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Old 06-16-2021, 12:48 PM
oldskewel oldskewel is offline
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I have a similar dashcam installed on my 2001 3.0i, high cluster, no rain sensor, fairly stripped of options. I mention all those, since people may find different wiring options up there depending on what they have.

Under (above) the map light console up there, I found a 12V power source that comes on with the key to ACC or ON, and then goes off 16 minutes (the sleep timer does this) after switching to OFF. I hard wired (soldered) that to a 12V-to-USB (5V) adapter, and ran a short regular USB cable from there to the dashcam. Works great.

So the cam comes on when the key goes to ACC or ON, and stays on for 16 minutes after OFF.

But I'll add that in a different car of mine (wife's daily driver, that gets driven very regularly), there was no switched 12V option, just constant 12V. So I did some measurements and calculations and found that the cam is so energy efficient that it should be able to run 2+ weeks before causing a problem with the car's 12V battery. And the cam has a motion sensor mode so it will stop recording when nothing moves, but will wake up every time a car drives by or someone walks down the sidewalk (set to high sensitivity trigger). That works great too, withthe added feature of a security camera when parked.
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2001 X5 3.0i, 203k miles, AT, owned since 2014
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