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[ozman12]

My father's car is getting scratched at work all the time and it's driving him nuts because he doesn't know who it is doing it whether a coworker or else. He asked me to install a camera and vcr in the car to record. He needs it for about 6-7 hours of recording. Has anybody done this before? I want to make sure that both don't drain his battery. He can turn it on when he parks and off when he is ready to go home but 6-7 hours might be alot of drain on the car battery standing still with a regular 12 volt VCR. I would appreciate any help on this as it's ruining my dad's new car. Thanks.

[hawk1]

everything should work, just make sure you get polarity right.  and i would definitely get an external power source (marine battery maybe) the camera's are 12v and if you have vcr that's 12v it will work.  there is article on x-10 web site about a camera hook up sorta like that. 

hope this helps

[Tuicemen]

As hawk1 stated:

get an external power source (marine battery maybe)

The battery should be a deep cycle one, Cosco sells these for a reasonable price. Your car battery will fail with to many deep discharges/recharges, deep cycle batteries are designed for this. You may get by with replacing the car battery with a deep cycle one.
If you don't have a 12 volt VCR you can get inverters which plug into the cigarette lighter and convert 12 volts to 110.

[steven r]

I like the idea of a good alarm that goes off if you touch the car.
In addition to having to recharge the battery every day or so, how do you mount the camera and which direction do you aim it.
i.e. What's to keep someone from approaching from the other side?

[HA Dave]

.......... how do you mount the camera and which direction do you aim it.
i.e. What's to keep someone from approaching from the other side?

steven r is right!

To get a good picture of you father's car you will need some sort of "camera platform". Maybe your Dad has a buddy at work that would park in front or behind your Dad's car. Then the buddy's car could contain a camera set-up.

Instead of making a tape recording.... maybe converting or modifing a cheap or older digital camera would work. There are lots of battery operated motion sensor activated lights out there. One of those could be hot-wired to trigger the camera.