I have just fitted two of these over the weekend and thought I would offer some advice for anyone else going with this camera and probably manufacturer so you don't waste a day like I did.

 

Before you even attempt to fit the dash cam charge it for 12 hours, the manual states 4 hours but one it was it hadn't fully charged in this time. If you don't fully charge it you will encounter problems when installing. 

 

I had bought the hardwire kit at £14.95 from Maplins, which was only slightly more than Amazon. The Kit has fuse piggy backs for standard and mini bladed fuses. Finding a fuse from a switched live isn't too difficult ( I used 48- mini but 16 or 42 - standard will work too) but this is where I ran into problems. Due to the Dashcam battery not being charged when it was connected to the hard wire kit it would sometimes come on with the ignition others times it wouldn't. Similar would happen when switching the ignition off. Sometimes it would switch off offer times it wouldn't but then when turning the ignition on it wouldn't start either and when it did start up it would go through the initial setup screens. It was truly erratic behaviour that had me checking the fuse I had connected to and trying others, finding alternate earths, updating the firmware on the Dashcam.

Only after the Dashcam was fully charged did it start to work correctly turning on with the ignition and automatically recording. Turn the ignition off and it carries on recording for 2 minutes before switching off again. The recordings are really good both visual and audio. When setting up the angle of camera you want it slightly down to avoid sun glare.

The cable was run (on a FL Octavia) from he fuse box on the drivers side, up the A Pillar and under the head lining to left of the rear view mirror. This still left around 2 ft of spare cable. Removing the A pillar trim just required a firm yank outwards from the top. Dropping a stiff wire down into the dash to the fuse box from where you removed the A pillar trim. Use a stiff wire so you can bend it in the direction you want it to go. Once the wire is in the fuse box area tape the Mini USB connector to the stiff wire ensuring it is tight and no sharp edges to get snagged and pull you wire back up gently. I used bicycle tyre levers to gently lift the head lining away so that I could push the wire into place with the USB connection exiting in the required place. Once all was in place realign the clips on the A pillar trim and and refit from the bottom up. Zip tie the excess cable and fit the fuse box cover.

 

Having solved the problem with fitting it to my Octavia first and taking the best part of a day mainly scratching my head the second camera was much quicker. Fitted to the wifes BMW which is extremely well built compared to the Skoda using many more fixings with very tight tolerances it only took an hour to install from start to finish.

 

Admin, if this isn't in the right area please move. 

 

Good write up but I didn't charge mine at all when I got it and never encountered any of the not turning on or off problems

My only glitch I ran into was should I zoom the camera in a few clicks or not

Anybody else zoomed in or left it as is

Also I didntt turn my night vision on seems to work ok in the dark with lights on

I usually press the button to make the screen come one for 10 secs just to check occasionally

When you do this, what precautions should be adopted to ensure you do not trigger any error codes? Should I disconnect the battery or just work with the ignition switched off?

Just gave the ignition switched off.

Cward - many thanks.