Viofo parking mode powered long term by powerbanks

[Taifun]

Hi, I've been reading up for a few days to figure out a parking security solution. This is for apartment garage security, addressing concerns of one of my unhinged neighbours messing with my car. I'm thinking of a viofo a139 or a229 3ch (pro probably not necessary). Normal front/rear recording is obviously still useful when driving, but I want parking mode activated with the possibility of WiFi notifications to my phone (need to check range from my apartment).

The problem is I won't be driving the car regularly throughout the week. While this is indoors, I live in Australia so it will occasionally be exposed to high temperatures (cooled glove box will help on trips, or I can just leave the battery at home when driving and switch to lighter socket). Would something like a 20,000 mAh laptop powerbank be enough to last 3 days, in which case I can alternate between two of them? Obviously LiFePO4 would be preferable, but they're expensive! I'm reluctant to go down the hardwire route with the risk of running my car battery dry.

My main question is getting the viofo to run in parking mode on a powerbank - it seems possible but not straightforward. Also, I realise the 3 ch still won't give full view out my windows, but it's better than nothing. An external camera probably isn't legal, and I'm also considering a proximity alarm such as the Viper 508D. Otherwise trail cameras??

All suggestions are welcome, thank you!

 

[Nigel]

Otherwise trail cameras??

Useless I think, if it is PIR triggered, PIR can't see through glass.

My main question is getting the viofo to run in parking mode on a powerbank - it seems possible but not straightforward.

You just plug it in... what is the difficulty?

I haven't carefully tested all those dashcams connected to power banks for parking mode, so I'm not sure it is as easy as just plugging it in, but I think it is supposed to be...

Would something like a 20,000 mAh laptop powerbank be enough to last 3 days,

Unfortunately not, with the current generation of cameras, a full charge should last nearly 24 hours with 2 channels in use and with 3 channels you are down to about 18 hours.

 

[Taifun]

Would you have any recommendations for an older model with low power consumption that would do the trick? I'm really concerned about being able to catch a crazy neighbour keying my car. Maybe even a dual channel which I can flip around when parked, so the front is facing backwards and visa versa. It doesn't have to be very high resolution or have wifi etc.

 

[Nigel]

Would you have any recommendations for an older model with low power consumption that would do the trick? I'm really concerned about being able to catch a crazy neighbour keying my car. Maybe even a dual channel which I can flip around when parked, so the front is facing backwards and visa versa. It doesn't have to be very high resolution or have wifi etc.

Difficult to recommend anything at the moment. The cameras have been slowly getting more power hungry, so to get a proper low power camera requires going back a long way to not very good sensors, and most of those cameras are no longer available.

My favourite low power dashcam is the Blueskysea B1W, which only uses about 1 Watt, so will record for about 74 hours on a 74Wh (20,000mAh) powerbank, which is 3 days. It is single channel, so you will need a separate powerbank for each channel. However the sensor in that is two generations old and is not really recommended now. The B1W does seem to still be available though, many people like it. The other issue is that I'm not sure what it does in parking mode these days, I remember a low power parking mode being added, that used so little power that my powerbank turned off, I can't remember that being optional, or maybe it now goes to sleep in parking mode and only detects impacts? @estore009 would know...

Generally, a dual dashcam is better than two single dashcams for power use, except with two single dashcams you can use two powerbanks, so get longer record times, at extra cost and inconvenience.

The other option is to go for a radar triggered dashcam like the Thinkware U3000, which will give 2 channels for a week or more, but that is rather expensive and has been having some issues and doesn't have HDR so is not worth the price. I don't know of any other radar triggered dashcams I could recommend currently. Might be worth looking into the U3000 since it does what you need, even though people aren't recommending it for normal dashcam use.

 

[Taifun]

Thanks, the blueskysea B1W looks like a good, cheap option with low power draw and 360 swivel camera. However, the parking mode seems to be shock activated. Otherwise, with continuous recording a 128gb card will fill up in a day and be unreasonable to monitor manually. I'm pretty sure that I saw somewhere that you could feed the live stream to a movement detection service and have that notify you (WiFi mode has higher power draw but still under 2W).

Otherwise a radar triggered cam like the U3000 sounds good, but it's very expensive. I wonder if a RF proximity alarm such as the viper508d could be used as a trigger.

 

[Taifun]

Birds AI view is the app I saw mentioned. I haven't seen how it works, but it might prove suitable.

 

[JardaB]

A dashcam is not suitable for what you need. Why don't you consider a standard security camera placed in the building (plus shock and door sensors) ??

There is no problem with power, no problem with storage size, no problem with identifying intrusion (movement), no problem with signaling intrusion.

 

[Nigel]

I wonder if a RF proximity alarm such as the viper508d could be used as a trigger.

