Parasitic drain on Mini 2

[herewego]

I just spent about $300 having a mechanic figure out why my car battery was dying every 2 days after sitting out in the cold. I have 2 Mini 2s connected to a ODB-II port connector. They noticed a parasitic drain occurring on the battery. They disconnected the power cable from the front camera and all the other usb ports in the car and still showed a drain that was noticeable. That's because he didn't see the rear camera. Once he realized it, he unplugged the ODB-II port connector, the drain stopped.

My Mini 2 rear camera had a software update which I installed. I know the parking mode drains the battery because, it has to be powered on to record. Is anyone else seeing parking mode with excessive drain? Are you using the ODB-II port for power? The mechanic said using the ODB-II port for power is a bad idea in general. I'm not about to go the hard wire route or the fuse route. Too much work and has its own issues.

Was it bad of me to assume Garmin makes a stable ODB-II solution or do I have a bad camera? Bad software release? I'd really like to use parking mode.

 

[lacibaci]

2 things: It's not really a parasitic if the camera is in the parking mode. It is still "recording" just not writing to the card. Even a small drain (500mA) adds up over two days.
There is low battery protection, not sure why it's not kicking in.
Maybe set the timeout for 24 hours instead of infinity?

Update:
I just checked the current draw and it is ~160mA when recording (2W assuming 13V battery)
When the camera is off, the draw is ~11mA (the draw of the converter)

In any case, a healthy battery should be able to handle this with no problem.

 

[Gary E]

>>"...too much work and has its own issues..."<<

Don't know what issues you are referring to. Never had any with the cams mounted here. Wasn't too much work at all. Beats looking at wires hanging loose around the interior that could get damaged.