**Installing a Dash Camera: A Step-by-Step Guide**

When it comes to installing a dash camera in your vehicle, many people may feel overwhelmed by the process. However, with the right tools and knowledge, anyone can successfully install a dash camera and enjoy the benefits of having this technology in their car.

**Sanding the Trim Pieces**

The first step in installing a dash camera is to sand down any plastic trim pieces that need to be removed. This involves using 180-grit sandpaper and wrapping it around a small screwdriver to create a rough surface for the trim piece to adhere to. The goal of this process is to smooth out any sharp edges or burrs that may exist on the trim piece, making it easier to install and ensuring that there are no points of irritation when working with the camera.

**Inspecting the Trim Piece**

Once the trim pieces have been sanded down, it's essential to inspect them for any remaining sharp edges or points. This is a critical step in ensuring that the installation process goes smoothly and without incident. By taking the time to carefully feel around the cutout and make sure there are no sharp edges, you can avoid accidents and ensure that the camera is installed correctly.

**Installing the Trim Pieces**

With the trim pieces inspected and ready for installation, it's time to put everything back together. The next step involves reinstalling the plastic pieces, including the weather stripping, which is crucial in preventing water leaks into the headliner. By carefully snapping these pieces into place, you can ensure a watertight seal that will last throughout the lifespan of your car.

**Testing the Installation**

Before finishing up the installation, it's essential to test everything out to make sure that everything is working properly. This involves starting up the car and checking the camera to ensure that it's functioning correctly. By testing the installation in this way, you can avoid any potential issues down the road and ensure that your dash camera is installed correctly.

**Finishing Touches**

Once the installation has been tested, it's time to put the finishing touches on everything. This involves reinstalling all of the plastic pieces, including the grommet, which helps prevent water leaks from entering the headliner. By carefully snapping these pieces into place and ensuring that they're securely fastened, you can create a seamless installation that looks like new.

**Powering the Dash Camera**

In addition to installing the dash camera itself, it's also essential to consider how you'll power it. There are several options available, including hardwire kits, cigarette lighter adapters, and OBD2 adapters. By choosing the right method for your vehicle, you can ensure that your dash camera has a reliable source of power.

**Using the Hardwire Kit**

One popular option for powering a dash camera is to use a hardwire kit. These kits typically involve running a wire from the battery to the dash camera and securing it in place using adhesive or clips. By choosing this method, you can create a seamless installation that looks like new and provides a reliable source of power.

**Using the OBD2 Adapter**

Another option for powering a dash camera is to use an OBD2 adapter. These adapters plug directly into the OBD2 port located underneath the dashboard and provide a convenient source of power for your dash camera. By choosing this method, you can create a simple installation that looks like new.

