Dash Cam

[Fokkerjet]

I watched a video recently of someone being scammed by a guy flinging a motorbike into the front of a car and then throwing himself onto the bonnet with an accomplice as a witness. When they saw the dash cam fitted they ran off. What a simple scam and impossible to prove without evidence.

I want to fit a dash cam to my E70 and have decided on one from Halfords as they will professionally fit it for £30. The problem is where does the power feed come from? I read on another forum that having the 'always on' option ie taking a feed from a fuse that’s always powered can cause a low battery warning, even though these cameras draw minimal power on standby.

Has anyone fitted one and taken the power from the fuse box under the passenger footwell and been successful in not getting low battery warnings? I gather the fuse box in the boot has more available fuses but it’s a long way to route the cable.

[pvr]

The one I fitted a week or so ago had a dedicated line to the battery, where it had another fuse inline. The unit also was configurable for a voltage drop and time out i.e. you could set it to stop recording after 1 hour, 3, 6, 12 or permanent and then the second fail safe would kick in - the setting for the voltage drop.

[Fokkerjet]

So that effectively bypasses the fuse box and hence the vehicle monitoring?

[Fokkerjet]

I’ve been advised by Halfords customer services to have a vehicle survey done at one of their fitting centres which I will do next week to ascertain whether it’s an easy job. I don’t fancy doing it myself to be honest!

[pvr]

[quote="Fokkerjet"]
So that effectively bypasses the fuse box and hence the vehicle monitoring?
[/quote]

Yes. One line is going via a switched fuse using a piggy back one, the other one is going straight to the battery.

I did buy the "hard wire kit" which contained everything to wire this.

(in about 2 weeks I will have nails again  ) )

[Spandex]

I think there are two separate questions there... Wiring directly to the battery does bypass the fusebox, but I'm not sure that means it also bypasses the battery monitoring.

As far as I know the IBS monitors both current and voltage, and wiring directly can obviously only bypass the current measurement. The IBS will still see the voltage dropping, although I don't know how it will react to an anomaly like a voltage drop with no associated measured current flow.

Personally I'd just wire it to a switched live circuit (or one that switches off relatively soon after ignition off) so there was never going to be an issue with the IBS. If I particularly wanted 24/7 recording I'd look at fitting one of the specially designed dash cam external battery packs so it never used the cars battery when it was off.

[Leslie]

I fitted my dash cam today , after looking at you-tube I was sure it wouldn't take too long ( I was wrong lol) and Id be able to tap into a fuse in the passenger foot-well fuse box , well all these fuses are live all the time , I even left the car locked for 20 mins and the dash cam was still running so a no go !
My hard wire kit was 3m long and would have struggled to get the the rear fuse box so in the end the only option was past the fuse box in the passenger side under the center console and tap into the cigarette lighter wiring ( middle pin of 3 pin connector is 12v which does shutdown with the ignition and there is a handy M10 bolt that screws into a metal bracket that mounts to the floor pan for an earth connection .
The 2 carpeted trim strips either side of the center console are held in with a single torx screw , 2 pop in clips and then they side towards the front to unhook .

[Leslie]

Pics:

I went along the headlining down the pillar airbag then down behind the door rubber , across under the fuse box( 3 star screws to remove ) , along and then under the center console trims to the drivers side where I spliced into the cigarette lighter loom plug with a scotchlok connector .When its all done you can't see any wires .The console side trims need a torx screw removing ,one for each trim.

[Alan Gunn]

Not sure if any use or even the same but i picked up the switched 12v from the light above the sun-visor but that was on my e53 x5.

[Leslie]

Not sure if any use or even the same but i picked up the switched 12v from the light above the sun-visor but that was on my e53 x5.

Hi Alan The lights on the e70 are in a separate panel above the rear view mirror which can clip out and yes I saw someone on you tube use this but it was a sunroof car so they used one of the motor screws for an earth , Its quite hard to find any earths around the car as everything is covered in thick foam sound deadening.