lets say you got a mediocore fon containing a 4Ah battery, which will last 12h when constantly recording (estimated, correct it if I am wrong). A 20Ah powerbank will run the device for app. 2.5-3 days. Two power banks around 5 days. Charge powerbank from the usb port or a usb cigarette lighter adapter. Usually cigarette lighters get switched off when you turn off the car to prevent the 12V battery from discharge
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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I have to assume you don't have charging ports on your car to just have the phone plugged in the whole time? Does it have a cigarette lighter? You could get a charger that plugs in there.
If internal combustion engine and run the car infrequently, get a golf cart battery and mount it securely. The weight of that is like a hefty little toddler.
Where do I mount it? How is that different from wiring it to the car battery? How would the golf cart battery get charged?
What.. I can't have that thing there. How much battery does a camera flipping need for like a day? I doubt it even records 24/7
Actually I forgot golf cart batteries are typically 6 volts, so you’d probably need two lol. It’s more useful if you don’t drive the car every day/don’t want to run down the engine battery.
I haven’t done this in a long time myself. You’d want to wire the batteries to the engine battery. Then set it in the back somewhere, not above the gas tank if possible, mounted as in firmly set where it can’t fall over.
It would definitely be a little project.
Wait do you want to have some sort of security camera when not using the car or more something to record when driving?
Do you want to stream the camera with the phone? If so that'll take quite a bit more power than you're expecting.
If you want to record when the car is sitting idle, I wouldn't connect it to the car directly as you'll probably drain the battery (the capacity of those isn't huge and I bet you'd drain it enough in <10h)
If you want the phone to be able to record and stream over 2G / 4G for a full week, I would do the following:
Fully charge the phone, turn off the WiFi, set the app to start the stream, and make it look outside a window. Then check in every hour to see when the battery ran out.
Once you know it take X hours to drain the battery, look up your phone battery capacity (ideally in WH to get an accurate result, but mAh is fine), and then you can do the math:
There's 24*7= 168h in a week You need capacity for 168/X hours (the time it took to drain the battery) Multiply by your capacity C
So in the end you'll need a power bank that has at least 168/X*C Wh.
If you only have the mAh rating it's a bit more math, happy to help with infos if you need it.
Ya I want to be able to view stuff remotely. Obviously not 24/7 but like..yeah I want to be able to check the feed when I get a notif about activity around the car.
I will have to buy an (I'm assuming) unlimited data plan for this first. Then I will put that sim card into my old phone.
Also it gets pretty hot here during the summer so idk how that'll work.
Maybe I'm best off buying some expensive dash cam that can record while the car is idle, but I'm worried it'll get stolen cause people here steal a lot.
A phone is easier to resell than a dashcam I'd say, so maybe that's better.
Also indeed heat inside the car could be a huge problem depending on where you live and if you have access to a shaded parking.
For a 1st test you could simply record the camera without streaming with the app and see how long that goes.