M6 and dash cam wires routing

M6 and dash cam wires routing

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Discussion

Exige77

Original Poster:

6,518 posts

192 months

Friday 13th May 2016
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Anybody fitted a dash cam to their F13 M6 ?

How did you route the cable to the nearest power.

I would like to hard wire mine in.

Is it a job for the professionals or can it be done by a DIYer ?

39sl

168 posts

125 months

Friday 13th May 2016
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When I had mine, I installed the camera to the passenger side of the rear view mirror and pushed the cable between the roof lining and windscreen, down the pillar and round the bottom of the dash and plugged it into the cigarette lighter in the storage under the armrest.
Hope that makes sense....worked really well for me smile

Cheers
Steve

Dan_M5

615 posts

144 months

Friday 13th May 2016
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I used the rear lighter for power as mone hasn't got the 12v point in the passenger well

Lostprophet

2,549 posts

170 months

Thursday 19th May 2016
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What cameras are you guys using? Is there any decent devices out there?

Exige77

Original Poster:

6,518 posts

192 months

Thursday 19th May 2016
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Nextbase 512G

Seems to be getting the best reviews at the moment.

Perfect for an M car

marting

668 posts

175 months

Thursday 19th May 2016
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The latest review by techmoan looks decent:
http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/5/17/a-great-sma...

ollie plymsoles

216 posts

100 months

Thursday 19th May 2016
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We have the roadhawk dc-2 (i think) and have been very pleased with it for over a year.
Ours is wired in as described above, pushed above the headlining, down the pillar and routed round to the power socket under the glovebox.
This is in a M3 so the M6 might be a little different.

msdes123

164 posts

141 months

Saturday 21st May 2016
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I literally just had bmws own "advanced eye" front and rear dash cam installed on my M6GCP at my local main dealer after nearly getting ran off the road by an idiot white van man coming the other way down a country lane.

The price was £577 included fitting. It must have been a fairly complex job getting all the panels off and on again because it took them two days however I'm very pleased with the final result, all the wires neatly tucked out of site and the unit itself is fairly unobtrusive and seems to do what it says on the box without any fuss or fan fair. I particularly like the bright blue LEDs on both cameras which sort of look like an extra alarm security light from a distance and start flashing if you get close and set off the motion pick up parked recording function.

The thought of messing around myself with stripping back all the roof panels on such a car....no way especially when BMW finance still own half the car!

While car was in I got a speculative quote on the M6 sports performance exhaust with carbon silencers which is on their website and seems to be made by akrapovic. Quote was £6500. I politely declined.


RichardM5

1,741 posts

137 months

Saturday 21st May 2016
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msdes123 said:
I literally just had bmws own "advanced eye" front and rear dash cam installed on my M6GCP at my local main dealer after nearly getting ran off the road by an idiot white van man coming the other way down a country lane.

The price was £577 included fitting. It must have been a fairly complex job getting all the panels off and on again because it took them two days however I'm very pleased with the final result, all the wires neatly tucked out of site and the unit itself is fairly unobtrusive and seems to do what it says on the box without any fuss or fan fair. I particularly like the bright blue LEDs on both cameras which sort of look like an extra alarm security light from a distance and start flashing if you get close and set off the motion pick up parked recording function.

The thought of messing around myself with stripping back all the roof panels on such a car....no way especially when BMW finance still own half the car!

While car was in I got a speculative quote on the M6 sports performance exhaust with carbon silencers which is on their website and seems to be made by akrapovic. Quote was £6500. I politely declined.
Do you have some pictures of both front and rear cameras? I've looked at this but thought it looked rather chunky.

sunnydude

907 posts

128 months

Monday 23rd May 2016
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Does the advanced eye record your speed as well?

msdes123

164 posts

141 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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In answer to the queries; yes the front camera is somewhat chunky but in fact the photos make it seem somewhat more obtrusive than it is in practice. From my driving position it just sort of blends in to the peripheral of your vision hidden behind the rear view mirror to a certain extent. I dont really notice it to be honest. The rear window camera is tiny.

I dont believe it records speed. you can see the data on the screen as shown in one of the photos; date/time/GPS position and file name. The image appears on the screen for the first 60 sec after starting the car and then the screen goes into a sort of black stand by mode which you wake up again by touching it again. It continues to record in the background whilst the screen in blank. You can change this standby time in the settings or switch it off completely I think.

The device records 90 min of video recording in 1 minute length individual files. Once it reaches the 90 minutes it loops back and starts overwriting the oldest file again.A 32 GB micro SD card is provided along with a USB adaptor for taking the card out and transferring images to your PC, your then supposed to download a specific image viewing programme to look at the files, all explained in the manual. The memory has separate permanent folders; if you want to save a particular clip before it is overwritten you have to manually move it to one of these folders. Equally the device detects excess movement (you can vary the sensitivity) and automatically puts clips taken at such times into the permanent store folder (in practice this occurs when going over speed bumps or potholes too fast but I presume the same would happen in a collision). Also when the car is parked it has a motion detected standby function that switches it on so in theory if someone hits your car in the car park and drives off it will have captured this event and i believe it can store the data from so many seconds before the event happened. In the settings you can toggle between recording front, rear or both cameras and whether voice/sound is also recorded or just picture is recorded.

Hope that helps.

Edited by msdes123 on Tuesday 24th May 08:57

RichardM5

1,741 posts

137 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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Thanks very much for the info.

I'd rather have something that was next to invisible, but this does seem to have pretty good functionality.

marting

668 posts

175 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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RichardM5 said:
Thanks very much for the info.

I'd rather have something that was next to invisible, but this does seem to have pretty good functionality.
I agree - I'm surprised the BMW solution doesn't replace the rear view mirror or something similar.

RichardM5

1,741 posts

137 months

Tuesday 24th May 2016
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marting said:
I agree - I'm surprised the BMW solution doesn't replace the rear view mirror or something similar.
Ideally I'd like something that would use the existing camera (or an upgrade to the existing camera) that's used for speed limit display etc for the front, something discrete in a C pillar or on in the headliner for the rear and display images on the main monitor with control via iDrive. It could use the existing on board storage with option to download onto a USB stick.

Somehow I feel such a system will never exist!