**Conclusion**

Installing a dash camera in your vehicle can seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools and knowledge, anyone can successfully install one. By following these steps and taking the time to carefully inspect and test everything, you can ensure a seamless installation that provides a reliable source of power for your dashboard camera.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Chris fix here and today I'm going to show you how to quickly and properly wire a dash cam in your car or in your truck and in this case we're going to be wiring two different Dash camers we have an inexpensive one that is pretty basic and easy to install then we have a more expensive one that has a front dash cam it has a cabin camera and a rear cam allinone a lot more wires but still not too difficult to install I'll show you all that and the other reason why I want to install two dash cameras is because I'm going to show you how to install it using the cigarette lighter adapter that comes with basically every dash camera on the market or if you want here's a hardwire kit that you would have to buy separately and I'm going to show you how to install that as well now the whole point of doing all of this is to make sure whichever dash camera you buy whichever vehicle you have whichever wiring kit you have you'll be able to install it in your vehicle because dash cameras are very helpful these things could save you big time for example here's subscriber Tad cruising along in his Hummer H1 when a driver did not yield and pulled out into his Lane now the other guy's insurance company tried to get Tad partially at fault but because he had dash camera foot AG he quickly proved otherwise and the other driver was found completely at fault another subscriber Kevin was driving when somebody pulled into his Lane the guy in the silver car tried to say Kevin was speeding and swerved into his Lane but the dash camera footage again showed Kevin was not speeding he had the green light and he maintained his Lane so he was not at fault now besides helping yourself a dash Cammer could be used to help someone else for example subscriber George captured this accident and he proceeded by giving this footage to the pickup driver which helped clear him of any fault and I could only imagine how appreciative that pickup driver was just imagine if it was you now besides while driving when you go and park the car if you're using a hardwire kit it could go into parking mode subscriber Caesar had his camera set to g sensor in parking mode so if the car moves at all like if somebody hits it it starts recording and from that he was able to easily get this license plate number from this truck that hit him while he was parked and he wasn't even around to see this another subscriber Oscar sets his parking mode to motion detection and then he backs his car in so it acts almost like a security camera at his house so he was able to see this scum testing car doors to see if they're open and report it to the police and finally not only do dash cameras protect you from the bad stuff but they also capture some pretty incredible moments subscriber Anthony got this cool shot of a meteor shooting across the sky and subscriber Ethan got this crazy near Miss of a cyclist and two cars with this Red Light Runner so I think you get the idea dash cameras could save you big time and I'd hate for something to happen to you and you don't have one installed so that's exactly why I'm making this video let's go and install a dash camera now now just to be clear even though I've used and installed tons of different dash cameras this is not a review video you could buy whatever dash camera you want I'm going to teach you how to install it if you want some good review videos both Linus Tech tips and the hookup does an amazing job at comparing dash cameras and I'll link those videos in the description for your research and based off of those videos and my own past experiences we're going to be installing these van true dash cameras and they do come with everything you need to completely install them but I do have some extras such as this hardwire kit which gives you a a nice clean install also if you have side curtain airbags these little clips that hold the wires in are very important I'll show you that and then we're also going to be adding a polarized lens which helps reduce glare so here's what the dash cam looks like with no polarized lens and this is what it looks like after the lens you can see how it removes the reflection and glare caused by the windshield it's like sunglasses for your dash camera and finally you're going to need a memory card but here's a tip a lot of people don't cover you want to get a high endurance memory card cuz they're made specifically for dash cameras since dash cameras have a lot of right cycles and are constantly recording new videos and overriding the old ones that way the memory is Never full they're also designed to endure high heat because inside of a car could get surprisingly hot and for those reasons I recommend a high endurance memory card they don't cost any more than a regular memory card so it's worth having now I'll be sure to include all these products down in the description so you could easily find them I do want to thank vanre for sending me out these dash cameras and supporting the video that way I could show you guys how to install dash camera in your driveway at home with common hand tools so now let's get started we are we're going to install the budget friendly one first and we're going to grab the hardwire kit cuz we're going to hardwire into my truck now a hardwire kit connects to the interior fuse box and that's in a different location for every vehicle so the easiest way to find it is to look in your owner's manual so you'll flip to the back where the fuses are and you can see right there it's showing us it's on the driver's side right next to the dash so if we open the door on the driver's side and take a look over here on the side of the dash you could see that's exactly where this fuse box is located now depending on your car the interior location of that fuse box could be different so here's two different locations that are pretty common so first we have the driver's side underneath the dash if we take a look here you could see there is the fuse box and the other common spot you could find your fuse box is on the passenger side if we take a look underneath the dash under the glove box sometimes it's located right up over here but in this car it's off to the side a little bit right here just remove this access panel then we can pop The Fuse cover off and there's our fuse box so once you locate the fuse box now you need your hardwire kit and this has two sides the USBC side which connects to your dash camera so we don't need to worry about that right now and the other side which has three wires that connects to your fuse box so our red battery positive wire is always going to get 12 VTS that has to be hot all the time then we have our yellow accessory wire which is only getting 12 volts when the car is running or in the Run position and then finally we have our black ground which is going to be connected to a bare metal surface like a bolt so let's start off with this red wire which is going to be hot all the time and let's find the right fuse that's always supplying power and to do that we want the car to be off and we're going to use a Multimeter to check the voltage at the fuse box so you're going to set your meter to DC volts and you want to look for the V with the straight line above it and if you look at the screen it says DC so we're ready to go now you can grab your two leads and the black lead you want to touch to a bare metal ground and if you take