BlackVue Camera Setup

[Guinea]

I just had a BlackVue 2 channel camera installed (970 Plus I believe). I had some questions on how this works with battery output and any impact on my vehicle. I noticed that the parking mode was running all night while in the garage and seems unnecessary. Is there something I could do to enhance my BlackVue experience with my Taycan (2022 4S)? Any additional installs or upgrades I should look into or possible settings I should implement on BlackVue or the vehicle to protect it? This is all new territory for me, so looking for some general or specific advice from those familiar with these products.

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[WattTurbo]

There's a voltage setting, which you can set so that when the battery falls below a certain voltage it'll power down the camera. I left it at the default setting and have never seen it get shut down since I installed mine 3.5 years ago. The one in my 911 gets shut down frequently since I hardly drive it. To prevent this, you can install a backup battery. The other thing I do is set the parking mode to use timelapse, so it doesn't record as much.

 

[anonymouse]

My Blackvue was installed with its own battery (hidden in the area below the boot) which charges when the car is powered up, and runs the cameras for some number of hours after parking. That way there is no risk of flattening the car’s 12V.

 

[800v]

On the Blackvue, you can go into the settings for "battery protection" and set a "Timer cut-off" of 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours. I have mine set to 12 hours (for overnight parking) and I have no problems at all with draining the 12V battery. The Taycan will recharge the 12V battery anyways so it is much safer than on a regular ICE car.

 

[prj]

On a Taycan you can't ever flatten the 12V unless something in the car is malfunctioning, in which case it will go flat anyway.
So - don't worry about it.

 

[ze_shark]

Huh how so ?

There are countless stories of "dead" 12V Lithium batteries (in low voltage protection), including during extended idle time if car is accessed remotely, woken by key proximity, etc ... so there seem to be plenty of mundane ways to defeat the recharging logic ?

 

[whitex]

I installed my 2-channel Blackvue a while back reusing Porsche's dashcam pre-wire option, which happens to be a perfect match for Blackvue dashcams (documented with pictures here). I setup the BV battery protection automatic shutoff, but it's never kicked in so far. Dashcams record 24/7, in parking mode when car is OFF and there isn't much motion (unless g-sensor trips). I've never had any issue with the "12V" battery, even when leaving it for a while. As a matter of fact, my Taycan spent 2 weeks parked unplugged at an airport parking a couple of weeks ago - zero issues. Out of curiosity, since I rarely leave my Taycan unplugged for two weeks, I checked to see if the dashcam was still recording when I got back to it, and it was (I had many days of parking mode footage leading up to when I got back to it).

I prefer that it records in parking mode, should anything happen to the car while parked, I an pull the footage. It's not like Tesla Sentry Mode which drains the battery significantly (heck, I had Blackvue dashcams running on all four of our Model S'es too, even one with Sentry Mode). While in the garage, there is very little movement, so the video compression does a great job at making the videos small. I install dashcams in all our family cars, treat them like airbags - hope to never use them, but glad they are there. Over the past decade or so, dashcams came handy in proving the other party's fault in 2 accidents (without the dashcam one would have been a "no-fault", so everyone-is-at-fault, and the second one would have been my teenage daughter's word against a cop who caused the accident, then claimed my daughter caused it - dashcam footage proved it beyond any doubt it was his fault, the insurance company used it court extract their money back including my deductible). It also came handy when one of my kids' cars was vandalized while parked at school - parking footage clearly showed the vandals.

 

[whitex]

Huh how so ?

There are countless stories of "dead" 12V Lithium batteries (in low voltage protection), including during extended idle time if car is accessed remotely, woken by key proximity, etc ... so there seem to be plenty of mundane ways to defeat the recharging logic ?

I think a lot of those stories were early Taycans, 2020, maybe 2021. Porsche adjusted their software after the early failures. Other stories could have been just bad 12V batteries - those fail on ICE cars too (I once had a few weeks old Toyota Sienna with a bad 12V battery which kept on dying - problems went away after dealer swapped it out for a new one).

 

[prj]

Huh how so ?

There are countless stories of "dead" 12V Lithium batteries (in low voltage protection), including during extended idle time if car is accessed remotely, woken by key proximity, etc ... so there seem to be plenty of mundane ways to defeat the recharging logic ?

There is no "mundane ways to defeat charging logic". It either works or it doesn't.
The car monitors the 12V battery voltage and connects the HV contactor when it falls too low. As simple as that - it does not matter how the battery is being drained.
Nothing you do is going to affect it. Either it works correctly or it doesn't.

Hence why I said - don't worry about it. If there's a 12V battery defect or an issue with the contactor, then the car will fail anyway, and the camera is irrelevant.

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