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Originally Posted by BokTroy
Thank you for your detailed post I really appreciate it because the situation you mentioned is the predicament I’m struggling right now. I think I saw the similar YT videos (the guys with a blue shirt and dedicated for DashCam reviews and comparisons) stating A229Pro has lots of current draws from fuse and it’s taking a toll on hardwire route without an external battery in between. Do you mean we also need that relay even when you hardwire the external battery? My understanding is when the ignition is cut, all the power draw needed for dash cam will be supplied only from battery and hard wiring to fuse from battery is only going to recharge it once you turn the car back on?
Btw, great job and looks very clean on your project. That place seems to be a perfect location to have the battery, how did you fish thru the wire into the cabin though? Just from the back seat slack to C pillar and all?
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The Blackvue Battery itself has an app for your phone that reports current draw to it and outflow current, etc. If I'm not mistaken the current draw was ballpark of the reported draw of the dash-cam.
So, in a sense you are correct that the dash-cam is drawing current from the battery, but the battery is also drawing current to recharge itself and/or maintain charge while the vehicle is running. If the vehicle is turned off and everything shuts down (it takes a while before the accessory power actually shuts off) then the only current draw will be from the Blackvue Battery. In fact, the car battery will start recharging the Blackvue and continue charging it after the car is shut off while the accessory power is on. I believe the Blackvue itself has a cutoff current that can be adjusted when the car battery gets below a certain voltage too just like most of these dashcams do. I can't remember off the top of my head.
In fact, the battery has no problem recharging while the car is on so you might assume that the current draw is in excess of the dash-cam alone. It has to provide both dash-cam power and recharge itself at the same time. It usually takes less than an hour of driving to get it fully charged. I honestly can't recall the exact numbers. I'll try to look next time I drive the car.
These batteries don't last forever. They work great for something like an overnight stay at a hotel, etc. You can wire them in parallel (?) to extend your reserve, but it's not going to last a week.
There are dash-cams with parking modes that will go into a super low power draw state that will last for a week or more. Unfortunately, they don't have the best video quality on the market. I like to use my dashcam video as a sort of action camera while driving. So, the video quality was more important to me.
Oh, and yes, I removed the back seats and passed the wiring through the trunk. It was a struggle to get the probably higher gauge wire than necessary to tuck under all of the interior trim, but I used a trim tool and mostly got it tucked without a trace. There are one or two spots where the wires were too thick to get tucked as nicely as I would have liked.