Capacitor in place of battery,good or bad.

[jace1969]

I see these a lot in the dash cams now the Capacitor model,no internal battery so need 24/7 supply.

Are these better as then you have no power when ignition is off and is there ones that hold a charge for 10mins or a bit less.

My question is what is a Capacitor ??? as more electrical items seem to get them in place of battery.

[Incontro]

5 hours ago, jace1969 said:

I see these a lot in the dash cams now the Capacitor model,no internal battery so need 24/7 supply.

Are these better as then you have no power when ignition is off and is there ones that hold a charge for 10mins or a bit less.

My question is what is a Capacitor ??? as more electrical items seem to get them in place of battery.

A capacitor simply stores electrical charge, but discharges magnitudes of order quicker than a battery does. It's not going to be anything like a battery, apples and oranges  in essence.

When used in dashcams, a capacitor will only provide sufficient charge/power for your dashcam to safely stop recording, and power-off (so that you don't lose the entirety of the current file being recorded). I am not aware of any capacitor that will power a dashcam for 10 minutes, that seems like an exaggeration. Happy to be proven wrong though!

The main reason people switch their dashcam batteries with capacitors is that batteries are prone to overheating (and batteries overheating pose a danger), especially in hotter climates when the dashcam is recording in direct and hot sunlight.

Hope that helps 

[jace1969]

Cheers for that info its great,i have had one in for years and no problems on that side with overheating but saying that i did try my old Mobius one

in the house on 24/7 and got red hot and in 4 days just went dead so stripped it down and take battery off and left it for a day and works like new now.

No auto off setting on them as on a lot of them these days.

That has made me look again as i did not know a lot how the Capacitor works,the 10mins is me as didnt know how they work,i was hoping around 2mins

area.

Cheers.