Dash cameras: good idea or paranoia

[ScottyB]

did about 800 miles with the new cam setup over Christmas vacation and came away pleased. it was eerily timely too since the ride home was in atrocious weather and included lots of tired people driving way over their heads on foggy/downpouring interstates in overloaded cars.

i did hardwire the cam beforehand so that it turns on and off with the ignition and it took only slightly longer to wire up than your average healthy Chipotle dump. i'm not going to post footage (of the cam, or the dump) since you can find that all over y00t00bs if you search for the G1C.

i used a "piggy-back fuseholder" that simply shares the cigarette lighter fuse socket. i had my soldering iron at the ready but it was not needed. here's a list of parts i used apart from the actual camera:

• • Add-A-Circuit Blade Fuse Holder, 20A - linky
  • 3A 15W DC 12V To DC 5V Dual USB Power Charger Adapter Converter Module - linky
  i intend to run a rear camera someday which is the reason for 2 USB output lines
  • 15ft USB 2.0 A Male to Mini-B 5pin Male 28/24AWG Cable w/ Ferrite Core (Gold Plated) - linky
  again, i bought 2 in the event i want to wire in a rear camera later. in hindsight 15ft of cable was excessive at least for the front camera.
  • mini-blade low-amp fuses, shrink wrap, eyelet terminals, and butt-splice wire connectors - i Harbor-Freight'ed these, just get whatever's super cheap
  • you'll need a couple odd tools like screwdrivers, a pair of pliers that can crush the butt-splice, and a lighter/heat gun to shrink up the tubing.
  

what you're doing here is taking power straight out of an already nicely sorted power source, i.e. your car's fuse panel via the Fuse Holder piggyback (you don't have to do it this way, but its super easy and allows the cam to turn on/off with the ignition). however, that juice is coming out at 15W and needs to step down to 5W which is what your cam wants to run, thus the Adapter Converter Module. after your electricity hits the Converter, we send it along a USB cable, up behind the pillar trip and under the headliner, and plug in to the cam. that's all it is.

in terms of work, you basically just need to strip and connect the blade piggyback wire to the converter's red power wire via a butt-splice, then shrink wrap it up to prevent any chance of a short. then just strip and connect an eyelet to the converter's ground wire (shrink that too) and bolt it to anything metal under the dash. mount it, and hook up the USB cord to the cam. done and done.

here's the exploded view of what you just built, except you did it with slightly different parts and without paying an 80% markup:


here's how it looks, with the piggyback fuse (red wire) taking power from the cig lighter socket (a safe play since its not crucial to the operation of the car if the fuse blows for some reason) and sending it to the converter which is the black box. it wouldn't be half the cluster-cuss you see before you if i had a better place to shove all the excess USB cable.


i was able to push the outgoing USB cable into the dash-to-door-frame rubber insulation with a screwdriver to hide it and then pulled the A-pillar trim and ran it up to the headliner from there. our headliner has a gap at the front and i pushed the cable up in there to hide/secure it and then did some tweaking of the cable length to get it to feed exactly the right amount out of the headliner to the cam. its all very discrete.


after firing it up for the first time, i found that the cam did fine but our cig lighter wouldn't work. i had set up the fuse sequence sloppily in the blade piggyback due to time constraints. i was only using the original 15A fuse in the wrong ("top") slot only with no secondary fuse, so essentially there was no power going to the lighter and a way-too-high fuse rating in the cam's slot. no surprise it wouldn't let the lighter work. i now run the original 15A fuse in the correct, "lower" slot and a little 2A fuse in the "top/extra" slot as the cam should never pull more power than that. here is an explanation of how the fuse piggyback works to send power to an extra thing from a fuse slot, and how you utilize the appropriate fuses:


pro bro tips:
• all those parts i link to take forever to ship since they come from hong kong on a slow boat. give them at least 3 weeks.
• the suction cup mount that come with the G1C is crap and fails after 5 minutes. get the solid mount you see in my photo.
• under-dash work blows. get a good work light
• i had to cock the converter at an angle so the fuse panel door could latch closed...you might have to tuck the converter somewhere weird if you have limited space like i did
• zip tie all the loose stuff away. under-dash rattles get old really fast.