As you’re probably aware every Thinkware camera has a dedicated parking mode to monitor your vehicle whilst it is parked up. The camera must be ‘Hardwired’ (not plugged into the cigarette lighter socket) to use this feature. I thought it was worth elaborating a little more into the different modes etc
Parking Mode Disabled
When the ignition is turned off the vehicle camera will shut down completely a few seconds later. No recording is done.
Energy Saving (Model Dependant)
When the ignition is turned off the vehicle the camera will appear shut down and it won’t be recording. If any shock is detected (sensitivity can be adjusted) the camera will fully wake up and start recording within 1 second. You won’t catch the actual impact but you should catch the aftermath. This will give the most available Parking recording as it uses the least amount of power from the vehicles battery
Energy Saving with optional New RADAR Sensor (U1000 Model Only)
Works as per the normal energy saving mode above but with a Radar sensor attached to the front windscreen so if some physical movement is detected in front of the car the camera will wake up and start recording but if ‘No Impact’ happens to the vehicle the camera will shut down and delete that recording. The Radar sensor will detect approx 8m in front of the car. If an impact happened to the rear of the vehicle the camera would wake up within 1 second and start recording. This method gives a very long parking recording time as it’s very battery efficient.
Motion Detection
When the ignition is turned off the camera will stay awake (minus the GPS) but running in a different mode. It’s recording to a buffer memory all of the time and will save this to the memory card if it detects some motion in front of either camera. Running along side Motion Detection is the Shock detection so if something hits the car this will trigger a recording too. The sensitivity of the Shock & Motion Detection can be adjusted in the settings. The downside to Motion Detection is that anything moving past either camera will trigger events. People walking past, vehicles driving past, trees swaying in the wind and the worst of all is Rain as it’s constantly dribbling down the windscreen causing movement alerts which means that folder can fill up fast and start overwriting the older incidents so by the time morning comes the incident has been lost forever. If you really want motion detection i would recommend using the largest Thinkware memory card you can afford!
Timelapse Recording (Model Dependant)
When the ignition is turned off the camera will stay awake (minus the GPS) but will continue to record constantly but at a reduced number of ‘frames per second (FPS)’. The older F770 will record just 1FPS, the F800 & Q800 will record 2FPS. When you playback the recording it will be a little jumpy due to the lower FPS so you won’t have quite as much detail’however you get a lot more recording space due to the low FPS rate. Again alongside this is the Shock detection which will Trigger an Incident recording in Timelapse.
Parking Mode ‘Shutdown’
Within the Settings of the Camera you can set a Timer so the camera will only record for that length of time each time you turn the vehicle off. Also you can set a Battery Voltage level (I recommend 12.0v) and when the battery gets to that level the camera will shut down to avoid you getting a flat battery. Battery voltage will override the Timer Setting if the voltage level is reached.