DIY How To Install a Dash Cam By Tapping Into Rearview Mirror

[superwario]

Hey guys,

I have been wanting to install a dash cam ever since I bought this car 3 years ago and finally had enough time to get this done. I would say the difficulty level is 2 out of 5 since this involves very minor soldering.

Since this is dealing with the car's electrical's I also have to add that I WILL DISCLAIM ALL INSTANCES OF MALFUNCTION TO YOUR CAR, DASH CAM, OR ANYTHING ELSE BY PERFORMING THIS MOD.

So without further ado, let's get to it!

Summary: What I am doing here is making my own pigtail wire tap in order to use the power that goes into the rearview mirror as a power source for my dash cam. This connection is exactly the same as those powertaps you see made for radar detectors, but much cheaper to make yourself. Also from my research they do not even make these power taps for dash cams.

Step 1: The first step is to gather the materials needed for this project. This will include:

• Your Dash Cam
• A 12v to 5v USB connector; either micro-usb, mini-usb, or another connection depending on the dash cameras that you use (You can find these on ebay for cheap; also mine came with a built in power protection so I didn't buy an inline fuse for this project)
• Breakaway header pins (You only need two, I got mine on Amazon.com and it came with 150 of them for about $6 bucks )
• Heat shrink tubing (To keep everything nice and tidy)
• Soldering iron and and solder material
• Heat gun

Step 2: Insert the Heat shrink tubing into the wires, so that after we are done soldering we can move them up and shrink them into place with the heat-gun.



Step 3: Prime the ends of the header pins and the exposed wiring that came with your 12v to 5v USB converter with some solder. After priming, join the two parts together with the solder gun. Be patient!



Step 4: Move the heat shrink tubing up into place and hit it with the heat gun so that it shrinks into place. I also put a larger piece of heat-shrink tubing around the whole thing to make sure everything looks nice and tidy. The caveat is that I had to make sure I knew which wire was red and which one was black, since the heat shrink tubing covered the colors up.




Step 5: Shove your newly soldered 12v to 5v converter wire into the headliner. I found the headliner is a little tighter in the middle but looser towards the passenger side, so I fed it into there and just slide the wires over to the middle. The wire hider for the rearview mirror comes off as well. Just slide the top part down and snap the bottom part off of the windshield connector. After that, you can route the wires down towards the connector and snap the wire hider back on. It's a tight fit, but it will fit in there.






Step 6: Remove the connector from the back of the mirror and familiarize yourself with the wire colors. There are 3 wires: The Brown one is the switched 12v power, which means the power goes to it when the car is turned on. The Black is the Ground. TheGrey is the constant power which I didn't use. (Depending on if you want your camera always on, even when your car is off, then you might want to use this wire, but i didn't want to risk my car battery being run-down).



Step 7: Plug your Red (+) wire from your converter into the Brown connector and the Black (-) wire into the black connector. It should go in a with a pretty satisfying click. My header pins ended up sticking a little farther out then i intended so a cut a little bit off with wire clippers before sticking it back in.



Step 8: Plug back in the connector into the rearview mirror.




Step 9: Install your Dash Cam, plug it in, and enjoy!!!

 

[la_fx35]

Awesome DIY. Thanks for sharing. :good:

 

[PEEJ]

Great write-up. As someone who just purchased a dash cam, I will be putting your DIY good use!

 

[Ed@TunerStore]

Nice DIY guide:good:

 

[superwario]

Great write-up. As someone who just purchased a dash cam, I will be putting your DIY good use!

Yeah no problem, always glad to help out the scene. Please let me know if you have any questions!

 

[Cruiser]

This is so cool. I was wondering if this would cause to trip a circuit if you already tapped power from the rear view mirror such as a radar detector.

 

[superwario]

This is so cool. I was wondering if this would cause to trip a circuit if you already tapped power from the rear view mirror such as a radar detector.

That's a great question, but unfortunately I don't have a radar detector system since I plan on purchasing and installing the ones that go behind the bumpers, I plan on doing a DIY on that soon.

I wonder though.... Since I am using a 12v to 5v converter, I wonder if it is really drawing the full 12v or just the 5v that my Dash Cam uses. If the latter, then the concern would be lessened.

After a week of having the Dash Cam though, everything is working great and as expected. The Dash Cam chimes on the second I start my car and truns off automatically about 10 seconds after I turn off the engine in order to save the last file. No regrets so far and I am getting some great footage (although nothing quite newsworthy yet). One downside to having the dash cam is im more embarrassed to sing-along to the radio because i know it is recording me, but hopefully this will pass

 

[Cruiser]

LOL at being conscious of your singing.


