VIOFO's A129 Duo

Is it possible you have red and yellow wires around the wrong way. For some reason viofo switched the colours of the Acc and B+ wires compared to every other manufacturer

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I did it per the labels on the wires. Should I follow the color standard or what the labels on the wires say?
 
Where can we buy the hardware kit or what is the part number? Thanks Also what is the amp power requirement of the A129 Duo? https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.freshd...rs=Host&response-content-type=application/pdf
lithium ion battery packs like Anker and others are not safe to keep in hot cars; I am looking at purchasing the Cellink Neo which is Safe in hot cars...
Using the cigarette lighter socket there's no option to set a cut-off voltage, runs a risk of the battery voltage going too low to start the car.

Recommended hardwiring if you intend to use Parking Mode. Their Parking Mode specific 3 wire hardwiring kit should be out soon, the kit has user selectable voltage cut-offs ranging from 11.4 or 11.6-12.4V. There's no need to go through the firewall, hardwire it to the internal fusebox using a fuse-tap. The Rhundo device appears to be a good option for cars with always on 12V sockets.

I haven't used motion-detection but I think the power draw would be equivalent to what their Parking Mode feature draws.
 
For the 2 wires version, we also have an updated version, quality improved, cut off voltage is 11.8V, we will tell the distributor to update the pictures.

For the 3 wires version, we are still improving and keep testing the feature, close to release.
Just offered a beta firmware for parking mode test.
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/parking-mode-beta-firmware.36138/
 
The voltage reading at the hardwire kit will generally be lower than at the battery, 11.8v will often be closer to 12v at the battery, ours only go as low as 11.8v, haven't used any that go down to 11.4v so not familiar with those
 
I take that back. Still horizontal bands at night. Here is a look at my settings. Anything else I should check before returning the camera?

Change your settings frequency to 60hz you have it set to 50hz which is not used in the states (see if that will help with the bands/lines?)
 
@viofo @jokiin

Since it's not advised to go below 12 or even 12.2, why provide cutoffs as low as 11.4?
The battery will still work at 11.4 volts, but the lower you go the shorter the lifetime of the battery before it wears out. For a standard lead acid battery, to get the maximum total storage and retrieval over it's lifetime, it is best to recharge when 50% full, which I think is where the 12.2 volt recommendation comes from, but for a car that is not usually the aim. If you don't mind trading some lifetime for longer parking guard coverage then you can go lower. Below some point the battery will start to suffer rapid damage, for a normal car battery that is at quite a high charge, but for some AGM batteries, going down to 20% is OK (80% on the graph below), so maybe 11.8v at the battery terminals and 11.6 at the hardwire kit is OK. AGM batteries are becoming quite common due to stop-start technology, mainly because the charge a lot faster between the traffic lights, but also because it is not so important to charge them to 100.000% occasionally, not doing so often leads to the death of standard batteries.

My rather old and well used 30Ah AGM battery has been regularly going down to 11.8 and quite often 11.6 volts at the battery terminals for the last year and will still happily start the car at 11.6 volts, struggles a bit at 11.4 volts, but 11.4 volts at the hardwire kit would probably be OK. That treatment would have killed a standard lead acid battery probably 6 years ago!

Also, the voltage at the terminals is not the voltage shown on the graphs/specifications, you are supposed to leave the battery disconnected for 6 hours before measuring it, the voltage at the terminals will be lower depending on the amount of load, but with a dashcam and car alarm connected it may be 0.2volts lower. So 20% remaining on the graph below shows 11.8 volts, which may read 11.6 at the battery terminals and maybe 11.4 at the hardwire kit.
2009414153615343.jpg
 
So basically if I don't mind replacing a battery every 2-3 years, I can safely go till 11.4 or 11.6 and not have problems starting the car?
With a good AGM battery, yes, no problem.

With a good long life (calcium) battery, 11.6 should be OK, 1.8 to be safe. You will loose a bit of capacity over time but most car batteries are bigger than needed anyway so loosing 20% capacity over 2 years probably isn't an issue. They also come with a 5 year warranty so if it fails in 2-3 years...

With a traditional cheap maintenance-free lead acid, they sometimes die within 2-3 years anyway due to internal short circuits so it may not be worth worrying about loosing a bit of capacity, but I would stick to 2.0 because they are not designed for significant discharge.

With all these batteries, they should be filled to 100.00% monthly to keep them in good condition, if they never reach 100% then they will loose capacity a lot faster, and 100% means maybe 6 hours charging on the road, or 12 hours on a charger.

Might be worth disconnecting the battery for an hour, measuring the voltage at the battery terminals, re-connecting and seeing how much the voltage drops with the load from your car and cameras and you measuring it at the fusebox. If you see a 0.2 volt drop then you can knock 0.2 volts off the voltage from the discharge graph.

Good car batteries can last 10 years but they often fail before that, replacing the battery every 5 due to heavy use is effectively the extra cost of a battery every 10 years, cheap compared to installing a Cellink Neo. And there is no guarantee the Cellink will last any longer, especially in freezing climates. The Megtech charging kit with standard USB power banks makes more sense, but is not necessary.
 
Thank you.

Yup, replacing a battery or even two is a lot cheaper than installing something like the Neo. My regular usage doesn't exceed 2-3 hours a day, maybe longer on a day or two during the week, should be alright.

