Almost every dash cams powered by vehicle’s ignition through a charging cable. Nonetheless, they require a backup power supply to save files when there is no electricity; to do this,they either choose a capacitor or a battery. Therefore, the basic thing you have to know is that the capacitor or inbuilt battery in a dash cam is aim to save files only just in case of emergency or power failure. The dashcams have a small battery that can keep your camera on for a few seconds and saving video files a few seconds after you turning off the car.
Both capacitor and battery have their own advantages and disadvantages. Overall performance, capacitors are much better than batteries. Nowadays, in the recording industry, more and more high-end dash cams use capacitors than batteries. At the low end, lithium ion batteries are still used. Then let’s take a look at the difference between a capacitor and a battery.
Their functions
Batteries and capacitors are both used to generate electricity, but not in the same way, which affects their applicability to different applications. Battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy by using a positive terminal (cathode), a negative terminal (anode), and an electricity conducting medium (electrolyte). Rechargeable batteries are able to restore the lost charge using external electrical energy.
A capacitor on the other hand uses conductive plates with an insulating barrier (dielectric) in between them. The dielectric stops the electrical current entering the capacitor and this builds up a charge which is stored between the plates. The amount of charge a capacitor can hold depends on the charge storage capacity or its capacitance. Researchers are keeping finding ways to increase capacity of capacitors to store energy.
When connected to circuit, capacitors discharge much more rapidly than batteries. Similarly, they charge faster than batteries.
Reliability
It makes a huge impact on its reliability whether your dashcam uses a capacitor or a battery. Battery are more likely to wear out because of charging and discharging. Therefore, the battery life ran out soon. As a result of, battery is much more cheaper, and low quality batteries will cause more problems and may even damage your dashcam recorder.
A capacitor are more heat resistant than those with a built-in battery so it is more reliable. If you live in a warm climate, a capacitor-powered dash cam will last you longer than a battery-powered one. And you are able to charge a capacitor faster than a battery. The only shortcoming is that one small capacitor can not hold a quantity of energy. You can only use a capacitor based dash cam to record an incident with connecting it to power source. But this drawback should go away soon with attempts to design more powerful capacitors.
The cost
There is no need to require any expensive hardware or technique to integrate them into dash cams and it is the reason that batteries are cheaper. In proportion to capacitor relative to battery, it needs costly and special hardware to integrate. Thus,we mainly found that cheap dashboard camera use batteries. In the near future of dashboard cameras, there will be more high-end dash cams with capacitors.
