Elohel

I recently purchased a dashcam to record my driving around since I do a ton of it for work, and the last accident I was in the doofus tried blaming on me.

Right now I have it clipped on my rearview mirror and I have to run a power cable down and around to plug into the 12v outlet. It's ugly and annoying. I suppose I have two options, to either run the cable under the dash, or try and tap into the rearview mirror. Has anyone done that before, or is it even possible? If it is, I'll just take it to a shop and have them do it, but I'm wondering if it's even doable before I take it in.

FatBoyG37S

Hi Elohel...I run my radar detector on the rear view mirror power and it's working great. Escort brand. I believe you can run the dash cam power to it too. just need to purchase the 2 slim power wire from radio shack. I don't have the part number...but they are $3.99 when i purchase it about 2 years ago.

chrismitch

I can confirm that this works as well. In the wiring harness going to the rear view mirror there are three wires. One is constant battery that goes to the homelink, one that comes on with ignition that goes to the autodimmer and compass, and a ground. Just tap into ignition wire and ground and you should be good to go.

inyquest

Are those wires different colors?

Which wire goes to homelink and which one comes on with ignition?

Elohel

You guys rock, thanks a lot. Seems easy enough to do myself.

chrismitch

I just checked yesterday. Assuming you want the power only to come on with ignition, tap into the brown wire for positive and the black wire for ground.

jujubii

iTrader: (5)

we we actually have to remove the headliner for this? this sounds interesting... my dashcam is wired up to the cigarette lighter across the dash and is asthetically unpleasing. any links for the products you guys are mentioning?

GoFightNguyen

iTrader: (14)

What? No, just unplug the wire harness from the back of the rear view and tap in to it.

blin

I just got a BlackVue 550 and have only had the time to setup the front camera. I have the Power Pro kit as well, which helps when the car is parked, but havent had time to complete that either.

Here is what I have done. I have the wires all tucked on my drivers side, and then luckily the wire is really long. So, I loop it along the side of the door (plastic area when the door is open), and then basically under my floor mat. Finally, I plug into the cig-lighter in the middle compartment. This was because I have my radar detector plugged into the socket at the bottom of my center console. I will post pics later.

As for video when Im parked...I actually realized that my (spare) iphone 5 does a really good job. I have an app called iSymDVR2, and its pretty darn good. On my passenger side, I have the lightning cable (colored black so its more discrete) with an extension cable. This is plugged into a battery pack (~20k mah), so it can last forever.

Sadly, the iPhone is only 32 GB, and with almost nothing on it, I have about 26GB of memory to record to. This translates to roughly 2.5 hours on 1080p with audio. I made a ghetto rig to mount it discretely, and its doing well so far. It would prob be better to use my 5S with 54GB, but I dont want that in the car all day esp since thats the phone I use.


ANYWAYS, thats just my 2cents and a bit more about my dash cam setup. I got my car around Nov of last year, and have tried to baby it as much as I can. Then someone backed into my front bumper and lightly scratched it (my tow hook license plate mount took the hit and prob did more damage to that SOB). This is what caused me to try these different setups.

jujubii

iTrader: (5)

right. i found the wiring harness that powers the homelink/rearview mirror. what sort of power wire / wire taps etc should we be using?
my dashcam requires 5v and 1A so i dont think it'll be an issue. i can double check the fuse box.