Always on cigarette lighter and dash cams.

[Binglebong]

Hello.

I'm hoping someone has.more idea of this than me and can advise. I have a dash cam that when plugged into the cigarette lighter should switch on when the ignition is on and when it is not go into standby and be activated by motion detector. I also have an always on cigarette lighter.

What is happening is that it doesn't go into standby - if plugged in it records constantly (and drains my battery!) and if I unplug it from the lighter it goes full off.

So does an ignition that is not always on still produce a trickle charge so the camera knows it's plugged in and goes into standby (I unplug at the lighter end not the camera)? I'm really confused!

Thanks for your help.

I’m not sure it’ll be much help but I know from experience it will drain your battery without the ignition on. We had a USB plugged into the car for music that slowly drained the battery and we had no idea until the car wasn’t used much in a week and it was flat. Similar happened with a cigarette phone charger. Best bet is to wire the dash cam into the fuse box

I think I will have to do that long term but can't before Christmas.

Bumping for suggestions.

Can you alter your parking mode in settings? Mine has different options I believe.

A constant recording dash cam isn't a bad thing though, you just need to hardwire it to your car. It'll protect your battery.

The problem with having the camera always on, rather than only when needed, is that as well as draining the battery the memory is being constantly overwritten so if something happened at for example 9pm it will have been overwritten by the time you view it the next day. If it only when mention is detected then you will likely only have an hour or so of footage to check and it will still be there when you need it.

You should hardwire the dashcam into a switched ignition live. That’ll solve your problem and be much neater.

How does it have the energy to be on standby if it's wired to an ignition on only system?

You can YouTube how to wire a dash cam quite straight forward but the explain there are fuses in you’re car that have a certain voltage when only the ignition is on. It’ll power up when it’s turned on and will turn off when you’re done. It’s the same type of fuse your radio would use

How does it have the energy to be on standby if it's wired to an ignition on only system?

Internal battery usually

It has a tiny internal battery - only enough for about 30 seconds.

You need a better dashcam then! If you leave it connected to a permanent live then it WILL drain your car battery.

I think it's down to your dashcam. If you wire your camera into the fuse box, it won't help (and it's not a good idea unless you really do know what you're doing - absolutely no patronisation intended here!) . You would be doing one of two things, depending on where you make the connection:

Either

(1) You would be connecting to a supply that is switched on with the ignition. In that case, when the ignition is off, there will be no power, and you will be in exactly the same position as if you had unplugged your dashcam completely from the "always on" cigarette lighter socket

or

(2) You would be connecting to a supply that is on all the time, in which case there will be power to the dashcam all the time, and the result will be exactly the same as when you leave your dashcam connected to the "always on" cigarette lighter socket, and will drain power from the car all the time.

My guess is that either your dashcam is faulty, and isn't going into standby mode properly, or it is no faulty, but it's just a poor design which still consumes too much power even when in standby mode.

Hope this helps.