12V Battery monitoring and dash cam parking mode
So, since I noticed that Smart Charging does not let the 12V battery charge past 60% and it was always chronically depleted, I got concerned and started researching. As some people suggested, I disconnected the battery from the Smart Charger, and for the first time ever, I saw my 12V battery reach 97% charge.
Then I noticed that the SOC dropped from 85% to 48% in just 3 hours. I got stressed out because that is definitely not normal. Then I remembered that I have a dash cam with a parking mode.
I had never noticed such a huge drop in SOC because parking mode has a safe shutoff feature that turns the dash cam off when it detects low voltage. Since my battery was chronically depleted, the safe shutoff was probably kicking in very quickly. But now that the battery was fully charged, the dash cam was able to run in parking mode for much longer and depleted a significant amount of the battery.
I immediately turned off parking mode, and I noticed that the battery no longer depletes significantly, except for a few percent, which seems normal.
So, if you have parking mode enabled, check it and see how much it is draining your battery. I believe parking mode has different settings/modes, and I’ll be testing how they affect the battery. Just keep in mind that a dash cam can draw a significant amount of energy from the 12V battery.