Hardwire dashcam setup

LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

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On our street it has become too dangerous to keep cars parked. It's not fun to find car damaged in hit and run accidents within 2 days!! Insurance is of course much worse than useless. Probably not going to get fixed at all, as there is no point; and this also means I will NOT be buying any new modern less polluting cars any time soon.

Dash cam was installed long ago but obviously it's OFF when parked.

I bought £7 ebay hardwire kit in hope to get it up and running 24/7. Which sort of fuse would I use to wire it and would it be a deadly drain on the battery particularly if left for 2-3d? If so are there any further tricks that can be done?

Any recommendations for relatively inexpensive home + street cameras would be also greatly appreciated.
 
Why not just buy yourself a power bank and just plug it into that, if you are away for two days or so buy two powerbanks plus a twin USB lead. The camera will drain the car battery depending on it's age and condition. You could do a test if you already have a power bank?
 
Probably not ideal but perhaps a spare car battery could be wired into the boot just to run a permanently on camera .. it can be done as caravan plugs charge the caravan battery while in motion . So I would suggest a chat to a tow bar installer ( the electrical side )
 
I have the Finkware 750D duel camera setup. It has a low battery setting and will switch off then the battery gets to a pre set level. I also have 2 power banks that discharge first then it switches to the car battery. It also has a motion setting that only records when someone or something is near the car, again saving the batteries.

The Blackvue also has the same low battery setting
 
My camera runs for a week without draining the battery.
It's an older nextbase 202 lite.
 
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admirable said:
Why not just buy yourself a power bank and just plug it into that, if you are away for two days or so buy two powerbanks plus a twin USB lead. The camera will drain the car battery depending on it's age and condition. You could do a test if you already have a power bank?
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Thanks. Any idea how long do the last? Dash is yi if it makes any difference. Video quality is decent enough to make out number plate
 
Most cameras are a minimum of 720p now , what you get with the more expensive ones is much better low light picture quality.
To stop your battery being drained you want one with parking mode , I've got blackvue in my car, front and rear with a box that cuts off when the battery gets low and motion and impact detection when in parking mode 750s I think it's called, they do a 4k version as well, but £££
 
Personally I wouldn't want to run a dash cam for 24/7. Even if it lasts for 2-3 days, what about when you go on holiday etc?

Do you not park near the house? You can buy fairly decent CCTV cameras these days.

This is ours at night:

wJu0yt5QTt-XRQp3-1UF9Q.jpg
 
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Yeah one of the Blackviews (and probably other makes) has some crazy impact detection system that records for 30 seconds before an impact. That's what I'd get and then pay a proper firm (Halfords do it and warranty their work) to hardwire properly.

Top of the range Blackvue fitted with Power Magic Pro will cost c£400. Compare that with (say) £250 excess, loss of NCD and fault claim loading. I bet there's a sale on soon too.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Yeah one of the Blackviews (and probably other makes) has some crazy impact detection system that records for 30 seconds before an impact. That's what I'd get and then pay a proper firm (Halfords do it and warranty their work) to hardwire properly.

Top of the range Blackvue fitted with Power Magic Pro will cost c£400. Compare that with (say) £250 excess, loss of NCD and fault claim loading. I bet there's a sale on soon too.
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Would you not need four of them though to cover all angles?

Even if you had front and rear, if someone hit you from the side or someone ran a key down the door, it might not see them?
 
A dashcam is usually rated at 1 A at 5 V. That means 5 W of power draw, or 5 Wh of energy every 1 hour. But that is worst case, they usually draw less than rated, let's assume it's 3 Wh of energy use per hour. A car battery can hold between 500 Wh to 1000 Wh of energy when fully charged. So, it would take 80 hours to lead-acid preferred 50% depth of discharge for a small car battery, or 160 hours a bigger stop-start battery.
(electronics is wonderfully easy, everything is in SI units. no stupid units like gallons or miles)

My hard-wire dashcam kit has a fixed logic in the DC-DC converter unit that will cut power to dash-cam when voltage is below something like 11.5v. This is pretty useless in two ways:
- A lead-acid car battery under minimal load dropping below 12v means it's already doing lasting damage to the battery. The cut-off voltage should be at 12.5v if you want to have any hope of cranking the engine with that battery after leaving it a few days.
- Stop-start voltage fluctuations causes the camera to loose power and restart every time engine restarts.
As such, I've only set my hardwared dashcame to record in parked timelapse for 1 hour after car shut off. Enough to record possible problems at locations I don't usually park.


