A riddle with DashCam power lead...

[StephenFord]

I have a NextBase dashcam. It stopped working in that the power lead no longer supplied power to the cam. I swapped the power lead over to a cheap generic lead I had, and the dashcam works perfectly with it. However, I then tried the old 'genuine' NextBase power lead with the cheapo dashcam I had spare, and it powers up perfectly, but it still won't power up the proper NextBase dashcam. You still with me? LOL

Why does the NextBase power lead work with the cheap dashcam, but no longer powers the genuine NextBase one?

[unofix]

This is just a pure guess.....

NextBase lead has high resistance possibly a poor connector or damage to the copper wire.

The NextBase dashcam takes slightly more power than the cheapo dashcam. Therefore when using the NextBase lead with the Nextbase dashcam there is too much of a volt drop in the lead for the camera to work.

[StephenFord]

2 minutes ago, unofix said:

This is just a pure guess.....

NextBase lead has high resistance possibly a poor connector or damage to the copper wire.

The NextBase dashcam takes slightly more power than the cheapo dashcam. Therefore when using the NextBase lead with the Nextbase dashcam there is too much of a volt drop in the lead for the camera to work.

Didn't understand a word, so this is bound to be correct 🤣

[unofix]

Just for a bit of fun 😜 let me try and explain a bit better. I'm just going to use made up numbers to make the explaining a little easier for me.

Lets say that the original Nextbase lead has developed a fault and that the resistance of the lead used to be only 1 ohm but now it is 10 ohms.

lets also assume that the Nextbase camera being of high quality draws a current of 2 Amps, but the basic camera is of poorer quality and only draws a current of 1 Amp.

So we need to work out what voltage will be able to be supplied by the faulty cable.

[I stress these are made up numbers just to explain the principle]

Nextbase camera: 2A x 10 Ohm = 20.

Volt drop = 20/10 = 2V therefore camera gets 12V - 2V = 10 Volt

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Cheap camera: 1A x 10 Ohm = 10.

Volt drop = 10/10 = 1V therefore camera gets 12V - 1V = 11 Volt

These are not the full, real electrical calculations to work out the volts drop in a cable. The above example is purely for demonstration purposes

[StephenFord]

I actually understood that, from my A level physics days, P=IxR LOL It does seem a very marginal difference though in any case, and my NextBase dashcam is obviously female, being so fussy - oh dear, does that mean I'll now be cancelled after that comment? 🤣