a look right down here it looks like we have a nice Solid Ground and one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add an alligator clip to the end of my prong here for the ground that way I could just connect it and now have both of my hands free now you're going to take your red lead and touch it against the fuse you want to check and on the fuse you have two small bare metal spots and you need to make contact with either one and it doesn't matter which one and as you can see when we test the voltage we have no volts going through this fuse with the key off now if we test fuse number 13 right beside it there we go you can see we have 12 volts with the key in the off position which is exactly what we need now let's go see what fuse 13 protects and if you take a look in your owner's manual fuse number 13 that's that 20 amp fuse it is a brake pedal position switch and this brings me to my next point you don't want to just tap any fuse important fuses for stuff like your brake pedal position switch which if that gets blown out you might not have brake lights or you might not be able to shift out a park so while you're looking for fuses just make sure you're not tapping fuses like the ABS or the SRS airbag or the PCM or ECM or body control module anything that's very important headlights tail lights turn signals I think you get the idea instead try to find circuits that that are not important like fuse 22 the auxiliary PowerPoint or fuse 29 the radio or the cigarette lighter power seats power mirrors stuff like that so in this case let's go check out the radio fuse so we saw the radio fuse is number 29 so let's check that out real quick and with the key off we have 12 volts so that makes this a good always hot fuse to tap so grab appliers and let's pull this fuse out good now the hard wire kit comes with a bunch of different fuse Taps because different Vehicles use different fuses so match up your fuse with the correct tap now take your radio fuse fuse and push it into the open slot on the fuse tap and just in case both slots are open for yours the one that's closer to the prongs should always have the fuse that you're tapping now let's put this back into slot 29 so let's line this up and push it in all the way good now let's verify we have 12 volts with the key off perfect and finally let's connect the red wire by pushing the pin all the way in so it's fully seated just like that then you want to give it a nice tug that way you know it's not going to come loose good next let's wire in the yellow accessory wire so this needs a fuse that has no power going to it when the key is off and then when we turn the key on there will be power so with the key off let's start here with fuse 21 which is the flashers and unfortunately that has power going to it so fuse 22 which is the auxiliary PowerPoint so like a cigarette lighter and it looks like that one is hot all the time as well and the rest of these fuses are pretty important so I don't want to tap into them but if you notice the fuse diagram some fuse spots like spot number 15 says not used and if you look here slot 15 doesn't have a fuse in it so let's see if we could use this open spot for auxiliary power now you want to be careful cuz sometimes these open fuse spots don't have any power going to them you can see right there there is no metal on that side but that side has a metal prong so let's probe that so with the truck off there's no power which is good but then if we turn the key to the Run position or accessory position boom 12 volts perfect now since there's no fuse in number 15 it's an open slot we don't need to add a fuse to our fuse tap leave it just like that but one thing I do want to mention fuse Taps are actually directional so the outside of of the fuse tap is where the power comes in that means the outside metal prong on the fuse tap has to be the one that touches the metal prong in the fuse block so the outside prong on the fuse tap goes to the metal prong in the fuse box like so and let's test this real quick with the truck off good there's no voltage now let's turn the truck to the Run position good 12 volts so we're good to go here now we can connect that yellow wire to the fuse tap and be sure to push it all the way in and then give it a good tug to make sure it's tight good and finally the last thing we need to do is wire in this ground now we need to find a good ground and you might be tempted to use one of these bolts here and while this does look good because the bolt is bare metal if we unscrew this bolt all the way and then remove it then we can pry this back and take a look and you can see this screws right into plastic not metal so this isn't grounded so even though it's a bare metal screw it's not grounded so although it looks like a good ground at first sight it really isn't it bolts right into plastic so instead let's go use the ground we've been using to test all the circuits right here so remove the alligator clip unscrew the bolt all the way and then we want to slide the ground wire over the base of the bolt right next to the Head now let's carefully get this bolt back in making sure we don't knock the ground wire off and then tighten it down all the way like that good so with the power accessory and ground wires connected now before we go and run our wires up the a pillar over to where the dash Cam's going to be let's go test this out to make sure we don't have any problems now when plugging in the dash camera don't plug it into the side port right there that's an accessory Port not a power in port instead we want to plug in this piece at the top here that it mounts to it just slides right in like that and then now we have our power input right there so let's plug this in now we can peel off this protective plastic and check it out beautiful the camera turned right on now in this case we wired everything up properly the camera is staying on but let's just say your camera turns on and then immediately shuts off and then turns on and shuts off and it keeps cycling like that odds are you have a bad ground so what you'd want to do is either find another ground or maybe just reee so pull your bolt out put that wire back in and then screw the bolt back in and sometimes that's all it takes to fix that problem in this case we're good to go so now let me show you how to properly Mount the camera in the best location possible now when mounting your dash camera there's only a couple simple things that you need to keep in mind the first and most important thing you never want your dash camera to be in your field of view so you're never going to have your dash camera anywhere on the driver's side even up in this corner out of your way it's still in your field of view you want this over on the passenger side you don't want it anywhere over here where you want it is as Center as possible behind the rearview mirror so it disappears out of your view yet it's still high up and centered that way the dash camera has a good view so right here behind the rear view mirror is perfect and let's verify the camera is in a good spot by plugging it in that way we can see what the camera sees and real quick now's a good time to get some alcohol on a microfiber towel and clean the area that we're going to mount the camera to so it sticks properly now we can remove the protective plastic off the mounting tape and don't forget about the plastic protecting the lens next we want to add our po polarizer lens and this just screws on like so good and finally we need to add our high endurance memory card I'm using a 256 GB card which is a good size because it's going to record a little over 30 hours of footage before it overwrites the old files okay so now we could get this in place behind the rearview mirror being careful