Hardwired dashcam causing electrical glitches?

[sawman]

I recently had a nextbase piqo dashcam hardwired into my lads Mito, i had intended to have a garmin mini installed but halfords were out of stock.
Over the last week the car has been throwing up odd warnings such as check engine and start/ stop unavailable.
Thought it might be a battery issue, as i know alfa’s can be a bit iffy with ageing batteries.
Just wondering if thd nextbase dash cam might ne the culprit

[defblade]

sawman said:

I recently had a nextbase piqo dashcam hardwired into my lads Mito, i had intended to have a garmin mini installed but halfords were out of stock.
Over the last week the car has been throwing up odd warnings such as check engine and start/ stop unavailable.
Thought it might be a battery issue, as i know alfa’s can be a bit iffy with ageing batteries.
Just wondering if thd nextbase dash cam might ne the culprit

That does sound like battery issues; if the dashcam has been hardwired direct to battery and is "always on" (rather than through ignition) then yes, if could well be the problem. It should have a module that turns it off if/when it detects the car battery voltage has fallen too low because of the drain it's causing, but the cut-off maybe be lower than the car's electrics are happy with, or just plain rubbish and not working at all.

[sawman]

My initial thought was a dying battery, but having replaced it the errors continued.
Today, I had a look at how the dashcam is wired up, didnt have the right tool to get into the fusebox where its connected. Note the nextbase module but cant quite see the fuse its connected to.
So pulled the power cord from the camera and went for an hours blast around. No warnings noted (previously check engine was coming on after about 20 mins) so maybe it is the camera causing upset to the delicate italian wires

[Matt_E_Mulsion]

Does the dashcam power on and off with the ignition?

I can't see that the dash cam would have any bearing on a Check Engine light that illuminates after 20.mins of driving.

[sawman]

Alfa and fiats seem to be a bit sensitive to anything that upset system electrics.
Might just be coincidence but no issues before cam, and having disconnected it the car behaving better

[normalbloke]

Get an OBD adapter and run it from there.