friendfoe29

Ok, this might sound like a silly idea but hey, I'm trying to think of creative ways to add more surveillance and security to my life/house/car etc. My car has a 2 channel camera system in it (front and rear cam) that record all the time while I'm driving and parked. The problem is that sometimes I'm worried about draining the car battery if I don't drive for 2 or 3 days. My cam system does have a SAFE SHUT OFF as it detects when the car battery is getting low, it will stop recording and shut down on its own so as to not make the car battery dead and unstart-able. But I was thinking of possibly adding 1 or 2 more cameras in the car without hooking it up to my car battery as there's already a lot of devices draining it while parked (i have a keyless smart system also which has to be able to communicate with my remote transponder). Is there any such thing as a giant portable battery with AC plugs? What I mean is, I was thinking about using my cheap digital camera or camcorders, setting them up in my car via clamps or brackets and recording to SD/mini SD media. Now the cameras would have a fully charged battery (Li-ON) but as we know, cameras can only record around 1 to 2 hours continuously until the battery is completely discharged. 1 or 2 hours is not enough for a 24 hour day. Rather than to constantly recharge those small batteries in the camera devices, I would rather recharge say a GIANT ASS portable battery all day then at night put in my car, hook up my camera to it, and it could record say 6 or 8 hours straight using the giant ass battery instead of it's own tiny lithium ion battery. Does anyone know if such a battery exists? I know they have those portable batteries for smartphones or other devices to recharge your phone or tablet etc. But don't they have portable batteries 20x that size (like the size of a UPS battery used for home computer systems). Or is that my answer? A UPS? Should I just use a UPS as my portable battery and plug in my camera to record all night?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm still debating on what to use as a power source to power a digital camera in my car to record during night. I came across this: BLACK+DECKER Tools | 500 Watt AC/DC Portable Power Station /Jump-Starter /Compressor PPRH5B It seems that I can put this in my car and plug in a digital camera to record all night. OR what do you think about using a GoPro camera? I don't know much about them except they are quite durable, versatile, and have many accessories. One accessory I found was a battery bac pack which is basically an extra battery that can be hooked up to the GoPro and doubling it's recording time from 2.5 hours to about 5 hours. Do you think I should just get a GoPro and use it as a camera for surveillance? Or should I get one of those power stations and use that? The benefit of the power station is that it also jump starts cars, has emergency lights, and compressor (for tires). Not sure if the GoPro also has night vision or not.

Hmm, but I don't want to hook it up to anything, no streaming, no wires, no wireless, no IP cameras...just a standalone surveillance unit. After doing some more research, I don't think gopro would be good for it since its a very expensive camera and simple P&S digital camera would do. The main issue I have is how to keep the camera recording and powered up for 8 hours straight? No camera battery can last that long. No camera that I know of allows you to hook up 2 batteries and double your battery time, EXCEPT the gopro, which was why i was inquiring about it in the first place. I was thinking about perhaps using one of those POWER STATIONS that are generally used to jumpstart cars or people who go camping take it with them to power up radios, a small tv, or even computers. Do you think a power station would be more suitable for what I need? I could charge the power station all day, then move it into my car at night and plug in my cheap digital camera and record all night for 8 hours? Not sure if this works?

wow thanks for that reply. I don't know half of what you said but I think basically it means that there is no such thing as a giant portable battery that I can use to plug in my camera in the car? So, it's just easier for me to install a 2nd car battery? Do you know how much drain a digital camera (point and shoot) while recording would have? Is it a lot of power or little?

I'm not sure exactly where this question should belong but I have a question about car alarms. My car recently (the last 3 weeks) has been vandalized twice. I have a car cam but it doesn't have night vision so in the dark parking lot I had my car, you can't see anything. I've moved my car elsewhere now. Just wondering here, my car has an alarm system so if someone tries to break into the car, the alarm will set off. The problem is, what good is a car alarm if there's no way for the car to notify the owner that the alarm has gone off? Sometimes I could be parked a couple blocks away and I'd never be able to hear the car alarm going off. Sure, the alarm is to scare away the criminal and hopefully get the attention of other ppl around my car, but what I mean is, it sucks walking to my car in the morning ready to enjoy a beautiful day and only to find that my windshield was smashed or whatnot. Isn't there some sort of technology by which a car can communicate or contact it's owner via a pager system or even a cell phone transmission, by notifying the owner that the car alarm has just been triggered? That way, I can be alerted right away and track down the criminals rather than to find out 24 hours later when I walk to my car the next morning or something. Obviously, the car would require some sort of built-in cell phone or built-in wifi/internet or maybe just something like a walkie talkie and how it can use radio waves? I'm trying to figure out what's out there in terms of how to get notified right away that my car alarm has been triggered. Does anyone know if we have such technology available to the average consumer or is this still not out yet and just for military use?