Dashcams!

IAmATeaf said:
My son has the Blackvue 4K 2 channel dashcam, has it professionally fitted and to date its killed his battery more then once, killed his endurance as card within months and has now started to overheat.
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I have a Skoda / VW and this happened to me. I change the power source from the 12v line (which is always on) to the OBD with one of these.
 
Quartz said:
I have a Skoda / VW and this happened to me. I change the power source from the 12v line (which is always on) to the OBD with one of these.
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You don’t need that to take a switched 12v feed, if you’re averse to soldering, an add-a-fuse all of a quid and the fuse board tends to be located near the OBD port on most VAG based stuff. If you want a better solution, the voltage sensing cables make more sense as they will cut the camera power when it hits the defined ‘low’ limit allowing you to still have enough power to start the car unless it’s left long term.
 
Is it just the Blackvue cameras that appear to have an issue with parking mode and battery drain?
Over the last 5 months my driving has been very sporadic. I have Thinkware cameras front & rear which are wired in, have the battery voltage monitor etc.
I've gone a couple of weeks more than once without starting the car and never had an issue with battery and the like - everything appears to be doing " as it says on the tin" so to speak.
 
stoofa said:
Is it just the Blackvue cameras that appear to have an issue with parking mode and battery drain?
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It's often to do with the car. On some cars (mainly VWs and their family, like my Skoda) the 12v feed does not switch off with the engine, so the dashcam just keeps going and drains the battery.
 
stoofa said:
Is it just the Blackvue cameras that appear to have an issue with parking mode and battery drain?
Over the last 5 months my driving has been very sporadic. I have Thinkware cameras front & rear which are wired in, have the battery voltage monitor etc.
I've gone a couple of weeks more than once without starting the car and never had an issue with battery and the like - everything appears to be doing " as it says on the tin" so to speak.
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No, it's not, all camera in parking mode will drain the battery, as its using power
 
You see I have a Skoda, and I have the aforementioned Thinkware cameras.
I'm yet to see any issues with battery drain at all. I know the cameras continue to run once i'm parked up - I can go check on exactly how long, but I'm getting a lot or recordings.
Mine has different modes.
So in parking mode I get time lapse - so 2 frames per second, motion and impact detection - 20 second clip save, 10 seconds either side of incident.
Then it finally drops into power save where it is impact detection only.

I had mine "professionally" fitted - guy certainly did a fantastic job hiding everything and I cannot comment on how he has wired it, but I'm certainly seeing no issues where my battery is drained to hell and I've got weeks without even starting my car over the past few months.
 
I have a thinkware too, my second one

I have mine set up to motion detection

The only way to stop it drawing the battey without a power bank is to set the cut off voltage high but then that defeats the object of parking mode

I first noticed it when the motion recordings where getting shorter and shorter

What I mean is this

Monday morning, fully charge the battery, when you check camera recording, it will have recorded say 24 hours


After a month say, it becomes 20 hours, then 18 hours , do on and so on, I then put a volt meter across the battery and its lower than it should be

Put a new battery in, same thing

Bought a cellink ,problems went away
 
ShiWarrior said:
I have a thinkware too, my second one

I have mine set up to motion detection

The only way to stop it drawing the battey without a power bank is to set the cut off voltage high but then that defeats the object of parking mode

I first noticed it when the motion recordings where getting shorter and shorter

What I mean is this

Monday morning, fully charge the battery, when you check camera recording, it will have recorded say 24 hours


After a month say, it becomes 20 hours, then 18 hours , do on and so on, I then put a volt meter across the battery and its lower than it should be

Put a new battery in, same thing

Bought a cellink ,problems went away
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Can't say I had similar issues when I used Thinkware to be honest and I've had a few of them too. Always had long record times when the car was left over the weekend.

