How do I hardwire a dashcam into a car (Mazda 2005 Tribute) with zero Always-On fuses?

SpaceMilkA79

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Some months ago I bought a Street Guardian SG9663DCPRO Dual Channel Dash Camera and a Street Guardian SGDCHW SG9663DCPRO Hardwire Kit with Mini ATO Fuse Taps as I have a pizza delivery job and I believed this was a responsible decision.

I figured hardwiring it would be straightforward, all the tutorials and manuals make it look easy and say it takes 15 minutes. However, I have been unable to successfully hardwire the dashcam into my car due to the lack of a fuse for the BATT wire that is always on.

Here is the service manual for my car, the Mazda Tribute 2005 - https://cdn.dealereprocess.net/cdn/servicemanuals/mazda/2005-tribute.pdf

On page 184 displays the fuses.

Of the fuses listed, a significant portion of them straight up do not work, such as sunroof, 4WD, and heated seats fuses. Which would make sense because my car does not have any of those things. But even the fuses displayed as "unused" or are in some way free do not have power in them. Only essential functions seemed to have power, with a couple of exceptions which I put the ACC wire into because they were only on with ignition. However, none of the fuses were always on, and thus I could not find anything to plug the BATT wire into.

I do not have any certifications or training related to cars, so what to do now is beyond my low level of knowledge. I cannot find anything in the manual that came with the dashcam nor any youtube tutorials that explain what to do in my situation.
 
Do you have a key fob where you can lock/unlock the doors with a button press? If you do there has to be at least 1 circuit live all the time for it to work.
 
I tied into the brake circuit as an always on fuse.. but in a different vehicle.
 
Yes I have a key fob and it works all the time.

Is it safe to tie it into the brake circuit? I was under the impression that you do not want to hook up the dash cam to anything essential as it is taking power away from it or else you could have safety issues down the road. I know that whenever I plugged it into a fuse such as for radio power or instrument clusters, both of those things ceased to work.
 
The brake circuit is plenty big to take on the load of your dash cam.. Especially as you will have the circuit fused with a low amp fuse. If.. you had a trailer that brake circuit would be tied into to run the brake lights on the trailer so there should be little worry.
 
How do I know if the brake circuit in my car is Always-On. Also, by tie in, do you mean getting scissors, cutting out the sheath for the brake wire, then cut off the end of the always on fuse tap wire in the dash cam, and take the exposed copper insides from both and wrap them around each other, then cover it with a protective electrical tape?
 
You would test it with a multimeter to see if there is power with everything shut off. Some... higher end vehicles do turn off everything after a period of time.. and in those cases the only way to have a power supply on all the time would be to tap into the main battery.

To connect the "wiring" you purchase an Add-a-Fuse. Remove the brake fuse... insert it into the fuse space that supplies the brake circuit.. replace the fuse you took out.. into the bottom slot of the Add-a-Fuse thing.. and insert a new low amp fuse in the other slot.. then connect your camera to that via the pigtail.

The orientation is semi important.. and a quick check is to see if you have power to the new circuit without the bottom (original) fuse in place. If you have.. good.. if not spin the Add-a-Fuse thing 180 degrees. It.. is a minor point and subject to much argument.

Or.. do a farmer fix and use the scissor routine.. at your own peril of course.. depending on how handy you are with electrical tape. :)

There is a lot of discussion and pictures in the https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/forums/power-magic-pro.122/ forum
 

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The general advice is to not tap into any safety-related circuit; the reason being that you're introducing another possible failure point for that circuit. In theory, a properly installed 'add-a-fuse' with a lower rated fuse for the cam will see the cam fuse blow first but the fuse-tap device itself could become shorted or displaced. And the cam fuse might not blow as it should. I have a friend who bought a super-cheap fuse assortment from the US seller "Harbor Freight", and in actually testing the fuses with his variable power supply discovered that they all blew at around 20A regardless of the color/inscribed rating :eek: So while you're not likely to have problems, it's still good advice to avoid safety-critical circuits when you can ;)

When designing anything, always try to look at every possible way it can be affected by any outside influences too, such as an errant foot, package, vacuum cleaner hose, etc. hitting a fusebox under the dash or in a side-panel. Ditto for running wires, and there look for what might happen should a section of wire become displaced and snagged or pinched as a result. Not hard to do really, just take a moment and think your way through it all because odd and unexpected things do happen occasionally, The better you design something the less likely you are to have problems but more important is that you will also have less of an effect should problems arise :cool:

Phil
 
Fuse 9 isn't the same size as whats on the hardwire kit. I tried fuse 20 and the horn stopped working. Whenever I tried pressing the horn all I heard was a clicking sound inside the car. Also, I don't know what happened, but now the dashcam won't turn on at all. Before it would turn on, but it would turn off when the car was turned off. But now it won't turn on at all?? Did I fry my own camera??
 
Fuse 9 isn't the same size as whats on the hardwire kit. I tried fuse 20 and the horn stopped working. Whenever I tried pressing the horn all I heard was a clicking sound inside the car. Also, I don't know what happened, but now the dashcam won't turn on at all. Before it would turn on, but it would turn off when the car was turned off. But now it won't turn on at all?? Did I fry my own camera??
the fuse taps come in various sizes, need to use one that is appropriate

when you used 20 did you have both fuses in the tap?
 
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