Dashcam parking mode explained
Motion detection, impact detection, time-lapse and radar: what the parking modes do, how to power them without a flat battery, and how to find the clips afterwards.
Most dashcams can keep watching after you switch off the engine. That is how people catch the car that dented their door in a car park. But parking mode only works if it is powered and set up properly.
How it gets power
A dashcam plugged into the 12 V socket usually turns off with the ignition. For parking mode you need one of these:
- A hardwire kit connected to the fuse box, with a constant and a switched fuse. It has a low-voltage cut-off so the camera shuts down before the car battery gets too low. Set it to 12.0–12.2 V for a normal car, or higher in cold climates.
- A dashcam battery pack, a separate battery that charges while you drive and powers the camera while parked. Your car battery is never touched.
- An OBD power cable, an easier install on some cars, with the same cut-off principle.
The different modes
| Mode | What it does | Good for | Downside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impact detection | Sleeps, wakes up on a bump | Longest coverage | Misses the seconds before the impact |
| Motion detection | Records when something moves | Catching people walking by | Many clips in a busy street |
| Buffered motion | Keeps a few seconds before the motion | Seeing what led up to it | Uses more power |
| Time-lapse | Records a few frames per second | Hours of coverage in little space | Fast events show in few frames |
| Low bitrate | Records continuously at lower quality | Nothing is missed | Uses the most power and space |
| Radar (Thinkware) | Radar wakes the camera when something approaches | Long coverage, few false triggers | Only on some models |
Buffered motion detection is the best compromise for most people.
Finding the parking clips
Parking clips usually get their own folder (Parking, parking_rec) or a letter in the name, like P in BlackVue or PA in 70mai. See dashcam file names explained.
Tripframe labels parking clips and lets you filter on them, so you can open the card and see straight away whether anything happened overnight. Tesla Sentry Mode clips are labelled as parking too: TeslaCam footage.
Which cameras are good at it?
Thinkware and BlackVue are known for parking mode; Viofo's buffered parking mode with its hardwire kit is excellent for the price. See the best high-end dashcams and best mid-range dashcams.