A better solution for 24/7 recording is to buy a large power bank as previously mentioned. A 15,000 mAh Li-on power bank has 55.5 Wh of energy. Good for 11 hours of recording at worst case power draw, or 18 hours using previously assumed figure. You are not putting extra load onto the lead-acid battery. You can be sure the car can crank everytime.

If you really want longer recording. You should consider a DC-DC converter that you can set cut-off voltage to be above 12v. This Blackvue hardwire adaptor for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/BlackVue-H...DFN8VCAW70G&psc=1&refRID=N1ABV8HSRDFN8VCAW70G

Alternatively, if only you use the car and you have the knowledge how to jump it. You can keep one of those 12v booster pack in the boot. Just in case you leave it a few days too many and car won't crank.
 
noneforit said:
Would you not need four of them though to cover all angles?

Even if you had front and rear, if someone hit you from the side or someone ran a key down the door, it might not see them?
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Front and rear should do it because they have a very wide angle of view and F&R are a lot cheaper than 2 X front. A vehicle that hits you from the side pretty much has to pass the field of view.

As for keying.....it depends what your goal is. Personally mine would be to get the registration of an insured vehicle - that way their insurers pay to fix my car. Keying involves talking to the police and even if somebody is successfully prosecuted then your insurers will probably class it as a fault claim. It's more of a deterrent than a way of actually catching vandals.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Yeah one of the Blackviews (and probably other makes) has some crazy impact detection system that records for 30 seconds before an impact. .
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The only way this works is if its recording all the time but saves a chunk of video from 30 seconds before.... It still has to be on and recording 24/7
 
KIPAX said:
The only way this works is if its recording all the time but saves a chunk of video from 30 seconds before.... It still has to be on and recording 24/7
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Well, the only way it works without a flux capacitor..... :)

But yeah, I'm pretty sure it writes 30s worth of video to bubble memory and then when it senses impact copies it to SD card. Some camcorders worked like this for a while. Power requirements should be tiny compared to a lead acid battery.
 
My dash cams are hard wired to the OBD plug as supplied by the makers of the dash cam, seems to work ok and it has a voltage cut off point of about 11.5v.
Ps, I believe they will work with various types of dash cam providing they have the same type of connector.
 
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LongLensPhotography said:
On our street it has become too dangerous to keep cars parked. It's not fun to find car damaged in hit and run accidents within 2 days!! Insurance is of course much worse than useless. Probably not going to get fixed at all, as there is no point; and this also means I will NOT be buying any new modern less polluting cars any time soon.

Dash cam was installed long ago but obviously it's OFF when parked.

I bought £7 ebay hardwire kit in hope to get it up and running 24/7. Which sort of fuse would I use to wire it and would it be a deadly drain on the battery particularly if left for 2-3d? If so are there any further tricks that can be done?

Any recommendations for relatively inexpensive home + street cameras would be also greatly appreciated.
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A good setup is something like the Street Guardian SGGCX2PRO which has an audible card error warning, which is important because power and cards are the most common reasons for failures. Street Guardian are renowned for having the best customer service in the business.

A hardwire kit such as Multi Safer or more advanced such as the Vico-Power Plus, some add-a-circuits for non-invasive connection to your fuse box and you'll need a multimeter to identify which fuse is live with ignition on only and which is live all the time (whilst also baring in mind some fuses remain live for up to 20 minutes until the car goes to sleep). This will allow you to set the duration that the camera will run after ignition off, or you can choose a voltage level instead so that you don't drain your car's battery.

Alternatively, you can do a power bank setup where the the camera is constantly powered by the power bank, which in turn is only charged whilst the ignition is on. This will avoid putting strain on your car's battery and also save having to plug and unplug a power bank all the time. But to do this you will need a power bank with pass through technology - which are fortunately more common an inexpensive now. You also need to take into account input voltage to the power bank as it's 12V from the fuse box but power banks typically take 5V in, so you'll need a step down.

