+1. A dash cam uses negligible load compared to what the battery can supply.

 

It's not so much the battery load as the memory (camera's and mine!).

 

I haven't had the cam long but I have already forgotten to switch it on at the start of a drive.  If I were to forget to switch it off the memory would be full by the next morning so a switched feed suits me.

It's not so much the battery load as the memory (camera's and mine!).

I haven't had the cam long but I have already forgotten to switch it on at the start of a drive. If I were to forget to switch it off the memory would be full by the next morning so a switched feed suits me.

Dash cams are supposed to auto-loop the memory so you never have to clear it...

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Dash cams are supposed to auto-loop the memory so you never have to clear it...

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Yeah there is a setting for looping but it seems to just set a max timer for each clip then immediately start a new one so you end up with multiple clips for the same journey (if that makes sense).  I haven't filled the chip yet so not sure what it will do.  

 

Even so, I'm happy to have it power up with the ignition but would prefer the 12V sockets to stay live. I am hoping that I can tap into the switched feed (fuse lower position) with a spade terminal to power the cam.

It has to make lots of smaller clips so it can delete the oldest one when full without interrupting the realtime recording. Having a smaller number of massive clips wouldn't allow the looping to be so efficient. It wouldn't bother me to have multiple clips per journey, Mac/PC software is perfectly happy to play more than one clip in a row seamlessly or join them as a single file should I want to publish any given moment that happened to go over a clip boundary.

They way you have it now should/when you fill the card it will stop recording.

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That's 2 things I've learned today.  Cheers Jose

That's 2 things I've learned today. Cheers Jose

Happy to help

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Yeah there is a setting for looping but it seems to just set a max timer for each clip then immediately start a new one so you end up with multiple clips for the same journey (if that makes sense).  I haven't filled the chip yet so not sure what it will do.  

 

Even so, I'm happy to have it power up with the ignition but would prefer the 12V sockets to stay live. I am hoping that I can tap into the switched feed (fuse lower position) with a spade terminal to power the cam.

 

Smeg, this link is the way I fitted my Dash Cam and other switched power feeds to my Golf - if you only want to power a single dash cam then you could run the power feed to the left and down inside the screen trim directly into the fuse box and use the same fuse I did.

 

http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=261543.0

 

I think there is a  post somewhere showing how someone did this but they did use the same switched fuse.

 

This approach still leaves you with the option of having your standard sockets switched or not via moving the fuse

Interesting.  I'll try pulling mine out later and see.  I don't suppose you have a picture of the Leon fuse box, by any chance?

 

 

This is a Golf fuse box. It's not the red circled fuse but the yellow one beneath. Look at its position; you can move it up to the same position as the green 30 amp beside it. This is not my car and I haven't tried it, just what I've read on the Seat forum. YMMV!

 

 

It occurred to me at the weekend that I never replied to this one - on the O3 (well, mine at least) there is no switched live wire so you can't move the accessory fuse to the lower position as per the Leon and Golf (pic above - not the circled fuse the vertical yellow directly beneath it).  That's a real shame as 1 extra wire would have helped a lot.  Ho hum!

Edited 9 February, 201511 yr by Smeghead

Dash cams are supposed to auto-loop the memory so you never have to clear it...

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This is true-at least for my Blackvue in the default setting but may be different across cameras so its always best to check. Don't forget to take the card out and format it every now and again to prevent it getting corrupted which can then lead the dashcam to stop recording.