I thought I'd give Blackvue a go in my latest car and I do feel like I regret it at the moment. I bought the DR900S-2CH and the Power Magic Ultra. The first 9 months were ok, initially I had a bug with the cameras but that was fixed with a firmware update. I always noticed how hot the dashcam got though compared to my Thinkware. Anyway, 9 months into owning it the dashcam just stopped working. Wouldn't respond to anything, wasn't recording anything, couldn't connect to it. I contacted Blackvue via their main site, went through fault findings, firmware updates, tried removing the card etc. The dashcam just still wouldn't respond. They then confirmed I needed to RMA, I had to send proof of purchase and gave them my address. That was when they told me that I would have to contact the UK distribution centre. This was frustrating as the whole process so far took just under 2 weeks.

I emailed the UK distributor with the full email chain. That didn't seem to make any difference, I got asked to go through the steps again and to provide proof of purchase. A week went by before I was then asked to RMA the device. At this point we were in lockdown and I didn't have a printer at home so I've had to wait to send it off. Finally got the paperwork printed off that was required for the RMA and sent it off on the 20th of July. Now I know a lot is going on in the world but I would have expected at least confirmation that they had received it, chased on the 31st as to whether they had received it. I did get a response pretty quickly this time just confirming it had been received. I then left them to it, I hadn't chased as from their previous response they did say they were on skeleton staff and very busy. I ended up getting an email on the 12th of August asking again for proof of purchase (I'd already supplied this as it was required before they would let me RMA the device). Provided it for the 3rd time and didn't hear anything back.

Today I got a replacement dashcam through the door, although the whole process was slightly frustrating I was glad to have it back. I was just about to fit it back to the car when I realised I should check the SD card is in the unit. That's when I noticed they had sent me back a 16GB card instead of the 128GB card.
 
i was thinking of getting that dashcam when i got my new car, as i didn't want to be without a camera in either car, so it was either the thinkware U1000 or the Blackvue 900s
 
I have been looking at dashcams.

I am unimpressed. Cheap, plasticky, tacky looking things and people wanting over £400-500 to fit one of the latest front/rear cameras.

As stupid as it sounds, I just want a dashcam. I don't want something that is going to record broadcast quality (I'm being sarcastic...) footage that I can upload to Youtube etc. I want a fit and forget system that starts up everytime the car does and switches off when I switch the car off. I don't want car parking on all the time as I worry about my battery, I'd like to be able to toggle that feature on/off as required. Quite happy to remove the SD card by hand (I know right? What with ones with wi-fi etc I must be crazy performing such a difficult task eh?) in the unlikely event that something bad happens.

Anyone care to recommend something that I could use that would be acceptable to insurance companies etc? Would like a 2 ch (front and rear system).
 
i know nothing said:
I have been looking at dashcams.

I am unimpressed. Cheap, plasticky, tacky looking things and people wanting over £400-500 to fit one of the latest front/rear cameras.

As stupid as it sounds, I just want a dashcam. I don't want something that is going to record broadcast quality (I'm being sarcastic...) footage that I can upload to Youtube etc. I want a fit and forget system that starts up everytime the car does and switches off when I switch the car off. I don't want car parking on all the time as I worry about my battery, I'd like to be able to toggle that feature on/off as required. Quite happy to remove the SD card by hand (I know right? What with ones with wi-fi etc I must be crazy performing such a difficult task eh?) in the unlikely event that something bad happens.

Anyone care to recommend something that I could use that would be acceptable to insurance companies etc? Would like a 2 ch (front and rear system).
Click to expand...

what you need is a Mini 0906, front and rear cameras on mine.. quite discrete, good quality basically fit and forget. I have a battery pack wired up which i can use for 'extended' parking mode without using the car battery - about 24+ hours or more that provides, the standard parking mode trips once the battery voltage drops below a threshold set by the parking mode device - that gets around 10 hours maybe...

wiring up the entire thing is not easy but doable, the rear camera obviously goes into the roof lining and is fiddly but its all relatively easy

You most certainly don't need to spend £400-500 for something like this

https://i.imgur.com/LlcH8QP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Pv9s9bx.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zCYl6iO.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/F5pafnQ.jpg

footage from parking..(rear cam, front is better quality)

https://youtu.be/vEz8vaFUmM8

front

https://i.imgur.com/auatWir.jpg

rear

https://i.imgur.com/y5aQDBh.jpg
 
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