Apart from storage limitations with continuous recording, there are potentially two main problems with using a dash cam as CCTV overnight whilst parked:

1. Light levels. Unless the street is very bright even the best dash cams struggle to get any decent detail overnight, especially number plates. The new super white street lamps may be sufficient, the older orange ones aren't really enough.

2. Rain. When it starts to rain your windscreen gets covered and visibility from the dash cam is pretty much non-existent.

But it's better than nothing and a second rear facing camera can help as well.
 
I'm doing a test tonight, and hopefully couple more nights with Halford's red jumpstarter battery. It's not an elegant or lightweight solution but could be an option.
For a passat I might do cheap hardwire and chance it. There is the red battery thing in case it is needed. I rather carelessly ordered the wrong USB end for the dashcam so will need an adapter or another. Or perhaps I will make a hybrid hardwire using an old USB charger adapter and original USB cable plugged in....

LiION battery packs seem tempting at first and probably will be OK in the winter but in the heat I fear there is credible enough risk of fire or explosion. Then there is risk of insurance not paying out due to something like lack of care or precautions... There are days when you can even sit down in the car as the leather gets boiling hot.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
LiION battery packs seem tempting at first and probably will be OK in the winter but in the heat I fear there is credible enough risk of fire or explosion. Then there is risk of insurance not paying out due to something like lack of care or precautions... There are days when you can even sit down in the car as the leather gets boiling hot.
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I had this concern when I was considering a Li-on 12v booster pack to keep in the car. I've heard people keeping it in their car without problem, as long as you keep it out of sunlight, for example in the glovebox, under the seat, it should be okay.

You'll probably want to buy specalised packs, rather than an average power bank. For example, my IP66 12v booster pack (which is a normal Li-on power pack with 12+ v output) has temperature range of -20℃ to 60℃. You should avoid cheap power banks that doesn't give any temperature range in their product discription. But this will push up the cost considerably.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
I'm doing a test tonight, and hopefully couple more nights with Halford's red jumpstarter battery. It's not an elegant or lightweight solution but could be an option.
For a passat I might do cheap hardwire and chance it. There is the red battery thing in case it is needed. I rather carelessly ordered the wrong USB end for the dashcam so will need an adapter or another. Or perhaps I will make a hybrid hardwire using an old USB charger adapter and original USB cable plugged in....

LiION battery packs seem tempting at first and probably will be OK in the winter but in the heat I fear there is credible enough risk of fire or explosion. Then there is risk of insurance not paying out due to something like lack of care or precautions... There are days when you can even sit down in the car as the leather gets boiling hot.
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What dash cam model are you using or did you buy?
 
YI Smart Dash Camera International Version WiFi Night Vision HD 1080P 2.7" 165 degree 60fps ADAS Safe Reminder Dashboard Camera
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/LwYoD5Z1

One for each car.
The one big negative is the sticker mount. Once stuck it is more or less permanent
 
I much prefer sticker mounts, although the SG ones I use are wedge shaped and went positioned near the rear view mirror housing they look quite OEM and are fine to leave in place.

I was wondering about your dashcam model because of your concern with using a powerbank and high temperatures. A lot of dashcams used batteries rather than capacitors and being on the windscreen are subject to much higher temperatures. I believe the newer YI ones now use capacitors, but you said in your opening post that you've had the camera a while. Thought it would be worth bearing in mind or checking if high temperature is something you are worried about? To be honest, I think it's not a huge concern in the UK and typically I've found online that it's more people from certain parts of America and Australia who sometimes have issues.
 
gman said:
I much prefer sticker mounts, although the SG ones I use are wedge shaped and went positioned near the rear view mirror housing they look quite OEM and are fine to leave in place.

I was wondering about your dashcam model because of your concern with using a powerbank and high temperatures. A lot of dashcams used batteries rather than capacitors and being on the windscreen are subject to much higher temperatures. I believe the newer YI ones now use capacitors, but you said in your opening post that you've had the camera a while. Thought it would be worth bearing in mind or checking if high temperature is something you are worried about? To be honest, I think it's not a huge concern in the UK and typically I've found online that it's more people from certain parts of America and Australia who sometimes have issues.
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It has a small battery in. In Passat it survived the summer just fine. I think it's still the same one as the one I got in the link (2018 model?). This summer was mild. Back in 2018 it was quite different.

