My $0.02:

Get a battery tender of some good manufacturer; I have two NOCOs. When she sits, plug ‘er in.
A pigtail connected straight to your battery makes it easy.
Rare drive…. Unplug, start, go.

 

Already have one. Used upon my return, after the dead battery issue. Disappointed Honda has loaded new vehicles with so much battery draining crap. Never had this problem on my older Hondas.
Hence my question on wiring for my dash cam. Don’t want to add anything that increases battery drain. So I will skip the 24 hour surveillance capability and only use the cam when my vehicle is operational.
Thanks.

 

That’s what I do. The rove does have a internal battery or capacitor now. So if something sets off the g sensor, you should get a short video.

 

Did you have your dash cam connected to an "always on" circuit for 3 weeks? If so, then yes, that will very likely completely drain the battery. To get a good idea of how long you can reliably leave your dash cam connected, you should either look up or measure its current draw.

I've measured the "sleeping" current draw on my Ridgeline at 53mA. That's not out of line compared to other half-way-modern vehicles. 53mA (0.053A) for 3 weeks (504 hours) is just under 27 amp-hours of drain. The Ridgeline factory battery is rated at 70Ah when new. I always use 50% reserve capacity when guesstimating if a vehicle is likely to start, which is very conservative. Your 1-year old battery no longer has full capacity, but it's likely pretty close. If it's at 60Ah capacity when parked, then 3 weeks later after a 27Ah drain, you're left with 33Ah of reserve capacity. That should have been plenty of juice to start the Ridgeline.

Typical dash cams draw well over 250mA while recording and a fraction of that when in "surveillance" mode. So if your dash cam draws 100mA when in surveillance mode, that will drain your battery SIGNIFICANTLY faster! 100mA for 3 weeks is over 50Ah!
50Ah dash cam drain + 27Ah Ridgeline drain = 77Ah = a completely dead battery - no chance of starting.

I 100% agree with @Vlad the Impaler and would be sure to connect a maintainer while the Ridgeline is parked for so long. I bought into the Del-Tran Battery Tender universe of compatible parts, but NOCO is a very good brand.

 

Dash cam has not been installed yet (waiting until weather warmed). I was planning on using both active and passive capability but now think I will stick to the active scenario. I know the rove cam has a cut off limiter, but until it reaches that trigger point the cam would contribute to the drain. Since my truck sits in my garage for extended periods, I really don’t need passive capacity except on road trips or in a parking lot. Wished they had a switch for turning passive on manually so I could control when I want passive monitoring.
I have a maintainer and will start using it when parked for extended periods. Still need to find correct wiring scenario, as the hardwire kit has both battery and accessory leads. The accessory is easy but where should the battery lead connect? Leave it unconnected or connect to a second accessory fuse.

 

Dash cam has not been installed yet (waiting until weather warmed). I was planning on using both active and passive capability but now think I will stick to the active scenario. I know the rove cam has a cut off limiter, but until it reaches that trigger point the cam would contribute to the drain. Since my truck sits in my garage for extended periods, I really don’t need passive capacity except on road trips or in a parking lot. Wished they had a switch for turning passive on manually so I could control when I want passive monitoring.
I have a maintainer and will start using it when parked for extended periods. Still need to find correct wiring scenario, as the hardwire kit has both battery and accessory leads. The accessory is easy but where should the battery lead connect? Leave it unconnected or connect to a second accessory fuse.

Are the instructions that came with the camera not clear? I've owned several dash cams over the years, but never set any of them up for passive monitoring. If you post your exact model, maybe we can find the instructions online and provide help.

Usually dash cams have their own internal battery or capacitor and therefore have no need for a memory wire. Therefore my pure guess is that you only use the accessory lead and do not connect the unswitched battery lead if you do not want passive monitoring. If this is the case, then simply adding a switch to the battery lead should allow you to decide on the fly if you want passive monitoring or not. Even if you have to wire the battery lead to the switched accessory connection, you can still easily add a switch to simultaneously break that connection and instead connect the battery lead to a constant on battery connection.

 

I have ADD today and did "fast" reading ... Unless I didn't follow, I think you are asking that you wish you could choose "when" for parking/passive/motion detect recording, right?

If you wire everything "normally" and then add a simple on/off switch to the constant power, you would have exactly that.

