Garmin 66W recording 10 1/2 hours a day

[dangerousdriver77]

I recently purchased a Garmin 66W with a parking cable and after getting it all set up and happy with it I had one issue when I when to start my car a week later and found the battery was absolutely dead!

The AA came out and managed to get me started and identified a small drain which turns out to be the Garmin. Then I noticed a strange thing, where each day the Garmin will record for 10 hours plus at random times of the day, but usually the morning. It saves the file in the unsaved files folder, but despite having tried parking mode off and there not being any reason for the activation where it begins recording I have been at a loss to figure out why this is happening. I contacted Garmin and there were no help at all and just advised me to turn parking mode off and that was that! This as I mentioned did not work and I am still getting the daily activations which of course will flatten my battery.

My car is a 2020 Ford Focus and the parking cable jumper is set at 12.3V which is what the car requires to start.

Can anyone suggest anything as I do not have any ideas?

Merry Christmas!!

 

[jonat]

I had a similar problem with my Garmin 55 that would drain the car's battery, even if I set the parking mode interval to be the smallest. What resolved the problem for me was a separate battery for the dashcam - I use a Cellink NEO, and the problem disappeared. A side benefit is that the parking mode can now run much longer - up to 24 hours in my case - with zero impact to the car's battery. Yes, the battery costs more than the dashcam, but the peace of mind is worth it.