How to hard wire dash cam to stay on when taco is off?

Hi,

hoping to get your input. Just installed a Viofo A119 dash cam and bought the Viofo hk3 ACC hardwire kit for it. Hooked it up and it powers on when I start the truck (ignition) but I don’t believe it stays on when it’s the truck is off. I believe it doesn’t stay on because the red light on the camera turns off. I also enabled the parking mode. I plugged the red wire (power) with (2) 15 amps to the USB fuse and the yellow (ACC) to the bottom left empty slot with (2) 20 amp fuses. Not sure if I’m missing something. Would appreciate the help. The more simple terms the better. Thank you!!

 

Both locations you have chosen are IGN source not always on (bat). Identify the sliding roof fuse. That one is always ON (bat).

 

Worked thanks!

 

Just a word of advice, consider getting a small dedicated battery pack for your dash cam. Otherwise it may drain your battery if you have motion sensing on all night and don't drive your car for a couple days.

 

What he said. Get a separate power source that you can switch to

 

From a time I ran an electric lawnmower (renting a house, had to mow, wanted something more expendable) I have a Kobalt 40V Max 4.0 Ah battery. Runs the mower for 40 minutes, so a dashcam can run for days. Not saying it is the prime solution, buy for $130 of the battery if you can get the charger it would run my dashcam on battery forever, if I wanted to wire a DC adapter. About 2 lbs, 6.5 in X 4.5 in X 2 in.

Just saying there are powerful options and since the truck already weighs 5600 lbs bare-bones ...

 

There is where I have mine hooked up.

Did you also ground the ground wire?

 

An over the top solution to this problem is a Blue Sea Systems M-LVD low voltage disconnect setup between the battery and the aux fuse panel where the dash cam is plugged in. The downside is that the camera will not know that the ignition has been turned off and it will stay in constant recording. I have pics of my setup in the electrical section of my build thread linked in my sig.

 

I have not tried it, but my dashcam has a "constant monitor" mode that I think is triggered by activity but is not always recording so "loop over-record" may not occur. Something to verify about any dashcam.

 

I just run my dash cam to the OBD port using a connector cable with a switch that toggles between always on and only on when the truck is powered on, since the OBD port always has constant power. This lets me set to always on when parking in public but set it to off when parking at home, the cable also has a voltage cutoff sensor that stops it from drawing so much power it stops the truck from starting - I deliberately left it on for a full week while using my work truck and it still started up fine afterwards.

 

Any info or links to this?

 

The kit he’s using has a selectable low voltage cutoff to avoid that problem.

 

Definitely an important consideration for sure. When my truck is parked at home all week it's in view of the cameras at the door and above the driveway, so running the camera is only when it's parked elsewhere for shorter periods of time. The OBD connector switch I use also has a voltage cutoff that turns the camera off below a certain level so the truck can still start - unintentionally tested several times when I forgot to turn the camera off after coming back late at night and the truck still started close to a week later despite having left the camera switch on.

Similar design to this one from the same generic brand, just make sure the connector power port matches whatever your dash cam uses. I found better deals on ebay than Amazon. Despite being cheap it has voltage cutoff so the camera won't kill the started battery, powers on automatically when the truck starts and stays on for ~5min after turning off, so the switch only controls power behavior when parked at length.

REARMASTER Universal OBD Power Cable for Dash Camera,24 Hours Surveillance/Acc Mode with Switch Button(USB-C Port)

https://www.amazon.com/REARMASTER-U...4557496&mcid=5d62b631bfe0370e946538dcb8cfa244

 

Hey venezian, are you saying this location will stay on without the key?

 

Yes

 

My dash cam has a parking mode that's supposed to turn off after a couple minutes of inactivity. Instead, it just ran all night and destroyed my battery.

*Edit*

Forgot to mention, it came with a low voltage hookup too. That obviously didn't work either. LOL