum cut-off voltage you can set is 12.4v. Lowest is 11.9v. Specs state battery can be recharged 300 times. Cost is about $80 USD. Battery pack can be hardwired or plugged into cigarette lighter. Seems like Lukas has it figured out. Lukas uses DC plugs for power so the power pack isn't usable on cams powered by mini-USB connectors.

I'll keep looking to see what's out there.
 
@fieldofview
Thanks a lot! I checked the page a little bit: http://www.lukashd.com/eng/product_info/power_lock_4.html
All of them sound quite good, even the smallest one you can set to turn off at 12.4, 12.2... Volts (should maybe added to the battery discharge prevention devices of Dashcamtalk). But as you said, the only one with a battery is the LK-530 UPShttp://lukashd.com/eng/product_info/power_lock_3.html.
Do you know where one can buy them? I assume they are not available in Europe. At least I couldn't find them on any Internet shop. Only found this on ebay -> http://www.ebay.de/itm/Free-Express...166?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19dd9eb11e

Would be great if there are others from other companies as well. Although I will definitly go with a (major) brand, as I don't want the lipo to catch fire ;).

In Germany we would say that what fieldofview found is the "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" :) (something that really got everything one needs)

EDIT: By the way, I think there is a glitch in the forum software. I liked fieldofview's comment some time ago and could now like it again :)

EDIT2: I am wondering a little bit how reliable the ebay seller is though, as he has quite some negative ratings. There is only one other seller on ebay who is selling the LK-530, but he has only 100 ratings and might just have one device, so I am not buying it from this guy.
Are there any other sources to get it from? Maybe Lukas directly?

EDIT3: Green-Sum seems to be the official Lukas reseller: http://dashcamtalk.com/forum/index.php?threads/official-seller-of-lukas-is-green-sum.1470/

Thanks!
 
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@fieldofview
I read the manual and the features of the LK-530. How sure are you that this is true?
Unit is supplied by always-on 12v power, when ignition is off, car battery continues to power dashcam until car battery voltage falls below preset limit (you set), then battery kicks in and powers dash cam until the battery is exhausted
Click to expand...
It makes of course much more sense than first using the LK-530's power and then the car's battery, but I did not really find this option/way of working in the manual.

Lukas uses DC plugs for power so the power pack isn't usable on cams powered by mini-USB connectors.
Click to expand...
Why not? Can one not just plug the cam's adapter (cigarette lighter male) into the LK-530's adapter (female)?
 
Saw this 20,000 mAh LiPo Anker battery on Amazon.ca for $99 CDN. It's meant to recharge cell phones and iPads, but should run a dash cam for quite a few days. No battery discharge voltage limiter though. Recharge time reported at 3-4 hours on AC power.

I phoned Anker USA sales and asked if the device can be charged in the car. One suggested option is to use a 12vdc to 110v AC cigarette lighter adapter and use the battery pack's AC charger to charge the battery pack. With switched cigarette lighter socket, it'd be interesting to see if charging time when the car is running is sufficient to offset the drain when the dash cam is in park mode and drawing from the battery.

http://www.ianker.com/product/79AN20L-SA
 
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