Power to rear camera

[DonnyD]

I have been thinking of installing my first dash cam and I am probably over-thinking the whole thing, but have a new idea. Any experience with installing 2 cams? One in the front and one in the rear. Each would be a 2 channel with the "rear" cameras mounted on the side. I have a small stationary window just aft of the front windshield for the two "rear" cameras. I think this might work, but not sure how to wire the cam that attaches to the rear windshield. It would be ideal to have parking mode for both windshields & side cams, but not sure how two hardwire kits would work.

 

[kamkar]

Installing 2 single cameras are nothing new, what we addicts did before multi channel systems became possible, some also still do it for redundancy reasons, the only downside is you have to go to 2 cameras to get footage.
What i did as i found out the hard way that powering a camera from the front with a 16 feet long USB cable was no good, i then tapped into a 30 A fuse in my car and put one of those 3 way 12 V socket adapters under my rear seat ( drawing the GND from one of the bolts that hold the rear seat in place )

In 2 channel systems the rear camera are powered with the one wire from the front camera that also send footage to the memory card in the front camera, so nothing else is needed here.

Using 2 dual systems to get a 4 way system using the smaller rear cameras for side cameras are nothing new, this is quite doable, only you need to extend 12 V to the rear camera as extending the 5 V USB wire are not a good idea.
If you hardwire, you can graft into the same 2 fuse taps you would need if it is a 3 wire hardwire kit, and do that with both systems so you will not need to tap into 4 fuses ( 2 for each system )
I have run up to 8 cameras on such a setup with just a 5 A fuse for the fuse tap side of things. ( tapped into 10 A fuses )

As i change often i have the 2 fuse taps and the GND come to a wire screw terminal so i can easy remove or add more cameras without having to go to the hard to reach fuse box in my car.
While hard wire kits do come with a not too small 12 V wires, it would probably be too short to reach out back even of a almost micro car like mine, but the 12 V wires you can extend as much as you like.

So in my case, kneel at driver side door, reach in, grab screw terminals, remove or add additional wires, and BAM in less than 5 minutes i am ready to go at least in that aspect of the matter.

As i recall @Vortex Radar have been running systems like that.

Me personally i rean a regular front / rear system and then a dual remote system for side cameras, which was nice CUZ the K2S system had extremely small camera units, like half the size of most rear cameras.

K2S received

And what a nice looking little camera it is, also nothing to blame on packaging though there was no protective film on cameras or the LCD, but it is also a pre - production sample i have received. And it have put me in a damn dilemma, it is - 3 degrees outside and snow in the forecast for the...

dashcamtalk.com

The down side was this is 2 different systems with different boot times, so the footage was not in sync, but you would get that if you have 2 similar systems with similar settings.

Sadly there are not many dual remote systems on the market, these dont seem to be popular in most markets.

I put cameras on fixed glass in rear door, routed wire down thru door and rubber grommet to B pillar.

Ended up with this kind of 360 coverage.

 

[DT MI]

...It would be ideal to have parking mode for both windshields & side cams,...

In addition to everything @kamkar mentioned keep in mind that having 2 systems operating in parking mode will use twice the power and cut in half the recording time. Not that this makes it impossible, just a limiting factor you need to consider.

 

[kamkar]

Indeed, if you have hopes for running parking guard for many hours a day, something will probably need to be done in regard to available power.
For using the car battery ( lead / acid ) it is not recommended to use a cut off value lower than 12.2 Volts, which is regarded as a 50 % depleted battery, that way you should have power to start the car again, also after you have been skiing all day.

Lower cut off value will eat into battery life, but they will often go as low as 11.8 volts, which will also start your not frozen motor i recon, but on a cold winter day it might well be a issue.

you can install a larger car battery, you can wire up a #2 battery too if you have the room for it, this could maybe be a AGM type battery which will work with lower cut off values, but you then need to have a battery isolater so when you use the #2 battery you do not also use the main car battery.

Second you have dedicated dashcam power packs, but these are not cheap, and generally will not provide day long coverage.

Though ! Thinkware and Balckvue models can be had with radar in them, this feature greatly extend the time parking guard will be active.


Also of course what power you use while parked you have to recharge by driving or putting a charger on the battery, so you can not do parking guard for 23.5 hours a day and only drive 30 minutes,,,,,, this two things need to be in harmony.

Thankfully a battery charge much much faster than a dashcam will discharge it, so its not like you have to drive for 4 hours when you have been parked for 4 hours.