• One lead is constant power that your camera needs for normal and parked (all) recordings.
• Another lead is for "switched" power to simply tell your camera that it is time to use the parking/passive mode vs an always on live mode.

If you put a switch on your constant wire to "break/cut" power, then you would have NO recording power... hence no parking monitor. If you're a fancy-hat kinda guy, you could even go further and do a DPDT switch to not only break it but switch from Constant to Switched. That way if you forget, it will at least start up with your next drive.

All that said... It is usually pretty simple to pop into the APP (if your camera has it) to enable or disable the parking/passive/motion mode

 

I have instructions but it implies you connect the battery wire (constant power) for passive 24 hr monitoring and the accessory wire for active driving. I like the switch idea but haven’t explored options I’m thinking I will wire for both active and passive but not connect the battery lead until I figure out the switch situation Here a pic of the unit & hard wire kit

 

Everyone should have a dashcam these days, they're cheap enough and there's really no excuse not to have one. You should, as a minimum, have it wired up so when your truck is on the camera is on and there would be no battery drain. Now if you want passive protection, that's where it'll cost you battery drain. You can't get something for nothing.

I have a dash cam with bump and motion detection. Although it seems to record a whole of of nothing. Random cars, people and even trees and the sun come under the category of nothing. There's a lot of weekends i don't drive and have never had dead battery issues. I have added a minimum voltage (11.6v) cutoff device but don't really know if it ever kicked in.

If you have in an enclosed garage and park for extended periods then bump and motion detection would not be very useful and may kill your battery.

 

Holy cow! That's an impressively complete installation kit! It includes two each of the 4 common styles of fuse taps plus a voltage probe.

The power adapter box itself has switches that control both the low voltage cutoff level and if it should use the parking mode:

Unfortunately I could not find anywhere that describes what this power adapter actually does. This is an interesting paragraph on the Rove power adapter hardware kit website:

So I'm thinking that what is really going on here is that this power adapter is simply a 5V voltage regulator with an adjustable low input voltage cutoff and a switch on the "constant on" power wire.

I looked at the manual for your Rove R2-4K camera and found that it only has one power input, via it's USB-C input. So the CAMERA only has a single input power wire. When power is applied to that wire, the camera is on. When power is removed, the camera stops recording after a couple seconds.

The camera also features a "Motion Detection" mode where it will only record when it detects motion. On page 39, the manual specifically says to NOT use this mode while driving because the algorithm likely won't work correctly if the entire scene is moving as it relies on some portions of the frame to be steady in order to determine motion. Interestingly, page 54 of the manual also says that 99% of their customers do not use the motion detection feature.

The camera also features a "Parking Mode" where it uses an internal 3-axis accelerometer to determine if your vehicle was bumped. If it detects a bump, the camera will automatically start recording for 1 minute using it's internal battery - no external power required. The manual states that:

So it sounds like you should get at least a couple "bump" events at the highest resolution.

What is NOT clear at all is how the camera will automatically enter "parking mode" if it is being fed by a constant on power adapter. I didn't see anything that talked about it automatically going to sleep after some time of no motion. I would not want to have to mess with any settings every time I drive, so I don't see how "always on" is a good option here.

If I were you, I would want to get a very good handle on how this power adapter thing works with the camera before permanently installing it. I would temporarily clip it to any old 12V battery or power supply and make sure it acts like I want. My guess is that it will NOT act like you want. It appears to always send constant power to your dash cam, independent of if your Ridgeline is running. The camera already has built-in bump detection, so why does it need constant power?

Personally, after reading all of this, I would absolutely return the power adapter.

If you have an auto-dimming rear view mirror, then I would instead buy a Dongar rear view mirror power adapter (which I did). Installing a dash cam is simply unplugging the Ridgeline connector behind the mirror, plugging in the Dongar to the mirror, plugging the Ridgeline harness back into the Dongar, and then plugging your camera into the Dongar USB port via the provided 3" long USB-C cable. Yes, the USB cable is only like 3 INCHES long because your camera is right next to your rear view mirror. It literally takes 2 minutes to install any USB powered dash cam with a Dongar power adapter; and it's 100% plug-and-play.

