Can I hardwire a rear facing dashcam to a 12V cigarette lighter?

hvaghela

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Hi
I have a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 2016. I have had a Ddpai M6 as my front camera for 3 years. Its hardwired to the front 12V cig lighter. To allow me to utilise the parking mode I have made the cigarette lights in the car permanently live (at the fuse box). I now wish to install my recently purchased Ddpai MiniOne Nighvision camera as my rear dashcam. It has a parking mode aswell. I have got a hardwire kit from Ddpai (3 wires - red/yellow/black), but the wiring is not long enough to get to the fuse box behind the glove compartment. So here is my predicament. Can I hardwire the rear cam to the 12V lighter in the boot/trunk? I assume its not possible to wire it to the light in the roof in the boot/trunk - which is also constantly live.

Any help, advice, thoughts, ideas would be appreciated.

Herbie
 
I did exactly that with a Mobius dash cam in our Toyota SUV which has a rear power outlet that is accessory powered on. However I simply used the supplied Mobius USB cable with a USB adapter plugged into the power outlet. You might want to try that first to be sure it works.

Caveat is that our Mobius cams are a completely stand-alone cameras, not associated with each other. IOW, there are two separate dash cams in our SUV, one facing forward in the windshield and one facing rearward through the back window, each with their own Micro SD card for recording. I'm not familiar with your Ddpai M6, but if they are independent of each other I don't see why that wouldn't work.

Hope that helps!
 
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I did exactly that with a Mobius dash cam in our Toyota SUV which has a rear power outlet that is accessory powered on. However I simply used the supplied Mobius USB cable with a USB adapter plugged into the power outlet. You might want to try that first to be sure it works.

Cheers golden99 - thats exactly what I ended up doing.
I tried to extend the HWK another 2 metres by buying some 18AWG wire form eBay and cutting and splicing the wires. I spent may hours on the project but it didn't work. So I've plugged the wire from the Ddpai MiniOne Nighvision camera to the 12v power outlet in the trunk/boot. I've hidden 95% of the wires. I really wanted a hard wire kit so it can monitor the voltage drop and cut off - thereby protecting the car's battery. I worried if I kept the rearcam plugged in all the time it will drain the car's battery.
Does anyone know if that is a strong possibility or does have the camera have its own built in voltage detector and will switch off itself if the car's battery voltage drops too low?
 
Sounds a bit painful @hvaghela but I'm glad to hear that you were able to get it working!

So is the power outlet in your boot "hot" all of the time? If so, your camera would be recording 24/7 and agreed, that isn't what they're designed to do and could have a negative impact on your battery. If the outlet is only supplying power when the ignition is on, the camera will record while you're driving, however the parking mode option would not work otherwise as it requires both switched and constant power.

I've read that trying to extend a HWK's red and yellow wires doesn't work due to the power drop-off over longer leads. IOW, the wiring it comes with is about as long as it can be. Anything longer doesn't supply enough power to the sensitive parts of the system to work properly.

They do make "stand-alone" 12v battery packs like these for dash cams but they're pretty pricey:


Hopefully others will chime in with some additional tips and/or thoughts.

Cheers, and let us know how it goes!
 
You should not extend the 5V USB cable side of a HWK un;less absolutely necessary. But you can usually extend the 12V side successfully provided you use large enough wires and a robust enough power source. 18ga wire is plenty big enough and a 5A or larger car circuit more than enough. Make certain all your connections are good- soldered or barrel-crimped, not just twisted together. Also be sure you've got a good ground as not all bolts are grounded to metal well anymore.

Phil
 
Cheers golden99 - thats exactly what I ended up doing.
I tried to extend the HWK another 2 metres by buying some 18AWG wire form eBay and cutting and splicing the wires. I spent may hours on the project but it didn't work. So I've plugged the wire from the Ddpai MiniOne Nighvision camera to the 12v power outlet in the trunk/boot. I've hidden 95% of the wires. I really wanted a hard wire kit so it can monitor the voltage drop and cut off - thereby protecting the car's battery. I worried if I kept the rearcam plugged in all the time it will drain the car's battery.
Does anyone know if that is a strong possibility or does have the camera have its own built in voltage detector and will switch off itself if the car's battery voltage drops too low?
If you used a HWK with a voltage cutoff, your problem may have been that to start it up, you needed to start the engine so that it sees a high voltage. Until you start the engine it may stay turned off. Extending the 12V side should be simple and work without problem, you don't even need big wires since there will be low current at 12V, you just need to make sure, for safety reasons, that the fuse is rated the same, or lower than the Amps rating of the cable.
 
... your problem may have been that to start it up, you needed to start the engine so that it sees a high voltage. Until you start the engine it may stay turned off.
Cheers for the input. I'd be gutted if this was the issue. No, I don't think I did try the engine once I had connected it all up. However before I extended the HWK, I tested it in the same fuse slots with out switching the engine on and it was fine.

So is the power outlet in your boot "hot" all of the time? If so, your camera would be recording 24/7 and agreed, that isn't what they're designed to do and could have a negative impact on your battery. If the outlet is only supplying power when the ignition is on, the camera will record while you're driving, however the parking mode option would not work otherwise as it requires both switched and constant power.

The boot 12v outlet is on all the time, but I have found the rear camera goes into parking mode after sometime. This is also the case for my front camera which I've have had for >3 years (is hardwired directly to the front 12v outlet (not the fuse box)). I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to be parked for >6 hrs I'll remove the adapter from the boot power outlet, unless I'm in a 'dodgy' neighbourhood - then i'll take my chances.
 
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