not to stick it to the windshield by accident and I connected my phone to the app so that you could have a big screen to aim the camera better and I'm glad we did that because you could see the rearview mirror Mount is on the left side of the video so let's move the camera over a little to the right and and perfect and that looks like a good spot right here so now let's press the mount to the glass with a firm pressure to make sure it adheres and now the camera is mounted so with the camera mounted the last thing to do is adjust the polarizer filter by spinning this outer ring so you're going to want to take a look at your dash cam footage and you can see all that glare at the bottom of the screen we'll just slowly turn the ring on the polarizer filter until it disappears like that much better and check out this before and after you can see how the image used to be hazy but now it's more clear and vibrant so that that's how you adjust the polarizer filter beautiful and what you guys are seeing right now is the exact same view I see when I drive this truck you can see out the rear viiew mirror the dash camera is hidden so it's not in my line of sight the only thing left is we have these wires that are just hanging here that need to be tucked in nicely so it looks like a professional install so let me go show you how to do that now when tucking in this excess wire to hide it you want to start from the dash camera and make your way towards where you hardwired it that way you don't get any extra wire wire up here all the extra wire will tuck in over by the fuse box and you want to be very careful when dealing with the headliner never do this what I'm about to do I'm just trying to show you the headliner could fall down very easily and start sagging you see that that would not be good so when you're tucking the wire in make sure you tuck it on top of the headliner there's a piece of cardboard that this material is glued on you want this wire on top of the cardboard and then just push it back just like so and work your way down the headliner towards the a pillar and real quick the wire is falling down over here because the headliner is not tight against the roof since the truck's an older truck so a solution to keep this wire from falling grab one of these wire Clips peel off the plastic to reveal the adhesive then push the wire into the clip like that and then move the clip as high as you could go where the headliner and the glass meet and press it into place so that adhesive sticks to the glass now the wire won't S and this looks really good now work your way across and carefully push the wire into the headliner that way it won't fall out when you hit the brakes all right so now the wire has has been run up from our dash camera across the headliner to our a pillar now this a pillar does not have any airbags the only airbags in this truck are this and the passenger airbag so we don't have to worry about taking this off and running our wire around the airbag I'll show you how to do that in the Prius which we'll do in a second but in this case we do not have to remove this a pillar trim we could just tuck this right in and run it all the way down to our fuse box and we're almost done here so let's finish this up so now I'm going to grab the end of the a pillar trim and pull it back away from the windshield that way I can tuck the wire in behind it like that then you can use the plastic trim tool that comes with the dash cam to help you push the wire into the trim and as you can see this trim tool makes it a lot easier to push the wire in such a tight spot now just work your way down the a pillar tucking that wire behind the trim until it gets to the bottom then at the bottom just tuck it in between the dash and the trim and finally just grab this we're going to pull it down in here beautiful now that it's in here it's tucked away all we need to do is get this all organized tuck it in put our cover back on and we're good to go so just gather up the excess wire into one bunch then grab a zip tie and tighten it down so it keeps the wire together then to cut the zip tie you want to use one of these a Flush Cutters now let's cut the tag end off good and this tool leaves behind no sharp ends to cut your hands or damage wires now with the wire all tidied up next we have to set the voltage to where our dash camera shuts off which is all controlled by this box you can see on the side here there's a switch that has 11.6 volt and 12 vol we want to switch this to 12 volts that way when the car is shut off in parking mode if it sits for a few days without being used the camera will shut off automatically when the voltage drops to 12 volts that way it won't drain your battery and you can still start your car at below 11.6 volts you might not have enough juice to start the car so I rather be safe than sorry so with our shut off voltage set let's tuck the extra wire behind the fuse box then we can get this back there as well and finally there's some more excess wire that needs to get tucked in there now we could reinstall the fuse box cover perfect and there you go that's how you properly hardwire a dash camera into your car or truck let's go start her up and try her out so now let's connect the camera that way we could adjust the settings so when we turn the car off the camera goes into parking mode so just tap the gear icon in the top right then near the bottom you have the parking mode Tab and now we have four different parking modes that use very little battery power when the truck is off and I'm going to use the Collision detection and set the sensitivity to high that way even a little bump will turn the camera on so let's go for a ride and test this out all right so we're on the highway and you can see the dash camera is out of sight behind the rear viiew mirror and here's the dash camera video Even This budget friendly camera has a pretty good image and if we pause to zoom in you could actually read the plate on some cars now when you go to park your truck and shut it off the camera will go into parking mode and it'll let you know on the screen before it shuts down so right now it's barely using any power but if I give the truck a slight bump a couple seconds later the camera turns on and starts recording so our install is working perfect all right and now you know how to hardwire a dash camera but real quick just in case you rather use the cigarette lighter adapter that comes with almost every dash camera on the market I'm going to show you how to wire this up that way you can't see any of the wires it looks almost like a hard wire kit and I'm also going to show you how to run this rear camera all the way to the back glass and finally this next car has side curtain airbags so I'm going to show you how to deal with that so you can safely and properly wire up your dash camera with the airbags so let's go get started so out with the truck and in with the car okay so let's open up the door and for this car the cigarette lighter is located right down here below the radio now we want to verify there's no power going to the cigarette lighter until the car is turned on so let's turn the car on and you can see the light on the adapter turns on and that means there's power and when we shut the car the light goes out so now there's no power perfect so once you find your power source the next thing to do is Mount the dash camera now this cigarette lighter adapter has a bunch of extra wire and it looks like spaghetti right now don't worry all that wire is going to be hidden I'm going to show you a really good way to make this look like a hardwire setup without actually having to hardwire it so we're going to run it up here across up to the a pillar up here and this is very very very important we have