Sent from my iPhone

 

[rex9271]

It is very good.

 

[Text]

Firstly, thanks for writing this up. Exactly what I needed. Now this pushes me to purchase the Dash Cam i've always knew I needed. (probably won't sing anymore either).

What do you guys think of the G1W dashcam? I've heard it's the best deal out there. I would post links but I'm a bit new here and not allowed to do so.

 

[mishanja]

This is so cool. I was wondering if this would cause to trip a circuit if you already tapped power from the rear view mirror such as a radar detector.

That is exactly why i did not wire it to the mirror. I am running Escort 8500x, so I wired my dash cam to the fuse (using battery saver) :good:

 

[Cruiser]

Cool. Maybe I'd check your set up on our next meet.


Sent from my iPhone

 

[mishanja]

Cool. Maybe I'd check your set up on our next meet.
Sent from my iPhone

For sure :rotfl: That's like the only thing I have done to FX lately... :disapointed:

 

[Text]

I went ahead and did this as I said I would. Total cost was about $85 bucks for the Camera (G1WH), 12v-5v USB cable, breakaway header pins and an upgraded mount. All purchased through Amazon (all items were prime).

I didn't solder the pin and wire (I didn't have the tools). I did however have heat shrink so I just wrapped the wire around the header pins and put heat shrink over it to keep it in place. It works...for now.

Here is a video of it after I installed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdTg1X6iWco

Here is a sample video that I took from my dash cam this morning on the way to work. (Change settings to high definition to see best quality).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8EkzDOryg

They muted the video because I had copyrighted music playing (I think I was playing PYT - Michael Jackson).

Thanks again to OP. You da man dawg! :good:

 

[superwario]

I went ahead and did this as I said I would. Total cost was about $85 bucks for the Camera (G1WH), 12v-5v USB cable, breakaway header pins and an upgraded mount. All purchased through Amazon (all items were prime).

I didn't solder the pin and wire (I didn't have the tools). I did however have heat shrink so I just wrapped the wire around the header pins and put heat shrink over it to keep it in place. It works...for now.

Here is a video of it after I installed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdTg1X6iWco

Here is a sample video that I took from my dash cam this morning on the way to work. (Change settings to high definition to see best quality).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8EkzDOryg

They muted the video because I had copyrighted music playing (I think I was playing PYT - Michael Jackson).

Thanks again to OP. You da man dawg! :good:

Hey man thanks for putting my DIY to good use, now I know my work wasn't for nothing haha. I really like your setup and I was also considering the G1W but initially thought it was too big, but after seeing your video i suspect the pictures only made it look big. Would have been a good choice for me.

I think that the heat shrink only technique should work fine since you wrapped the wire around first. The heat shrink holds on tough, and I'm sure will only get stronger over time during hot summer days!

The quality is really great! How is the night time video quality on that thing? I found that since I mounted mine a bit high that the camera catches a lot of glare from my navigation screen (reflected off the windshield) and so the camera ends up "focusing" on the glare and making everything else really blurry. I definitely plan on bringing it down a little to solve the problem. I would have done it already but my mount is stuck to my windshield with tape, so not as easy as de-suctioning and replacing.

The reason I put it so high and used the tape mount was because I wanted it to be more "stealth" and out of the way like it isn't even there, but obviously there are trade-offs with video quality like I have mentioned. I will need to sacrifice stealth for better video quality.

 

[PEEJ]

Thanks for the most excellent tutorial!

It took me all of 15 minutes from start to finish!

​

(the cabling looks clean compared to this photo)!!!

 

[krazyfiend]

Thank you for this informative post. I ordered all of the same items (actually had breakaway header pins on-hand...advantages of being a computer geek) and I'm going to install on my '11 g37 coupe later this week when I have time. I already have a hardwired rx65 radar detector, but ran a wire tucked inside of the pillars and down to an switchable power fuse for some accessory and used a fuse-tap for that.

I'm going to be installing a B40 pro A118c dashcam w/ a 64gb sdxc card. I went this route due to the very stealth / concealed look of the unique wedge mounting system of this particular model. I'm also putting the dashcam behind the left side (looking towards the mirror from driver's seat) of the mirror (because of the detector on the other side in a concealed position) thus why camera profile and mount mattered even more.

Sorry, below 10 posts, otherwise I'd leave the embedded pic for example of why I chose this model of dash cam.

h t t p ://w w w .rav4world.com/mods/A118Dashcam.jpg

I'll post an update of how the process goes in my G. I wouldn't expect anything less than success due to us all using what looks to be the same rear view mirror.

Thanks again, OP!