More intelligent parking mode?

[nielsf]

I work from home, meaning my car sits in the drive-way most of the time. As a result the battery eventually discharges to the point where the camera is shut off.

This is not a big deal, as the drive-way is covered by regular security camera's. I don't really need the parking-mode when the car is parked at home.

I do however need the parking mode when I drive into town and run an errand. These often take several hours. Unfortunately the short drive there doesn't charge the car's battery sufficient to cover several hours of parking mode.

Ideally the camera looks at the GPS data, or the presence of my home Wi-Fi, to know that I'm at home and don't need parking mode, saving the battery for those moments that I do need it. (That will still drain the battery eventually, but much less so. The occasional longer drive should then be able to cover my needs.)

Unless I missed something, the current camera's (I have the A129 Pro) do not support this, so this is more of a suggestion to Viofo than anything else.

In the meantime I am curious how others deal with this. And/or if you have any tips on how to deal with this.

 

[Capture Your Action]

When parking mode isn’t needed, simply press and hold the left button to manually turn off the camera. It will start up normally the next time the car is started. This is what most users do, including myself.
If your battery isn’t lasting long, I’d give it a good charge with a charger or buy a new battery if it’s getting old.

 

[benkar]

I work from home, meaning my car sits in the drive-way most of the time. As a result the battery eventually discharges to the point where the camera is shut off.

This is not a big deal, as the drive-way is covered by regular security camera's. I don't really need the parking-mode when the car is parked at home.

I do however need the parking mode when I drive into town and run an errand. These often take several hours. Unfortunately the short drive there doesn't charge the car's battery sufficient to cover several hours of parking mode.

Ideally the camera looks at the GPS data, or the presence of my home Wi-Fi, to know that I'm at home and don't need parking mode, saving the battery for those moments that I do need it. (That will still drain the battery eventually, but much less so. The occasional longer drive should then be able to cover my needs.)

Unless I missed something, the current camera's (I have the A129 Pro) do not support this, so this is more of a suggestion to Viofo than anything else.

In the meantime I am curious how others deal with this. And/or if you have any tips on how to deal with this.

If you have the parking mode off and the camera properly connected to the hardwire kit, so after switching off the engine, resp. in my case it turns off after the key is pulled out. The camera turns on again after the engine starts.

 

[nielsf]

I want parking mode on though, just not when parking at home. I'll do as @CaptureYourAction suggests and turn it off manually for now, when parking at home.

Still hoping for a way to automate it. Ideally the dashcam is a set and forget kind of deal. Either through a firmware feature, or by creating some kind of external switch that knows when I'm parked at home and cuts the power.

Just thinking out loud here..

I have some experience controlling relay boards with a raspberry pi, but the Pi draws more power than the camera itself so that doesn't help. Unless maybe the Pi shuts down as well, but it seems like a rather convoluted solution.

Perhaps a simpler (from Viofo point of view) compromise is to allow us to limit the parking mode to X hours. If I'm parked for more than 4 hours it's unlikely I'm parked in an unsafe environment and wouldn't mind the camera shutting off.