side curtain airbags you do not want to just run the wire across and bring it to the dash cam you want to be super careful here we're going to take this off I'm going to show you how to properly run the wire so that you don't make it a dangerous situation if your airbag goes off so once we do that I'm going to run it across and plug it right into the dash cam now just like before when mounting the dash camera you want to keep it as high as possible and hide it behind the rearview mirror that way it's not in your field of vision the only difference here is we have a cabin facing camera and we don't want to block this that way it has a good view inside the car now once you find a good spot remove the protective plastic on the double-side tape and firmly press the mount against the clean glass so next we need to connect the cable that runs to the rear camera now this cable that comes with it is 20 ft long which is plenty long for most vehicles but surprising enough for the Prius we need the 30t long one so I went out and I grabbed this that way we have plenty of length to run it all the way down the rear hatch you'll see what I'm talking about once we get to the back so the rear camera cable gets connected right at the top right here so let's plug this in good now we can angle the camera back up and run the wires so just like in the truck we're going to run the wires along the headliner to the a pillar the only difference now we have two wires so let's start with the rear camera wire because it's further away and we'll just tuck that under the headliner like so and then we can tuck away the wire that goes to the cigarette lighter and I don't know if you could tell but because this car is so much newer the headliner is a lot tighter so these wires aren't going anywhere all right so we'll finish tucking that and once you get close to the a pillar we could leave those wires now we want to remove this plastic now there's an airbag behind here so this plastic is actually not too difficult to remove because it's designed to open up when the airbag goes off now every car is going to be a little bit different you could do a Google search YouTube check the forms for your vehicle but for the most part this is the process on this car what we're going to do is we're going to come out here and remove the weather stripping first and all you need to do is get your fingers behind it and pull it off and now we have easy access to our a pillar trim and this should just pop right out good now most a pillar trim with an airbag behind it will have a strap holding it in that way this plastic doesn't go flying into you when the airbag deploys so in this case our strap is located right down here and you can see how this strap holds the trim in place so to remove the trim you just get a needle those pliers and twist the strap 90° like that now it has the clearance to slide out and you can see the tip of that plastic strap has a hook which locks the panel in which is why you need to turn it 90° to remove it good and now we can set aside the a pillar trim like so so this right here is your side curtain airbag it's best to just leave it alone don't touch it cuz you don't want to damage it by accident but what I do want to show you is many people run their wires without taking the plastic off and just run it right over the airbag like that now if this airbag deploys it might not deploy properly and it can seriously hurt you all because you ran some dash camera wires the wrong way so definitely take the plastic off to make sure you're not running it over the airbag and you can see right up here we have the stock wiring harness from the factory that's exactly how we're going to run our wires so it's out of the way of our airbag so let's tuck these wires into the corner of the headliner and now we want to zip tie them to the factory harness that way they won't get in the way of the airbag and we'll put another zip tie over here that way the wires don't s down and one more where the airbag ends and now the wires are safe and secure now if you don't have a factory wiring harness running above the airbag that you could zip tie your wires to another option is to use those clips that we used before just peel off that double-sided tape stick it right to the painted metal you put one here put one down a little bit further and so on so forth and then run your wires through that instead that way this holds your wire in place you don't have to worry about it falling down over the airbag and causing a safety issue but in this case we have a wiring harness we're able to zip tie to so we're good to go so with the wires secured now let's run them down the a pillar right here and just tuck it in behind the plastic Dash like that now let's make sure the trim piece still fits in at the bottom with the way we ran these wires good and next we can run the wires down the side of the dash just tuck them back here which will be covered by the weather stripping and then now we can reinstall the a pillar trim so we want to align that plastic strap then push it through and now we just need to turn it 90° to lock it in and once you verify it's locked in now just press the top of the trim to snap it back in place so with our panel secure the last thing to do is to run the weather stripping to close this Gap but before we do that we want to grab our skinny wire which goes to the cigarette lighter adapter and we want to run it underneath this plastic trim here across to the cigarette lighter in a way that hides the wire so let's slide this wire between the dash and kick panel plastic good next we need a remove the glove box so get everything out of it uncp the shock from the side of the glove box and now you want to grab the sides of the glove box and push inwards to remove it and just so you understand why we need to press the sides of the glove box inwards if you take a look right back here most glove boxes in most cars have a little stopper you can see that stopper there it prevents the glove box from going down but if you push that in you could work that stopper out and then now you can drop the glove box so bend the sides inwards and carefully drop the glove box down like so now we can take the cigarette light adapter out and we want to fish it up under the dash behind the glove box and then pull all the wire through next we want to bundle up any excess wire and I'm going to zip tie it to the stock wiring harness back here that way you don't have a big mess of spaghetti behind the glove box and finally you can take the cigarett lighter adapter and drop it back down under the glove box now we can put the glove box back by reattaching the shock on the side then simply push the glove box closed like that now you can see the end of our wire down there so grab this and let's push it into the cigarette lighter hole and and finally we want to hide this extra wire that's still exposed so let's tuck it behind where the upper and lower dash meet like that beautiful and that's how you do a super clean install of a cigarette lighter adapter the only exposed wire runs from there to there and that looks very clean plus with the cigarette lighter adapter now you have a USB port so you could charge your phone now with that done we are going to install our rear camera the last thing to do we have this excess wire right here and we are going to be running it down along the door sill because we don't want to run it up over by the side curtain airbag and get in the way you can see right here we have our side curtain airbag we don't want to mess with that so in this case we're running down here along the door sill along the dill in the back up right to our rear glass and don't worry I'm going to show you some tricks to make this very easy so let's finish