If you do not have available power up at your rear view mirror, then you'll have to run a long cable down the A pillar. But the camera already comes with a 12' long USB-A to USB-C cable (which should be PLENTY of cable), and a 12V-to-USB-A power adapter. If you want to completely hide the cable, then I would just install a USB-A power adapter under the dash. Like this:

https://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/posts/3370077/

 

Yeah, If you want parking monitor, you require this adapter. Those power kits are typical these days. The default switch just swaps the Switched/Constant leads, because some cameras are reversed. I would leave the voltage cutoff at 12.2v to protect the battery. The kit monitors the battery voltage while the camera is in park mode, and when it dips below the selected setting (e.g. 12.2v), it just cuts the power.

Here is Rove's Kit manual: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2.../files/HWK_For_R2-4K_R2-4K-PRO_R2-4K-DUAL___R3_User_Manual_Updated_JAN-2025.pdf
Here is Rove's Camera Manual: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2287/2433/files/ROVE_R2-4K-PRO_User_Manual_Updated_JAN-2025.pdf

Screenshots

 

Yeah, If you want parking monitor, you require this adapter. Those power kits are typical these days. The default switch just swaps the Switched/Constant leads, because some cameras are reversed. I would leave the voltage cutoff at 12.2v to protect the battery. The kit monitors the battery voltage while the camera is in park mode, and when it dips below the selected setting (e.g. 12.2v), it just cuts the power.

Some of those kits are made cheaply (maybe not that one) and they will sometimes cut the power, but then the battery may poke above the 12.2v and it starts again and then stops and keeps cycling. But that was older era, and I hope all of that is remedied now.

Here is Rove's Kit manual: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2.../files/HWK_For_R2-4K_R2-4K-PRO_R2-4K-DUAL___R3_User_Manual_Updated_JAN-2025.pdf
Here is Rove's Camera Manual: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2287/2433/files/ROVE_R2-4K-PRO_User_Manual_Updated_JAN-2025.pdf

Screenshots
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View attachment 463866

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If the camera is receiving constant power (assuming the battery voltage is sufficient), then how does it know to automatically go into parking mode? It cannot use voltage for 2 reasons - the Ridgeline varies it's system voltage and the camera receives 5V anyway. I guess it has the accelerometer and GPS.

Your screenshots of the power adapter certainly say that the adapter is required for parking mode, but the dash cam manual says otherwise. The dash cam manual says that feature is already built into the camera; but it'll only work 2 or 3 times until the camera battery is depleted.

 

If you don’t want passive monitoring, then the rear mirror is an option. I like the passive feature but only want it when running errands (parked in a lot) or traveling and not while the truck is in my garage.
Obviously, battery drain is an issue with newer vehicles. I don’t want to make battery drain worse by passive monitoring while the truck sits in my garage, which is the majority of the time.

 

If you don’t want passive monitoring, then the rear mirror is an option. I like the passive feature but only want it when running errands (parked in a lot) or traveling and not while the truck is in my garage.
Obviously, battery drain is an issue with newer vehicles. I don’t want to make battery drain worse by passive monitoring while the truck sits in my garage, which is the majority of the time.

Right, so then you need to either:

• Fumble with the software to enable/disable each time
• Or make your own CUT switch and place into the constant power
• Or (and probably easiest for you), keep the battery protector (kit) switches handy, and flip from DEFAULT to the other position. From what I'm reading that should swap the leads internally and your camera would not operate when parked. Essentially, it would think that your ACC is (car running), but have no constant power (red lead) to record, so it won't go into park mode. I would test that, but I bet that would work.

 

My dash cam (in a different vehicle) has a two feeds, constant-power + ACC, as shown above. But my dash cam has menu setting to turn the parking/sentinel mode ON (default is OFF).

 

THAT makes way more sense to me!

 

I did some more digging and discovered that for some reason there isn't a lot of pinout information on these dash cam USB-C connectors. But I did find over on the dashcamtalk forum that someone used a generic cable to supply both BATT and ACC power to their dash cam. Here's the post:

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/lto-lithium-titanate-oxide-%E2%80%93-the-ultimate-battery-for-dash-cam-parking-mode-diy.50484/post-613443

They said that they used this cable:

Amazon.com: ELNONE USB C Pigtail Cable, Type-C 4ft 1.2meter 5A 20AWG 6 core Power Data Pigtail Cable, CC1 CC2 Cord DIY Black for Laptop Charging : Electronics

Amazon.com: ELNONE USB C Pigtail Cable, Type-C 4ft 1.2meter 5A 20AWG 6 core Power Data Pigtail Cable, CC1 CC2 Cord DIY Black for Laptop Charging : Electronics

www.amazon.com

They said that they connected pin V+ (red) to BATT, pin CC1 (yellow) to the accessory circuit power, and pin Gnd (black) to common.

