Strange electrical problem(s)

[HoosierDaddy]

A couple days ago, my 2016 Mustang had no electrical power. No puddle lamp or dash lights when opening the door. No button or switch did anything. I hadn't driven it for 4 days.

Over a year ago, my dash-cam (Thinkware F770) once decided to go into continuous recording in the middle of the night in my closed garage and ran the battery down. The following day, it wouldn't start but still had power for dash, etc and it would try to crank the engine. It shouldn't have happened because it was set to turn off completely when voltage dropped below 11.6V. So, my initial thought was the dash cam screwed up again.

I won't go into details but it took a while to charge the battery up first with a 15 AMP charger that eventually stopped at 80% and finally with a 3.5 AMP NOCO G3500. The NOCO doesn't have a percent readout but I hooked up the 15AMP the next morning and it showed 96% I have no idea how these calculate a percent.

I tried to measure the current with key off (and dash cam off) to make sure there wasn't something else draining the battery. I did that by removing the negative cable and putting the probes of my multi-meter on the cable end and the battery post the cable came off of. But the reading was ZERO which everything I've read says there should be at least 20 or so milliamps. So, that's something I'm scratching my head over.

I played back the dash cam recordings and there were 15 hours ending at 3 PM 2 days before I found the battery dead. I have no idea how long it recorded before the 15 hours since it just keeps recording over. Absolutely no motion to trigger recording. No motion at all except the small digital clock in my garage door opener panel which you can barely make out in the 1080P recordings and have always been there.

I noticed for the first time that the recordings had a voltage number at the bottom along with the time, speed, etc.. The last frame showed 5.3 volts. The first (15 hours earlier) showed 10.9 volts.I confirmed the settings call for the dash to turn off when voltage drops to 11.6 volts, so it should not have been on for any of that 15 hours and some time before. I don't know if its relevant but the voltage numbers near the end were bouncing around a lot between low 6 volts and low 5 volts.

I guess I'll need to remember to turn the dash cam off when I park in the garage until I find out why it ignores the voltage shut-off setting.

And I have no idea why I couldn't measure ANY current flowing with the car (and dash cam) off.

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[Blue Moon]

I hate to ask, but have you checked for mice chewing on your wiring? I hate those things.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I hate to ask, but have you checked for mice chewing on your wiring? I hate those things.

No signs of rodents. And the dashcam was definitely running long enough to drain the battery and showed the steady drain thru the last 15 hours of recording. I will be contacting the US rep for Thinkware to see if there is a known bug/fix for the cam to record when there is no trigger and at the same time ignore the setting to shut down when voltage dropped below 11.6 V. This is the second time its done it in the 3 years I've had the dashcam.

 

[thelostotter]

A couple days ago, my 2016 Mustang had no electrical power. No puddle lamp or dash lights when opening the door. No button or switch did anything. I hadn't driven it for 4 days.

Over a year ago, my dash-cam (Thinkware F770) once decided to go into continuous recording in the middle of the night in my closed garage and ran the battery down. The following day, it wouldn't start but still had power for dash, etc and it would try to crank the engine. It shouldn't have happened because it was set to turn off completely when voltage dropped below 11.6V. So, my initial thought was the dash cam screwed up again.

I won't go into details but it took a while to charge the battery up first with a 15 AMP charger that eventually stopped at 80% and finally with a 3.5 AMP NOCO G3500. The NOCO doesn't have a percent readout but I hooked up the 15AMP the next morning and it showed 96% I have no idea how these calculate a percent.

I tried to measure the current with key off (and dash cam off) to make sure there wasn't something else draining the battery. I did that by removing the negative cable and putting the probes of my multi-meter on the cable end and the battery post the cable came off of. But the reading was ZERO which everything I've read says there should be at least 20 or so milliamps. So, that's something I'm scratching my head over.

