I have was using a USB cigarette lighter charger to power the car’s dash camera and charge my phone. I thought of getting a new unit since the old one after hundreds of hours of continuous use was looking tired. Mechanically it was loose from all the thermal cycles.
This time round, I decided to get something ‘branded’ hopefully for a charger with less electrical noise. After I changed over, the first few weeks was troublefree. The only strange behaviour was with the same micro USB cable, the charging current is lower.
After some weeks, I noticed that the dash camera kept prompting for USB/PC mode. Instead of the usual video, the display will show select USB mode (storage) or PC mode (PC camera). The only way to clear this is to unplug the dash camera. This progressively got worse.
I think the USB charger was too intelligent and changed the voltage, triggering a mode selection function in the dash camera.
In the end, I changed back to my original charger and no more problems!!