USB-C pins 4 and 9 are V+ and appear to be connected to the vehicle BATT connection (after regulating down to 5V). USB-C pins 5 and 8 are CC1 and CC2 and appear to be connected to the vehicle ACC connection (after regulating down to 5V). USB-C pins 1 and 12 are ground.

So to summarize, what this means is that on the USB-C connector, there are two sets of power pins used on dash cams - one for BATT power and one for ACC power. This is apparently what the hardwire power adapter does and this is how the dash cam knows to automatically switch modes from recording to parking monitor.

 

I have the same Rove dash cam. I decided that I didn't need the parking sensor so i just used the cigarette lighter adaptor that came with the camera. Install took about 20 minutes. It comes on and turns off with the truck. It just sat idle for over two weeks. The truck and dash cam started right up.

 

That was my fall back option, but I want to keep my console clear. With drinks and google maps already on the console, I want to avoid adding to the clutter. I have found Honda’s navigation system to be lacking, so I use maps on my iPhone for travel.

 

There is no clutter. The wire for the power is run under the glove compartment and up to the cigarette lighter/usb adapter that came with the kit. All of the wiring to the cameras is concealed under the head liner and plastic molding. Rove has videos showing installation.
I have the front camera mounted to the right of the rearview mirror.

 

I'll check the videos out. Definitely an option.

 

here's mine:

https://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/threads/my-dash-cam-install.241890/?post_id=3368366#post-3368366

 

I have a 2017 ridgeline and plan to install a Rove r2-4k dash cam using the associated hard wire kit. However, I'm retired and don't drive much (5K/Yr), so my truck sit in the garage for multiple days unused. I just returned from a 2+week international vacation and found my battery drained to an extent the truck wouldn't start (probably 3 weeks idle). The battery is only one year old so it's not a battery issue.
My question is where do I connect the hot wire (battery) when I don't need the 24 surveillance feature? Should it be left unconnected or wired to an accessory slot too?

I have a 2017 ridgeline and plan to install a Rove r2-4k dash cam using the associated hard wire kit. However, I'm retired and don't drive much (5K/Yr), so my truck sit in the garage for multiple days unused. I just returned from a 2+week international vacation and found my battery drained to an extent the truck wouldn't start (probably 3 weeks idle). The battery is only one year old so it's not a battery issue.
My question is where do I connect the hot wire (battery) when I don't need the 24 surveillance feature? Should it be left unconnected or wired to an accessory slot too?

Car and Drive Nov 2024 did a review of battery tenders. Their rated #1 was a NOCO genius 1, Schumacher was next and then Battery Tender 3.

 

I had installed an older model ROVE dash cam on my 2014 Ridgeline. It worked well, with excellent forward-looking video and no problems. I didn’t like having to connect and disconnect the unit into the cigarette lighter every time I started and stopped the truck.

For my 2024 Ridgeline Black Edition I decided to install a ROVE R2-4K Dual Channel front and rear dash cam. Rather than plug the unit into the power supply in the dash I decided to use a power supply that connected with the Ridgeline auto-dimming rear view mirror power supply. I purchased a 7-pin Honda dash cam power adapter from Amazon. The supplier was listed as YQ-MAJIM and the price was around $30. With this power supply adapter I wanted to turn the ROVE units on and off with the truck ignition.

Installation of the power supply adapter was remarkably easy. The YQ-MAJIM adapter came with clear instructions. It took 5 minutes to carefully disconnect the existing 7-pin mirror power supply, connect the adapter pin, reconnect the power supply to the mirror, and connect the power cable from the adapter to the front ROVE unit. I followed the detailed instructions in the ROVE installation manual and installed the front and rear camera units. I installed the rear-facing unit on the fixed side of the rear window. I routed the cables connecting the two cameras behind the interior truck trim pieces using the installation tool provided in the ROVE kit. It took about 30 minutes to complete the installation.

I’m very pleased with the result. The cameras power on and off automatically and I use the ROVE app on my phone to view the videos. I decided not to install the ROVE 24-hour parking mode.