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Dashcam hardwire location?

Actual

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Hi All

Bought myself a Thinkware 770, fuse taps on the way and even got some trim removal tools. All I need now is the best way to route the wires out of sight for both front and rear cameras

Do any of you guys have any tips / photos for the installation? would really appreciate any guidance

Cheers
I mounted my Thinkware F750 behind the rear-view mirror and nearer to the driver so that the manual record button is accessible while driving.

The sticky pad is stuck to the painted area so that the light grey pad doesn't show from outside and the camera looks out from under the painted area and that part of the windscreen is covered by the wipers.

The Thinkware F750 is not particularly hidden not no-one looking at the car as ever commented that there is a dashcam installed so it can't be very obvious.

Poke the cable(s) behind the trim around the windscreen. In some places I had some black foam that I used to jam into the gap to keep it all tight and minimise vibrations/rattles.

It is tight but do-able to push the cable down between the side of the dashboard and the pillar and I removed trim to route down to the fuse panel. I removed all the side trim next to the drivers foot to make access to the fuse panel easier and the slack cable is pushed behind the dashboard.

Routing the cable to the rear along the roofline is even easer and only took about 2 minutes. There is a lot of slack cable which is pushed behind the rim down the side of the rear window. I do guarantee that you will mount the rear camera upside down on the first attempt :). I put a black sticker over the blue LED on the rear camera.

When there is an incident it can involve wading through 1000's of files so I also keep some spare microSD cards in the car so if anything happens
I can swap them over immediately which makes it much easier to find the incident later.
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Ian whu

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When there is an incident it can involve wading through 1000's of files so I also keep some spare microSD cards in the car so if anything happens
I can swap them over immediately which makes it much easier to find the incident later.

There still will be 1000's of files on memory card if u remove card after an incident.
If there is an incident it will put it in the collision folder :)
 
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Actual

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There still will be 1000's of files on memory card if u remove sad card after an incident.
If there is an incident it will put it in the collision folder :)
Not always and also applies when something non incident but interesting occurs.
 

goldengooner

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Not always and also applies when something non incident but interesting occurs.
just check it by the time and folder
The F750 does make things easy if you want to leave the card in, never take mine out, once a week do a format
also great thing about it, when you press the start button the cam tells you what incidents and how many
 

Actual

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just check it by the time and folder
The F750 does make things easy if you want to leave the card in, never take mine out, once a week do a format
also great thing about it, when you press the start button the cam tells you what incidents and how many
If I hit the brakes hard then the Thinkware F750 will sometimes record the clip as an incident but if I'm just cut up by another driver and I don't brake then the incident won't be recorded no matter how loudly I swear. Actually voice activation would be very useful. The recorded incident will be in the middle of a 1 minute clip which is very useful.

I can also press the Thinkware F750 manual record button which will record a 2 minute clip but only backtrack 10 seconds which often isn't enough to get the whole build-up to an incident and is often missed all together if I forget to press the button.

The Thinkware F750 facility to use WiFi to download to my smartphone can be useful when I'm out with the car but I don't always remember the exact time that an incident occurred and as there is one new file every minute it can be quite laborious to connect the smartphone and find the correct file.

For me as a personal preference it is much more convenient and quicker to swap the microSD card and then use the file explorer on my PC or even the excellent Thinkware Dashcam Viewer PC application to find the clip.
 

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tooley

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I mounted my Thinkware F750 behind the rear-view mirror and nearer to the driver so that the manual record button is accessible while driving.

The sticky pad is stuck to the painted area so that the light grey pad doesn't show from outside and the camera looks out from under the painted area and that part of the windscreen is covered by the wipers.

The Thinkware F750 is not particularly hidden not no-one looking at the car as ever commented that there is a dashcam installed so it can't be very obvious.

Poke the cable(s) behind the trim around the windscreen. In some places I had some black foam that I used to jam into the gap to keep it all tight and minimise vibrations/rattles.

It is tight but do-able to push the cable down between the side of the dashboard and the pillar and I removed trim to route down to the fuse panel. I removed all the side trim next to the drivers foot to make access to the fuse panel easier and the slack cable is pushed behind the dashboard.

Routing the cable to the rear along the roofline is even easer and only took about 2 minutes. There is a lot of slack cable which is pushed behind the rim down the side of the rear window. I do guarantee that you will mount the rear camera upside down on the first attempt :). I put a black sticker over the blue LED on the rear camera.

When there is an incident it can involve wading through 1000's of files so I also keep some spare microSD cards in the car so if anything happens
I can swap them over immediately which makes it much easier to find the incident later.
Thanks for that! :cheers: really helpful
 

GR11M

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Connected mine up, started the car and this happened :(

 

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I do guarantee that you will mount the rear camera upside down on the first attempt :).
I can confirm that I did indeed mount the rear camera upside down at first attempt - the correct way round makes no logical sense as the writing on the back of the camera is upside down.

I also managed to connect the ignition and permanent 12v to the wrong fuses as well first time despite checking beforehand.

All good now though and the camera is great

I'm steering clear of a career in bomb disposal.
 

tooley

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Connected mine up, started the car and this happened :(

That's not good ! faulty unit do you think or did you use the wrong fuse to tap?

Other thing is to note on the fuse tap is which fuse protects which output - i.e. which slot does the original fuse go into and which one holds the camera fuse. I tested the ones I bought with a multimeter and the fuse on top is the camera one
 

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GR11M

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Not sure, I put the fuse tap in fuse 23 and the fuse I put in the tap were the blue one that came with it at the bottom and the red one that came out of fuse 23 at the top

FYI the explosion was awesome :D
 

Actual

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I can confirm that I did indeed mount the rear camera upside down at first attempt.
The purpose of my guarantee was to ensure that you took enough care to get it right first time :doh:
 

Actual

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Not sure, I put the fuse tap in fuse 23 and the fuse I put in the tap were the blue one that came with it at the bottom and the red one that came out of fuse 23 at the top

FYI the explosion was awesome :D
What exactly is that photo showing. Was it your dashcam?

This highlights a certain nervousness that I have playing with modern car electronics and fuse tapping. The modern car doesn't use simple switches and voltages and instead it is all done using CANBUS.

Controller Area Network (CAN bus) is a vehicle bus standard designed to allow microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other in applications without a host computer.

For example the switch module that controls the headlights is microprocessor controlled and it sends commands to some other controller to control the lights.

My concern is that playing with fuse taps in your modern car is the equivalent of hooking up directly to your desktop computer mother board but maybe the whole car is now a motherboard. One small voltage spike in the wrong place could do an awful lot of very expensive damage.
 

GR11M

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No I unplugged my dash cam before I started the car incase something like that happened. Its the little black box on the power cable that converts the power.
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