I was always convinced that dashcam should be hard wired in the car and you don't need to disconnect it every time you go home. But in some places in the world you can't just leave dashcam in your car without risking to get it stolen by somebody break in your car. So i wanted to find a camera that i can embed in the car plastic either to hide completely, or make it look as a part of the car electronics.
Most of the dashcams on the market have the camera module hard soldered to it's mainboard, but when i saw that camera on A119 rotates, i understood that it is connected through a cable, so can be detached from the block (Thanks Gibson99 for posting pictures of inside the camera in his blog). I made the following changes to construction:
1) replaced the cable that connects camera to mainboard with a longer one (15cm). 28pin cable is needed
2) i cut a hole in car plastic and mounted the camera deeper into it
(unfortunately it is not visible on pictures)
3) as the camera was no longer installed in the Dashcam case, the case size could be reduced, so i cut it a half.
4) as i removed the back cover of the device, which holds connector to GPS, i still needed to connect it. after several different experiments i decided to solder 4 wires from GPS connector directly to main board. I could not solder to the original connector, because it is too small, but with help of multimeter i found 4 spots on the main board that are linked to it - 2 spots on one side of the board 2 spots on the other side.
Here are some pictures. I'm sorry for the quality of work, i don't have proper tools and proper hands, but it is ok for me.
PS you may ask why camera is white - this was an attempt to paint it in the color of car plastic, but it turned bright when drying.
Most of the dashcams on the market have the camera module hard soldered to it's mainboard, but when i saw that camera on A119 rotates, i understood that it is connected through a cable, so can be detached from the block (Thanks Gibson99 for posting pictures of inside the camera in his blog). I made the following changes to construction:
1) replaced the cable that connects camera to mainboard with a longer one (15cm). 28pin cable is needed
2) i cut a hole in car plastic and mounted the camera deeper into it
(unfortunately it is not visible on pictures)
3) as the camera was no longer installed in the Dashcam case, the case size could be reduced, so i cut it a half.
4) as i removed the back cover of the device, which holds connector to GPS, i still needed to connect it. after several different experiments i decided to solder 4 wires from GPS connector directly to main board. I could not solder to the original connector, because it is too small, but with help of multimeter i found 4 spots on the main board that are linked to it - 2 spots on one side of the board 2 spots on the other side.
Here are some pictures. I'm sorry for the quality of work, i don't have proper tools and proper hands, but it is ok for me.
PS you may ask why camera is white - this was an attempt to paint it in the color of car plastic, but it turned bright when drying.
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