Ignition Switched fuse or wire in the rear back cargo area?

[DriverX]

Hi fellow X enthusiasts,

I'm going to wire up a rear "dash" cam. Just too many close calls recently with pure idiots on the road. I am stuck trying to find an ignition-switched source in the rear anywhere.

Any ideas?

I can't find a nice cheap voltage cutoff 12v to 5v USB that will cutoff the voltage at what I want (more than 12.4V). Plus it would be a lot of uneventful recording on the SD card while the car is parked in the garage. I guess I need it more for idiots on the road than idiots in the car parks, so not too interested in parking monitoring at the moment.

I've checked all the fuses, as well as any floating harness stuffed in either of the rear side compartments and can't find any ignition-switched ones. Everything I have found pulls 12v with the car off (even after the 15-20 minute cooldown on the canbus system).

Any help appreciated,

Thank you!

[andrewwynn]

The only thing I can think of is: run it from the running lights. I don't have drl so I will drive with parking lights on. If you do the same you'll get video whenever you have parking lights on.


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[Overboost]

Before I decided to run my rear camera power from my AVIN headunit, I had planned on grabbing power from the rear fuse panel. If you want KL 15 power you can tap into the rear defroster relay pin 4/ 7.5A fused F34 or if you want KL R 12V you can tap into the unloader relay pin 8/ 5A fused F7.

[deepblonde]

Originally Posted by Overboost

Before I decided to run my rear camera power from my AVIN headunit, I had planned on grabbing power from the rear fuse panel. If you want KL 15 power you can tap into the rear defroster relay pin 4/ 7.5A fused F34 or if you want KL R 12V you can tap into the unloader relay pin 8/ 5A fused F7.

KL is the abbreviation for 'klemme' which is the German term for connector / connection.

KL15 is ignition switch position #2 (on)
KL30 is battery positive, hot at all times
KL31 is battery negative, connected all the time
KL50 is ignition position #3 (start)
KLR means ignition switch position #1 (accessory)


Is the above correct?

[Overboost]

Yes sir. KL R will be powered key position 1 and 2

[andrewwynn]

Xoutpost doing what it does best.


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[DriverX]

Thanks to the wonderful help above, I found a good wire to use. In the rear panel, looking from left to right, I had this sequence of relays: empty-green-green-blue-empty in terms of relays. The 2nd from left green relay had the top middle pin activate 12v at key position 1. At key position 2, the leftmost (empty) relay plug had the top middle active 12v, the middle green relay had the right middle active 12v, and the rightmost green relay had the top middle active 12v. The blue and empty relay positions on the right side had no active 12v at any key position (well I mean they had a constant 12v feed but nothing that turned on with the key moving).

If anyone was interested, I used the leftmost position as it did not have a relay plugged in, and tapped the top middle wire. This feeds my 12v>5v USB converter well, and then the dash cam feeds of the USB plug. Ironically enough, not long after installing this, a drunk driver almost ran us off a cliff coming around a corner, and we got the footage, but the rear window just had so much dust on it that we couldn't make out the license plate number. Being a general failure at life, he did not have a front bumper (likely from a prior drunken incident) let alone a front license plate that would have been captured on our front camera.

Thank you everyone for all your help.

[andrewwynn]

That is great feedback. im thinking of adding rear view cameras in our X5. Was going to power from backup light but think it would be helpful to have always live. I would put the display at the top of the rear window so you can see in the rear view mirror.

On my car I installed a frensel lens there to see behind me for parking and it's very natural to look there.

[DriverX]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

That is great feedback. im thinking of adding rear view cameras in our X5. Was going to power from backup light but think it would be helpful to have always live. I would put the display at the top of the rear window so you can see in the rear view mirror.

On my car I installed a frensel lens there to see behind me for parking and it's very natural to look there.

Hello, do you mean you are putting in a back-up camera or a dash cam (constantly recording camera) in the rear?

We have both. Used an old 70mai as the rear dash cam, and have a no-name camera above the license plate that connects to our Eonon head unit. Not the best but works ok. We (somehow) wired it via the PDC, so that it comes on when in reverse, but only turns off when driving >5mph or whatever the PDC is set to. Can also manually turn it on and off at low speeds by pressing the PDC button. I forget exactly how I wired it up, I think there is some kind of trigger wire that comes with the camera and that is what gets spliced into the PDC wire, and the camera gets its normal 12v from the rear fuse box.

We use the new 70mai Pro up front now. Both have worked well for us, not amazing but pretty good considering the price.

[andrewwynn]

I'm planning to have a camera facing rearward that is always on but with the display on the rear hatch at the top facing forward.

I have a frensel lens in that position on my car that gives me about 160° view out the back. I can see the ground about 3' behind the car very helpful for parallel parking and also. Helpful for putting the car in lane center as I can see the lane marking in the lens.

With an appropriate wide angle camera facing downward it will do the same thing but with brighter view I can see always. At night I can use night mode on the rearview mirror to dim the display brightness as well as with any luck find a display that fine with ambient light.


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