First time poster here. Anyone mind taking a look at my setup to see if I did this Vantrue dashcam hardwire for my 2020 Kia Telluride wrong?
I did this 12 days ago, and didn't have any issues until a few days ago. After letting the Kia sit for 14ish hours, the battery was dead. Which is weird because about a week ago, it sat upwards of 19 hours and had no issue. After Jumping it and driving around for an hour, I let it sit overnight. I have my dashcam settings in parking mode set to impact only, and made sure not to touch the car to get a good baseline. After 14 hours, my battery was sitting at 12.14V. After 22 hours, I couldn't get a good reading (operator error) but the car struggled to turn over.
I have my battery protection switch set to kill the dashcam at 12V so I am not sure why it is still dropping below. I would assume I either wired it wrong, or the battery is just on its way out. But that would be a hell of a coincidence since I wired it 12 days ago and have had no issue for the past 2 years. I did buy it used, so if it was a factory battery then it would make sense it is just old... but again, it would be a hell of a coincidence.
I have since unplugged the dash cam and will monitor the battery to see if it drops more on it's own, but unfortunately can only let is sit for 12ish hours at a time for the near future before it needs to be driven. Regardless, I will get the battery tested in the next few days.
I tapped my battery (red) cable into the fuse for the sunroof (20A fuse on the right) that was always hot on the right side of the fuse slot.
I tapped my auxiliary (yellow) cable into a spare slot (fuse on the left). I verified I was pulling no amps with the car off, and 12 amps with the car on. With power coming from the left side of the fuse slot. To reiterate, I had the flip the fuse tap so the slot furthest from the cable was the slot I was pulling power from.
Anyone see any issue with this setup? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
What do you mean you were pulling no amps with the car off and 12 amps with the car on? What was drawing 12 amps?
Using a multimeter I was verifying if the fuses had constant power or not, so I could figure out what fuse to use for auxiliary vs battery cords. When I touched a ground with the negative probe and touched the inside of the fuse with the positive probe, it would read 0 or 12 depending on whether or not the car was on. Sorry if I'm not making sense, very new to this.
And again, that was an empty fuse spot that wasn't powering anything at the time. Guessing they have those as spares for accessories.
That would be volts, you had me confused when you said amps, you did not measure any amps.
Sounds like you were just confirming whether the fuse you tapped into was constant power or switched power, that would be fine.
One of the fuses you tapped into needs to be switched, the other fuse you tapped into needs to be constant power.
Your dash cam needs both signals, constant power and switched power so the camera can identify if the car is running or not.
Whoops. Thanks for the correction. Any thoughts? Do you think if I wired it wrong that it could bypass the battery protection switch and kill the battery? I assume its either that or a bad battery.
No, I don't think it is possible to wire it in a fashion that bypasses the low voltage cutoff.
Does your camera switch to parking mode when you shut the car off?
Have you confirmed that you correctly wired the switched and the constant power wires? Does the camera correctly start recording when you start the engine?
The parking mode works when the car is off and starts just fine when I turn it on. I also noticed parking mode did not turn on when the battery was dead the other day. But the battery did have enough juice for lights and other auxiliary functions, just not enough to turn over. So it seems the cutoff switch worked as intended in that instance.
Your question about wiring... can you elaborate? Aside from plugging the camera in in, the only "wiring" I can think of is plugging and playing with the fuse box. And that is why I'm posting. To see if anyone can pick apart my narrative or pictures for potential mistakes.
It sounds like you have confirmed that you have both the constant power and the switched power in the correct place. So there is nothing about your wiring that would be questionable.
When you say the low voltage cut off works properly, it obviously did not work properly if your vehicle would not start the following day.
I assumed it worked properly becauce the dashcam turned off during parking mode. If it didn't work properly, I assume the dashcam would stay on past 12V and continue to kill the battery. Just checked my battery after the car sitting for 10 hours. It was at 11.9V with the dashcam unplugged so I am leaning on the battery just dying. Thanks for the feedback!
With that new information, it definitely sounds like your battery has simply reached the end of its useful life
What brand is your dashcam and hardwire kit?
A lot of the budget brands like Viofo and Vantrue have huge margin for error in their hardwire kits. It's +/- 0.2v. So if you're setting your cutoff to 12v, it can still potentially drain it down to 11.8v everyday.
Premium dashcams like BlackVue and Thinkware have much smaller tolerances for error listing it at 0.1v, but in real world testing I believe this to me much smaller and the 0.1v a just in case value.
Both are Vantrue. And that might be the case but I am still leaning on the battery. I tested it today after sitting for 10 hours, dash unplugged. It was down from 12.4 to 11.9 just sitting there.
Replacing the battery is worth a short as of now
Agreed. Thanks for the input. I didn't know that about the variance in the battery protection.
The various is significant on the more budget friendly brands like Vantrue compared to the more premium brands.