up this install since we're going to be running our wire under the Dills the first thing we want to do is remove the Dills so get your fingers underneath and lift up and the dorsal should pop right off now we can run the wire behind the plastic kick panel so just tuck it in and it's a little tight over here so I'm going to tuck it in at the bottom and just pull it through perfect now we could run our wire along the door seal but we don't want to just lay it on top like this because it could get damaged you could see there's sharp plastic pieces in here and all the vibrations everything could chafe this wire and then cause it to short out the factory harness is in this nice clip here also the rear windshield wiper fluid hose is in this nice clip as well so we could run our line through either one of those and I like the idea of running our cable with the washer fluid hose since it's going to the trunk as well so we're going to run our rear camera cable just like this it is nice and secure then when we get to the B pillar here just pop this out like that and you can see there's another clip here to hold our wire in good next we want to get the end of our wire and send it through the B pillar trim but before we do that let's come over here and let's remove this door trim and then let's pop this out as well good and now we could run the wire through from the other side so let's fish this wire through like this until it reaches the other side and on the other side look at that our wire is right there just waiting to be pulled through so pull the wire all the way through and make sure none of the wire gets knotted or hung up once the wire's all the way through we can run the wire along the door sill pushing it into the clips holding the rear washer fluid hose now we want to run the wire up the side to the back like that so just remove the weather stripping and set it out of the way for now and then tuck the wire in behind where the weather stripping goes okay so with the cable all tucked in on the side of the seat here now we're at the C pillar and if we take a look inside the car you can see it says side curtain airbag so we don't want to run this up and then cross the side curtain airbag instead we're going to run it right here through the plastic back there and then run it up and over to our rear hatch so let's pop this off and run it through so get your fingers behind the trim and give it a good pull so with this popped open now we want to run our wire in that little spot right there it's definitely going to be a little bit difficult and we need it to run all the way in the back so what we're going to do is we're going to come around here and and we're going to pop this trunk open and we need to get the wire right back here that way we could run it up around the airbag to here up this into our rear deck here and don't worry I have a little trick that makes running this wire nice and easy and that trick is using a snake in this case it's just a long metal wire that has a little bit of a backbone to it that way we could just push this right down here just like that and once you snake this through you can see we have exited the other side so we're good to go here you come around here and check this out this is perfect we're right through where we needed to be and now we can connect the wire to the snake so get some black tape and wrap the wire and snake together a couple times making sure to tape all the way past the end of The Wire that way it doesn't have any edges to get hung up on good now all we need to do is pull the snake out with the wire attached and look at how easy this is so a snake works great to get the wires through quickly and easily so let's pull the rest of the wire through good now let's run it up the headliner like so and to make sure the wire doesn't move around I'm going to zip Tire it to the factory harness that runs right along here and this will keep the wire away from the airbag which is located all the way back there next we want to run the wire up here like this so remove the weather stripping and now we can tuck it into the headliner up to the factory rubber grommet next we want to pop both ends of the grommet off and we'll start right here at the roof this one's a bit of a pain but just work that plastic pry tool under the Rubber and you want to remove it from the plastic clip like that and then we want to get the other end off at the trunk as well good so now we're going to get our wire and run it under the headliner we'll pop it up through here bring it through this grommet and get it through this hole right here so it's in the hatch so first let's get the wire under here being sure not to damage the headliner then we'll work it up into the clip like that and now we can pull a wire through making sure you get all the slack out of the wire and now you're going to want to run the wire up through the grommet but these are usually so tight you're going to need the help of your snake again and even with the snake due to the angles inside The Grommet it's really tough to push this through so a trick a good friend of mine taught me is to use some silic silicone spray so just spray a little bit inside The Grommet and the silicone won't damage any of the wires or the rubber grommet itself then we can try pushing the snake through the grommet again and look at that much easier so get the end of the snake in front of the factory wires okay now let's tape the end of the camera wire to the snake and then carefully pull this through and the snake just makes this so easy to do then pull the rest of the wire through that way there's no slack left just like that good and finally let's pop off the trim on the trunk then we could fish the wire through the trunk pulling it all the way through and then let's zip tie the wire to the stock wiring harness that way the wire doesn't move around so it won't make any noise and it won't chave beautiful so our cable is run away from the airbag under the headliner up through the factory grommet into the hatch and then ends up right here now for most people you'll be able to run your rear dash camera right here and call it a day that's why you would only need the 20ft cable I need the extended cable cuz I need to run it all the way down to the rear glass which is right here the reason being is this glass is such a shallow angle for aerodynamics you can't get a good view out of it let me show you so the view actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be but there's a lot of Reflections and part of the view is cut off by the spoiler in the back so instead of mounting the camera right here we'll run our wire up along the trunk and mount it to the back glass right there and to do that we need to remove the plastic trim piece and the other side as well then we need to get the trim off the deck lid starting with this piece right here and finally this last piece could come off now we could run our wire up the factory harness like that and let's zip tie it so it's secure and it doesn't bang around so with that wire secure now we just need to run the wire right to our camera which will Mount right there the problem is we have a lot of extra wire so what I'm going to do is I'm going to run this wire this way along the wiring harness and I'll zip tight all the way up to here and then I'll run it back and zip tie then bring it right here so that'll use up all this extra wire and keep it nice and organized under the trunk here so let's take the extra wire and run it along the factory harness like so then we want to run it back and let's make sure we have a good length of wire at the end this looks perfect now I'm going to use a couple of zip ties to secure the wire to the factory harness again this is pretty important you don't