Hi All,

I bought a Thinkware F800 Pro and I'm having a hard time with the hard wiring in my GLS. The cam works ok using the cigarette lighter plug but that won't give me the option to use the cam in parking mode. I ordered the hardwiring kit with the dashcam and it needs ground, 12v permanent and 12v ignition power. The fuse box next to the glove box doesn't have 12v ignition power, so I'm trying to use the fuse box under the back seat. The hard wiring kit is too short to reach to that fuse box so I used 25 feet of bell wire (that was the best I could find for this purpose at Ace) and using a simple light tester I figured out that no power was getting to the end of that cable. I thought ok, should have gotten the right cable, so I bought a 25 feet 14 gauge all copper wire and same thing... no power at the end of that cable. I thought that maybe I didn't make a good connection with the fuse tap and for testing purpose I cut the cable next to that connection but at that point the light tester lights up. Is a 25 foot extension too long for a 12v circuit? I don't have an amp meter to see if that cable is broken but I would be surprised if 2 cables in a row were damaged. I don't know how many trips I've made to autozone, homedepot and ace, how much time I spent googleing which fuse tap I need, which wire to use and so on... my neighbors must think that I'm an idiot because everytime they go in the garage they see me fiddling with my car :-(

 

First, make sure you use the fuse for the cigarette lighter. It's below the rear seat. I dont remember which one it is but this way you are sure it is powered with ignition (and each time the ignition is ON). For the cable length, it doesnt matter as long as the cable is thick enough, and for a dashcam, that means not really thick. On a 25ft long, 14 AWG cable, the resistance is around .063Ohm... That means that to get .5V of voltage drop on your hardwiring kit, you would need at least 8A to be drawn... A dashcam normally pulls only about 1A max, that mean's you will bet a voltage drop of only .063V with your 25ft cable.
Just get a cheap voltmeter and mesure the voltage at the end of your 25ft cable when hardwired. If you dont have any, then something is wrong with the way you hardwired it, or the cable is broken. The cable can easily be checked on his own with the voltmeter though, just put it in Ohmmeter mode.

 

Thanks a lot for the advice! I bought a voltmeter and figured out what the issue is. I've extended the 2 wires for permanent and ignition power to the fusebox under the backseat and I used the metal housing from the fuse box next to the glovebox for ground. That grounding doesn't work. Unless I find another spot to connect the ground cable, I'll have to run a wire to the rear fuse box just for that. I didn't think there would be an issue using that metal for ground because it works when I tap the fuses next to the glovebox.

 

Update: Every time I thought that I'm close to be done with the installation another thing comes up. I couldn't find another car frame/ground point to connect to, so I decided to add a third wire going to the fuse box under the rear seat. I soldered the battery+ and acc+ cable extensions on, plugged the fuse tabs in and ran a ground cable from the front to the back... and the dashcam still didn't turn on. I used the voltmeter and it showed that the battery+ cable had 12 volts but the acc+ had 38 volts??? I measured at the rear fuse box directly and same thing and more and more fuses had that elevated voltage. I got real nervous, disconnected everything and turned on the engine to check if everything is fine but it wasn't, the check engine light came on. I've read before that some cars are sensitive and throw error codes when you do stuff to the electronics but I was getting worried that I may have fried something. I turned the engine off and on again, drove it, locked it, unlocked it, turned it on again and finally the check engine light went away. At this point I've spent about $600 on the dashcam, larger usb card, solder gun, voltmeter, cables and connectors plus my last 2 weekends dealing with this. I could spend another $200 or so and have a professional install it but the dashcam is actually not that great. According to reviews it's the best on the market but the app crashes every time I use it and the video footage is good enough to see what's going on but if I really needed to get that license plate number chances would be 50/50 that it's readable from the footage that I've captured so far. I don't give up easily but this dashcam is not worth the hassle... it's going back to amazon.

 

Hey Strafzettel,

Sorry to hear youre having so much difficulty with the hardwire install.....The complexity has actually put me off installing one in the GL.

Can I ask why you ended up choosing the thinkware? I never came across it before reading your post; but I always had heard great things about the blackvue 7/650 line with their app and video quality and power magic pro.
If you're returning your thinkware, maybe that may be something to look into?

I hardwired a dash cam into the vw with this kit which works perfectly for my use as its out of sight.
I had trouble finding the fuse diagrams as you did.....it seems German carmakers don't like sharing them.

Also, I looked at the Roav Pro from Anker, it has all the features you might like at a good price point and it has a stable app.
Hope it helps!

and yes, I've been in bethesda (i mean dc) for a little while now. Its probably changed a lot from when you lived here!

 

Thank you for the suggestions but I'm done with dashcams for now. I chose the Thinkware F800 Pro because it has HD front and rear vs HD front and 720p rear, it's smaller than the dashcams with screen, it takes a 128GB memory card and I was really excited about the parking mode. I'm always worried about getting my car scratched and I thought if it happens and it's on video, there is a chance that I can go after that person. I sold my 2014 ML after 3 years with zero bumper scratches because I really take care of my things, especially my cars.

I've installed an after market backup camera in my ML all by myself and it worked fine, so I didn't expect such a hassle with the dashcam in the GLS.

It's been 7 seven years since I left Bethesda. You reminded me of this photo, that's how I got my Camry (and other stuff) from Bethesda to Chicago

 

Sorry to hear about all the hassle as well. The 38V is weird, I know some cars were supposed to get a 42V network at some points, but never saw one in real life, and that would be a real surprise for me if the GLS was one of them! I think the issue was something else, and the fact that more and more fuses were reading so high probably corroborates it. Maybe a ground issue again?
For the faults, it's the way the OBDII system works. If for example a power consumer is pulling more power than a predetermined threshold, then it can throw a fault code. But generally, it will be a pending code that will go away by itself if the fault doesnt reoccur in I dont know how many occasions (either starts, minutes, activations, etc, depending on the hardware). It's probably what happened with your car. At some point it must have detected a short circuit or an open circuit, threw the code as pending, then removed it when the fault did not reproduce.
BTW, another way of hardwiring the dashcam is via the OBDII plug. It provides 12V ACC as well in most occasions (I would need to check for Mercedes to be sure, but that how I hard wired the dashcams in all our Toyota Hiluxes at work). You can simply push the wires inside the holes, but for a cleaner install you can either buy some small pins or purchase the plastic OBDII connector with the proper pins inside.

 

If you don’t mind me asking which fuses did you hardwire to? I’m assuming yours is under the back seat fusebox. I just purchased a blackview and wanted to hardwire it in the vehicle.

 

You shouldn't ask me, my install wasn't successful. I returned the dash cam