Will look at the AGM options once it's time.
If you are driving over an hour a day then you should not be getting below 2.2 volts, maybe 2.0 at the fuse box anyway, if you only reach the voltage limit at the weekend then it will take a long time to kill the battery.

The Neo only makes sense if you are driving less than 1 hour a day, in which case the car battery doesn't charge fast enough to provide more than a few hours parking coverage and the car battery never gets near 100% which is bad for it. The Neo can charge quite fast, it is full in 40 minutes, doesn't mind if you don't fill it and doesn't mind much if you empty it, although charging that fast gives lithium batteries a shorter life so it could work out an expensive option over time.
 
Just if i understand it right. I drive less than 30min each day, is hardwiring it with the 3 wire is bad for my battery ?
Or does it just means that the parking mode will not work for my day at work ?
 
Just if i understand it right. I drive less than 30min each day, is hardwiring it with the 3 wire is bad for my battery ?
Or does it just means that the parking mode will not work for my day at work ?
With less than 30 minutes driving per day, the car battery will not charge enough to provide 24 hour recording. How much recording you get will depend on the type of battery and the power output of the car alternator, and the time of year - if you have the lights and heaters and wipers turned on then the battery will charge more slowly.

If you only want to record during the day then turn the camera off at night and you will have enough for a work day from 15-20 minutes daily driving.
 
With less than 30 minutes driving per day, the car battery will not charge enough to provide 24 hour recording. How much recording you get will depend on the type of battery and the power output of the car alternator, and the time of year - if you have the lights and heaters and wipers turned on then the battery will charge more slowly.

If you only want to record during the day then turn the camera off at night and you will have enough for a work day from 15-20 minutes daily driving.

The turning it off at night is a good tip, my problem is during the day my car is downtown in a semi-sketchy area so more important to have parking mode in this time of the day. Since i live where winter are really hard and the heater is always on at mid-max 2-3 months, i guess i can forget winter, but anyway, little thugs stay inside during winter, heheh.
 
A little of both, as an undercharged battery will reach the low-cut voltage more quickly. @Nigel is right about lead-acid starting batteries liking to be 100% charged more or less regularly, but in the real world a lot of people do not drive enough to achieve this, yet get good battery life anyway.

As most battery warranties are "pro-rated" heavily after the full warranty period expires, there's not much value left 3/4 of the way through. The way I see it, if a battery doesn't deliver what I expected it to, then I do not want to replace it with the same thing because it will probably happen again so warranties are only much good for a defective product most of the time. Another point to be considering is that with quite a few of the newer cars, the battery is quite expensive and no budget-friendly alternatives exist. Sometimes just swapping out a battery will take an experienced mechanic a half hour shop time too. So know what you've got before you go for the lower voltage cut-off settings. Most important is to never buy a cheap car battery unless you're selling the car very soon. Mid-grade and higher batteries are worth their extra cost and then some.

Phil

I meant to add this: I have been running one single channel cam continuously in my vehicles for a number of years now, and it doesn't seem to affect battery life very much if at all. Running a 2-channel cam like this probably will shorten battery life considerably.
Phil
 
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The turning it off at night is a good tip, my problem is during the day my car is downtown in a semi-sketchy area so more important to have parking mode in this time of the day. Since i live where winter are really hard and the heater is always on at mid-max 2-3 months, i guess i can forget winter, but anyway, little thugs stay inside during winter, heheh.
Maybe you have bigger alternators in Canada to cope with your winters, also if you have an AGM battery it will charge faster. You will just have to try it and see how it goes.

"the 3 wire is bad for my battery" - the idea of the voltage cut off is to protect the battery, you may need to set it a bit lower for your winters than most people because battery votage drops in the cold. Also, if you battery never gets fully charged because of the dashcam then I recommend getting a battery charger and filling the battery once a month, a cheap trickle charger is fine.
 
A little of both, as an undercharged battery will reach the low-cut voltage more quickly. @Nigel is right about lead-acid starting batteries liking to be 100% charged more or less regularly, but in the real world a lot of people do not drive enough to achieve this, yet get good battery life anyway.
I think it is a case of many people in warmer climates not noticing if they loose 70% of the battery capacity. Here there are always a lot of battery failures in the first cold spell of the winter, the batteries were working perfectly until then, or so people think. And if a weak battery makes it through to March then it almost always survives until December.
 
I'm sorry but i have another question, is a powerbank a good solution for me ? instead of hardwiring it ?
 
I think a large powerbank might be your best solution if it will last as long as you need it to. The only real issues I see is the need to charge it daily and shuffle it between car and house. If you keep it out of direct sunlight that will keep it safe in the summer. In use is will generate a little heat itself which will keep it safe for a few degrees below freezing. In your climate I wouldn't worry about any of that, but as a forgetful person myself it would take some getting used to the charging and moving.

@Nigel- You don't have a monopoly on the cold, and we get the same kind of thing happening here when we near the first freeze of the year and for shortly thereafter. Plus we get another round when summer arrives in earnest and the sweltering heat takes out weak batteries then too, usually when someone parks for several minutes or a half hour and the engine heat cooks it past it's limits as it sits there. I'm happy to trade a few months of battery life to gain the security of my cam coverage, even though I've never needed that footage. Like SD cards wearing out there are some extra costs in running dashcams but it's pretty small overall.

Phil
 
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