Preventing Battery Discharge on a BMW

We're a big fan of BMW's here at BlackboxMyCar and one of our vehicles is a 2013 F30 328xi with a dash cam that is hardwired with a multi-safer. This multi-safer alows for a high voltage cut-off setting, which we set to avoid Battery Discharge Errors.

While a hardwiring is recommended, issue can still be experienced. That is because some specific vehicles (BMW in particular) have sensitive electronic systems and from time to time error messages can show up due to battery discharge when the vehicle is off. Vehicles like this tend to not like any kind of third-party power draw, and will pre-emptively cut-off power to the device. Sometimes this will simply be shown as the battery discharging message shown here, some other vehicle models will actually disable all electronics, including things like overhead lights and key signals, until the car is turned back on manually.

To help with this, we set a high voltage cut-off. This engages before the vehicle has drawn enough to reach the battery discharging issue, however a quick cut-off means very short parking mode, likely only a few hours. Many of our cameras have a timer cut-off option that can be used together with the high voltage cut-off.

The best option to protect your vehicle's battery is a Battery Pack. Our battery packs only draw power when the vehicle is turned on, completely bypassing the issues above! Battery packs are also great tools to conserve the health of your vehicle's battery, and reach substantially longer parking mode, 25 hours on average, depending on the camera and battery model. The PowerCell 8 is capable of 35 hours of continuous parking mode, when used with a Thinkware camera. Battery packs are also easier to wire, as they only need to be connected to an ignition-based power source, and can easily be wired to the cigarette socket of the vehicle instead, if it turns on/off with the vehicle.