I played back the dash cam recordings and there were 15 hours ending at 3 PM 2 days before I found the battery dead. I have no idea how long it recorded before the 15 hours since it just keeps recording over. Absolutely no motion to trigger recording. No motion at all except the small digital clock in my garage door opener panel which you can barely make out in the 1080P recordings and have always been there.

I noticed for the first time that the recordings had a voltage number at the bottom along with the time, speed, etc.. The last frame showed 5.3 volts. The first (15 hours earlier) showed 10.9 volts.I confirmed the settings call for the dash to turn off when voltage drops to 11.6 volts, so it should not have been on for any of that 15 hours and some time before. I don't know if its relevant but the voltage numbers near the end were bouncing around a lot between low 6 volts and low 5 volts.

I guess I'll need to remember to turn the dash cam off when I park in the garage until I find out why it ignores the voltage shut-off setting.

And I have no idea why I couldn't measure ANY current flowing with the car (and dash cam) off.

My battery seems to go down after not driving for a week or two, I’ll get a notice on the radio next time I start that the system is off to save battery or something like that. Car always starts but a bit slower to crank the first time.

I tried using my multimeter to measure parasitic draw but got the same result you did. I just assumed my multimeter isn’t sensitive enough or has too high of resistance for the vehicle to register the battery. It’s a cheap multimeter. Do you have a nice one?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I tried using my multimeter to measure parasitic draw but got the same result you did. I just assumed my multimeter isn’t sensitive enough or has too high of resistance for the vehicle to register the battery. It’s a cheap multimeter. Do you have a nice one?

It's a top-notch MeTex ME-11 digital multi-meter compatible with Windows AND MS-DOS (for graphing)! LoL

Good for its day. But it does have a 4mA scale. I started with 20A scale then went to 400mA and finally 4mA. Now, I did NOT try alternating the red and the black probe on the battery terminal because it didn't occur to me and wasn't mentioned in the DIY guides I found. But I did do it the same as a YouTube video. So, if that makes a difference, I guess that could be it. That video also commented how most guides say to use the positive battery post but since that could lead to shorting out if the other probe touched ground said to use the negative battery post.

Maybe the car itself has some circuit that shuts off all current flow for some period when either battery cable is disconnected?

 

[emericA243]

Interesting scenario in general but I will post my thoughts.

1. I have the Thinkware 770 in my mustang for about a year and it always shuts off as required.
2. Perhaps a solution instead of driving yourself crazy would be using a Powerbank\dedicated battery for your dashcam to gain parking mode instead of hard wiring it. I do this for my BlackVue 650-2CH in my Fusion.
3. Its possible the circuitry in the product for sensing the voltage from the system is bad. Also, what fuses \ grounds are you using for the hard wiring kit?

 

[ChaoticFury09]

I can’t speak directly to this problem but I have a BlackVue DR750S two channel system in my car. It was installed in both of my mustangs and the same problem happened regardless of which fuse was tapped. My passenger side door handle wouldn’t function. I would also get strange drain or electrical issues. On the first car the BCM ended up going bad and Ford replaced it but the problem continued. I ended up disconnecting it and just going to the cigarette lighter where I have not had any additional problems.

I would recommend going to the cigarette lighter or using an external battery pack instead. I think due to the complicated electronics the cars really hate hard wired dash cameras. That or it could be a Thinkware/BlackVue issue.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Interesting scenario in general but I will post my thoughts.

1. I have the Thinkware 770 in my mustang for about a year and it always shuts off as required.

I've had at least one full year of shutting off properly. Its not any regular problem

3. Its possible the circuitry in the product for sensing the voltage from the system is bad. Also, what fuses \ grounds are you using for the hard wiring kit?

I don't think so because the videos show the voltage along with speed and date/time. The earliest frame that hadn't been overwritten shows 10.9 IIRC and slowly drops to the 5s by the last frame.

I got a response back from Thinkware but it assumed the run on video was in the parking folder. But these were in the continuous recording folder same as when driving the car. It somehow believed the car was never was shut off.

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