want these wires to be banging around as you're going over bumps beautiful and if you take a look over here you can see the end of our wire is at the perfect length and we don't have all that excess wire just dangling around over here so now let's go and install our rear camera so first first clean the glass with some alcohol then let's pull the plastic off the double-sided tape and now line up the camera making sure you don't put it on the heating element and finally plug the wire into the camera now here's a problem you might run into when reinstalling your trim you can see the wire is in the way here so an easy fix is to Mark the spot where the wire is then we can remove the plastic trim and let's make a little cut out for the wire and to do that I'm using a drill and drill bit just get the bit spinning fast and since the trim is only plastic the metal bit easily cuts into the trim piece so I'm just working the bit sideway into the plastic cutting out a little spot for the wire and then once you're done cutting grab some sandpaper and wrap it around a small screwdriver this is 180 grit and then you could use this to sand away any plastic shards that not only don't look good but they could cut into the wire over time good and now you just want to feel around the cutout and make sure there's no sharp edges and this feels nice and smooth so let's get this trim piece back in place and see how it fits perfect and that little cutout gives relief to our cable so it's not at a steep angle and it won't chafe also it allows the plastic to go flush against the glass so it looks good and won't make any noises now with that done the next thing to do would be to put all these plastic pieces back but before we do that you always want to test out your work that way you know everything is working properly so let's go start up the car so just hit the start button and let's check the camera great and as you can see the rear camera is on and now that we know our rear camera is working let's go and reinstall all the plastic bits some of the weather stripping get this car back together so we could finish up this job and all these Pieces Just snap in so give him a good hit good now let's reinstall The Grommet that way we don't have rain water leaking into the headliner so just push that in there and then give it a little pull out to seat it in place now the other side is a bit more tricky so pop out this plastic piece and I'm going to carefully use appliers it's going to help me grab the Rubber and stretch it around the plastic like that now we can push this plastic clip into the roof so it clicks and then reinstall the weather stripping by pushing it all the way down next let's get the C pillar trim back in followed by the rest of the weather stripping and again make sure you push it all the way down so there's no leaks and just like that the entire trunk has been put back together you can't tell any wires have been run it looks Factory fresh it looks so good I love it okay so we're done back here now let's go over to the passenger side and right over here we do have our trim that needs to be popped in good and then we could come down here let's pop that door seal trim back back in and then reinstall the weather stripping around the door beautiful everything back here has been reinstalled so now let's finish up the last piece in the front so get the weather stripping over the pinch Weld and work your way around the door and finally let's get our last piece of trim in and with that done now your dash Cam's completely installed all right so we're out for a test drive let's check the front cam good and this is a top of the line model so for a dash camera this picture looks really nice now let's check the cabin camera and as you can see Cooper came from for a ride but if you're an Uber driver or do deliveries or anything like that this is a great feature to have and finally let's check out our rear camera and look at that now we have a much better view with no obstructions in the rear all right so now you know how to safely install a dash camera in a car or truck that has airbags also how to run the dash camera all the way to the back but there's one more thing I want to show you so you know how to use the cigarette lighter adapter to get power you know how to use a hard wire kit to get power there's one more way that I just wanted to include real fast and that is using a OBD2 adapter to get power so if you have a vehicle that's 1996 or newer you could power your dash camera by coming to the driver's side underneath the dash and look for your OBD2 port and in this case it's located right here and then all you do is grab your adapter and it plugs right in just like that and then you'd run this wire to your dash camera and that's one additional way you could get power to your camera all right and now that's everything you need to know on how to install a dash camera in your vehicle I'll be sure to include a link to all the tools and the products I used in this video down in the description so you could easily find it from the dash cameras to the hardwire kit to the special memory cards everything will be down there that way you could do the same exact install if you have any questions at all feel free to comment below I do my best to answer as many comments as I can as always if the video is helpful remember to give it a thumbs up and if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing cuz we have a lot of really great videos coming up soonhey guys Chris fix here and today I'm going to show you how to quickly and properly wire a dash cam in your car or in your truck and in this case we're going to be wiring two different Dash camers we have an inexpensive one that is pretty basic and easy to install then we have a more expensive one that has a front dash cam it has a cabin camera and a rear cam allinone a lot more wires but still not too difficult to install I'll show you all that and the other reason why I want to install two dash cameras is because I'm going to show you how to install it using the cigarette lighter adapter that comes with basically every dash camera on the market or if you want here's a hardwire kit that you would have to buy separately and I'm going to show you how to install that as well now the whole point of doing all of this is to make sure whichever dash camera you buy whichever vehicle you have whichever wiring kit you have you'll be able to install it in your vehicle because dash cameras are very helpful these things could save you big time for example here's subscriber Tad cruising along in his Hummer H1 when a driver did not yield and pulled out into his Lane now the other guy's insurance company tried to get Tad partially at fault but because he had dash camera foot AG he quickly proved otherwise and the other driver was found completely at fault another subscriber Kevin was driving when somebody pulled into his Lane the guy in the silver car tried to say Kevin was speeding and swerved into his Lane but the dash camera footage again showed Kevin was not speeding he had the green light and he maintained his Lane so he was not at fault now besides helping yourself a dash Cammer could be used to help someone else for example subscriber George captured this accident and he proceeded by giving this footage to the pickup driver which helped clear him of any fault and I could only imagine how appreciative that pickup driver was just imagine if it was you now besides while driving when you go and park the car if you're using a hardwire kit it could go into parking mode subscriber Caesar had his camera set to g sensor in parking mode so if the car moves at all like if somebody hits it it starts recording and from that he was able to easily get this license plate number