I'm not sure what that is, but in general a radar/microwave sensor should work fine, the only problem is getting a dashcam to start recording reasonably quickly on the trigger. For Viofo dashcams you would need to use the hardwire kit, turn parking mode off in the menu, and get the sensor to activate the ACC input to put it into normal recording mode, then it would wake up and start recording while the radar is triggered and go back to sleep to save power when the trigger input disappears. Then of course you have to get it to also wake up with the ignition. Probably quite easy if you have enough electronics knowledge, but you are going to have to understand it.

I don't know if the 70mai Omni is suitable?
I've not tried it yet, but it looks like the power consumption is not too bad, and I think it doesn't record too much. People seem to have a bit of an issue with the tracking, but it is marketed for what you want.

I have an Xmas discount code/link for the Omni if it helps, needs using quickly!

70mai Dash Cam Omni 360° Full View Vehicle Security Guard

Experience extraordinary day and night performance with F1.5 aperture and PureCel®Plus-S HDR technology. Industry's first 360° full view design. Detect suspicious activity with AI motion detection. Get clear video with 60 FPS dynamic vision. Benefit from eMMC storage, which retains data without...

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[Nigel]

Otherwise, with continuous recording a 128gb card will fill up in a day and be unreasonable to monitor manually. I'm pretty sure that I saw somewhere that you could feed the live stream to a movement detection service and have that notify you (WiFi mode has higher power draw but still under 2W).

Wifi from dashcams is normally such short range that it is not practical, although the B1W does have the longest range wifi I have ever seen in a dashcam.

It is possible to get ffmpeg to search through a memory card full of parking video with close to zero movement and pick out the bits that do have movement, so checking through a large card is not necessarily impractical. Of course the B1W, being a little old, can't take very large cards.

 

[Taifun]

A dashcam is not suitable for what you need. Why don't you consider a standard security camera placed in the building (plus shock and door sensors) ??

There is no problem with power, no problem with storage size, no problem with identifying intrusion (movement), no problem with signaling intrusion.

The only real problem is legally installing this is a shared complex parking lot. I would rather not go down the route of asking permission as this will escalate the matter. If I detect any criminal activity then this should be enough to warn the person off or have the manager extend the current CCTV system to where my car is. Recording from within my car is also questionable but impossible to prove and likely to go unnoticed if it's a dashcam.

 

[Taifun]

Wifi from dashcams is normally such short range that it is not practical, although the B1W does have the longest range wifi I have ever seen in a dashcam.

It is possible to get ffmpeg to search through a memory card full of parking video with close to zero movement and pick out the bits that do have movement, so checking through a large card is not necessarily impractical. Of course the B1W, being a little old, can't take very large cards.

I think I misunderstood the meaning of WiFi connection for this. I thought it would connect to a wifi network to stream the data to an app, like how a nestcam works. For this is seems that it acts as the wifi network, which you can connect to with a phone to monitor. Having an old phone in the car wouldn't be an issue, but it could only connect to 1 camera and can't relay the information by cellular data.

 

[Nigel]

I think I misunderstood the meaning of WiFi connection for this. I thought it would connect to a wifi network to stream the data to an app, like how a nestcam works. For this is seems that it acts as the wifi network, which you can connect to with a phone to monitor. Having an old phone in the car wouldn't be an issue, but it could only connect to 1 camera and can't relay the information by cellular data.

Yes, I don't think the B1W can connect to another network, unlike the Viofo cameras, and it has its own app with no published interface, so I don't think you could stream off it even if you had a computer with two network cards. The Viofo cameras, you can connect to an RTSP stream from the camera so can do things if you know what you are doing.

 

[Taifun]

So it doesn't seem like there's any good (and reasonably priced) solution. I'll probably buy two B1W cameras anyway, they're certainly better than nothing as dash cams.

If I really want I can hook both up to a dual port 20000 mAh power bank, and load them up with 128GB SD cards. Then every 24hr swap the power bank and cards around, and analyse the footage with DVR-scan.

The 508D I mentioned is the radio frequency emitter/detector designed to work with other components (or attached to your horn I think). You can adjust the sensitivity, so entry within an outer layer (i.e. near your windows) sends out half second 'chirps', and the inside layer (i.e. inside the car) is a continuous current. These are seperate wires with 200mA output. It really shouldn't be that hard to set the continuous wire to activate a switch, like one that completes a USB input/output, running from a power bank to the cameras. Of course, the cameras would need to start recording immediately, save the footage, and the power bank can't go dormant. All of this would massively cut down the storage and need for video analysis, but power consumption would remain the same.

 

[Nigel]

I'll probably buy two B1W cameras anyway, they're certainly better than nothing as dash cams.

They are pretty good as a dashcam, only issue is the low light performance relative to the latest models, license plates become motion blurred long before the latest sensors, and the dynamic range is not as good, but as rear or side cameras to record what happened, rather than to read plates, they are still good, reliable, and low powered.

If the parking mode is not what you want, you can probably still get a parking mode free firmware from the manufacturer.