Of course a small battery in the worst case would make only a little mess. I had one AA battery explosion while charging and it just melted the charger; carpet underneath was fine. A big one we know is capable of a lot more, so bare minimum it should be from respectable manufacturer and at least minimally shielded from direct sunlight, ie,. in the glovebox. Having seen a car burn down a month ago (I don't know any particulars - electrical or vandalism) it's something I want to play safe.
 
I caught a video on Facebook the other day of a BMW on fire. Speculation is that he tried to use his indicators.
 
Heat kills Li-on batteries, usually slowly.

My 2014 dashcam battery is no longer holding a charge, having spent its days mounted on the windscreen under direct sunlight. It does not even hold enough charge to gracefully shutdown. Everytime I start the car I have to make sure it restarts okay.

I'm replacing it with a supercapacitor dashcam. That should work for years without problem.
 
wuyanxu said:
Heat kills Li-on batteries, usually slowly.

My 2014 dashcam battery is no longer holding a charge, having spent its days mounted on the windscreen under direct sunlight. It does not even hold enough charge to gracefully shutdown. Everytime I start the car I have to make sure it restarts okay.

I'm replacing it with a supercapacitor dashcam. That should work for years without problem.
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Definitely, this is why so many brands are switching over to supercapacitors. Some Mobius cams suffered from melting and I think there was a capacitor diy fix.
 
wuyanxu said:
Heat kills Li-on batteries, usually slowly.
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As long as they see me through into affordable 4K era and don't burn I can justify it £30 a pop. I may likely have to sell them with the cars considering the mounts can't be removed with out unreasonable force or destructive tools.
 
the way i have mine set up is the front camera is hard wired straight to battery via a 5 volt regulator and the back is wired via power brick through ignition live
the power brick is rated at 6000mha which gives around 24hrs continuous recording, the rear camera draws 250 milli amps ( iv'e checked ) and the front camera draws about the same which has been left all weekend ( forgot it was still attached ) with no detriment to the car battery, it's magnetically mounted to it's base which makes it easy to remove when not in use

the trouble with using a power brick as a source while the ignition is off is if the car only does short journeys it doesn't have time to charge it back up
iv'e tried a few different power bricks even the ones with USB c connectors which are supposed to be fast charge and measured the charge current and none of them seem as fast as their specs suggest
even if the power brick will charge at 2 amps it still takes at least 3 hours to charge fully, if your only doing 10/15 min journeys it'l never charge
my compromise is once i week i fully charge the power brick which seems to work but it's never left on 24/7 it's just used during the day whilst out
the front camera is used in more or less the same way i unplug it ( when i remember ) once back home

you will need a large card to record 24 hours or so of footage a 32 gig card will only give you a few hours depending on compression ratio and start to overwrite itself
a 128 gig card should see you through the night easily
 
Some cameras designed to be hardwired can do timelapse, with G sensor or microphone to save normal speed video when triggered.

My DDPai mini 2 (with super-caps) does this, I think it uses microphone to detect whether the car is being used. I've noticed shutting the door triggers it to go into normal recording mode. If I'm only getting stuff from the car, it'll trigger another hour of timelapse. (I've set it to be 1 hour before going to sleep)

Good point on SD card sizing. Check bit-rate of the videos, combined with some simple maths, it will tell you how long a certain sized SD card can record.
 
wuyanxu said:
Some cameras designed to be hardwired can do timelapse, with G sensor or microphone to save normal speed video when triggered.

My DDPai mini 2 (with super-caps) does this, I think it uses microphone to detect whether the car is being used. I've noticed shutting the door triggers it to go into normal recording mode. If I'm only getting stuff from the car, it'll trigger another hour of timelapse. (I've set it to be 1 hour before going to sleep)

Good point on SD card sizing. Check bit-rate of the videos, combined with some simple maths, it will tell you how long a certain sized SD card can record.
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i have the DDPai M6 plus front and the DDpai mini 1 rear, i didn't go for the mini 2 because it won't link to the M6 Plus the mini 1 does
the M6 plus does time lapse ( 1fps ) and it is triggered by sound to start normal recording. A 128 gig card can hold about a week with time lapse and normal combined ( M6 Plus ) not sure about the Mini 1 i don't think that one does time lapse or should i say Edog as they call it :)

good cameras
 
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