Hi,

I have had a hardwired Garmin Dashcam 55 for a few years now and it works fine when driving, but recently had some miscreants trying to break into my garden gate and thought my dashcam may have caught them.

However upon checking the dashcam footage I noticed that recordings are only last about 15-30Mins after the ingition is turned off, which means the dashcam is not charing in parking mode.

I have spent the morning double checking the connections with a multi-meter:

Yellow is plugged into F70, which is constant live

Red is plugged into F85, which is switched live

Black is screwed under mounting bolt of ground

I have the offical Garmin Parking Mode Cable.

I did notice that when the ignition is off that the constant live voltage is around 11.8V. Is this normal or is my battery getting old and in need of replacement?

Any help would be appreicated

Your car battery voltage is very, very low. Even after standing for a couple of days it should be no lower than 12.4V

The dashcam will automatically turn off when your car battery reaches a critically low level in order to reduce any unnecessary drain.

If your car battery is more than 5 years old it may well need to be replaced. Otherwise I would just put it on charge for 12 hours.

@unofix Thank you. I have just checked the terminals on my battery and they read 12v, so definatley very low.

1 hour ago, Dark360 said:

However upon checking the dashcam footage I noticed that recordings are only last about 15-30Mins after the ingition is turned off, which means the dashcam is not charing in parking mode.

I'm confused, (admittedly not a rare condition). I understood that 'parking mode' only activated a recording if the car sensed any movement like being shunted, it doesn't passively record infinitely just because the power supply has been removed?

looks like you need to give the battery a very good overnight charge or possibly a new battery

1 minute ago, StephenFord said:

I'm confused, (admittedly not a rare condition).

can i join your club please, I suffer with the same problem  🤣

25 minutes ago, unofix said:

can i join your club please, I suffer with the same problem  🤣

I thought you were a founder member - you forgotten? LOL 🤣

3 hours ago, StephenFord said:

I'm confused, (admittedly not a rare condition). I understood that 'parking mode' only activated a recording if the car sensed any movement like being shunted, it doesn't passively record infinitely just because the power supply has been removed?

No you are correct, but the dashcam is not charging so the battery dies after 15-30Mins

7 minutes ago, Dark360 said:

No you are correct, but the dashcam is not charging so the battery dies after 15-30Mins

To be fair, the battery on my DashCam dies after a similar amount of time. It's really only a backup battery to allow a recording to continue after activation. DashCam batteries are not designed to be operated solely on them as they need an external 12v supply...