from this truck that hit him while he was parked and he wasn't even around to see this another subscriber Oscar sets his parking mode to motion detection and then he backs his car in so it acts almost like a security camera at his house so he was able to see this scum testing car doors to see if they're open and report it to the police and finally not only do dash cameras protect you from the bad stuff but they also capture some pretty incredible moments subscriber Anthony got this cool shot of a meteor shooting across the sky and subscriber Ethan got this crazy near Miss of a cyclist and two cars with this Red Light Runner so I think you get the idea dash cameras could save you big time and I'd hate for something to happen to you and you don't have one installed so that's exactly why I'm making this video let's go and install a dash camera now now just to be clear even though I've used and installed tons of different dash cameras this is not a review video you could buy whatever dash camera you want I'm going to teach you how to install it if you want some good review videos both Linus Tech tips and the hookup does an amazing job at comparing dash cameras and I'll link those videos in the description for your research and based off of those videos and my own past experiences we're going to be installing these van true dash cameras and they do come with everything you need to completely install them but I do have some extras such as this hardwire kit which gives you a a nice clean install also if you have side curtain airbags these little clips that hold the wires in are very important I'll show you that and then we're also going to be adding a polarized lens which helps reduce glare so here's what the dash cam looks like with no polarized lens and this is what it looks like after the lens you can see how it removes the reflection and glare caused by the windshield it's like sunglasses for your dash camera and finally you're going to need a memory card but here's a tip a lot of people don't cover you want to get a high endurance memory card cuz they're made specifically for dash cameras since dash cameras have a lot of right cycles and are constantly recording new videos and overriding the old ones that way the memory is Never full they're also designed to endure high heat because inside of a car could get surprisingly hot and for those reasons I recommend a high endurance memory card they don't cost any more than a regular memory card so it's worth having now I'll be sure to include all these products down in the description so you could easily find them I do want to thank vanre for sending me out these dash cameras and supporting the video that way I could show you guys how to install dash camera in your driveway at home with common hand tools so now let's get started we are we're going to install the budget friendly one first and we're going to grab the hardwire kit cuz we're going to hardwire into my truck now a hardwire kit connects to the interior fuse box and that's in a different location for every vehicle so the easiest way to find it is to look in your owner's manual so you'll flip to the back where the fuses are and you can see right there it's showing us it's on the driver's side right next to the dash so if we open the door on the driver's side and take a look over here on the side of the dash you could see that's exactly where this fuse box is located now depending on your car the interior location of that fuse box could be different so here's two different locations that are pretty common so first we have the driver's side underneath the dash if we take a look here you could see there is the fuse box and the other common spot you could find your fuse box is on the passenger side if we take a look underneath the dash under the glove box sometimes it's located right up over here but in this car it's off to the side a little bit right here just remove this access panel then we can pop The Fuse cover off and there's our fuse box so once you locate the fuse box now you need your hardwire kit and this has two sides the USBC side which connects to your dash camera so we don't need to worry about that right now and the other side which has three wires that connects to your fuse box so our red battery positive wire is always going to get 12 VTS that has to be hot all the time then we have our yellow accessory wire which is only getting 12 volts when the car is running or in the Run position and then finally we have our black ground which is going to be connected to a bare metal surface like a bolt so let's start off with this red wire which is going to be hot all the time and let's find the right fuse that's always supplying power and to do that we want the car to be off and we're going to use a Multimeter to check the voltage at the fuse box so you're going to set your meter to DC volts and you want to look for the V with the straight line above it and if you look at the screen it says DC so we're ready to go now you can grab your two leads and the black lead you want to touch to a bare metal ground and if you take a look right down here it looks like we have a nice Solid Ground and one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add an alligator clip to the end of my prong here for the ground that way I could just connect it and now have both of my hands free now you're going to take your red lead and touch it against the fuse you want to check and on the fuse you have two small bare metal spots and you need to make contact with either one and it doesn't matter which one and as you can see when we test the voltage we have no volts going through this fuse with the key off now if we test fuse number 13 right beside it there we go you can see we have 12 volts with the key in the off position which is exactly what we need now let's go see what fuse 13 protects and if you take a look in your owner's manual fuse number 13 that's that 20 amp fuse it is a brake pedal position switch and this brings me to my next point you don't want to just tap any fuse important fuses for stuff like your brake pedal position switch which if that gets blown out you might not have brake lights or you might not be able to shift out a park so while you're looking for fuses just make sure you're not tapping fuses like the ABS or the SRS airbag or the PCM or ECM or body control module anything that's very important headlights tail lights turn signals I think you get the idea instead try to find circuits that that are not important like fuse 22 the auxiliary PowerPoint or fuse 29 the radio or the cigarette lighter power seats power mirrors stuff like that so in this case let's go check out the radio fuse so we saw the radio fuse is number 29 so let's check that out real quick and with the key off we have 12 volts so that makes this a good always hot fuse to tap so grab appliers and let's pull this fuse out good now the hard wire kit comes with a bunch of different fuse Taps because different Vehicles use different fuses so match up your fuse with the correct tap now take your radio fuse fuse and push it into the open slot on the fuse tap and just in case both slots are open for yours the one that's closer to the prongs should always have the fuse that you're tapping now let's put this back into slot 29 so let's line this up and push it in all the way good now let's verify we have 12 volts with the key off perfect and finally let's connect the red wire by pushing the pin all the way in so it's fully seated just like that then you want to give it a nice tug that way you know it's not going to come loose good next let's wire in the yellow accessory wire so this needs a fuse that has no power going to it when the key is off and then when we turn the key on there will be power so with the key off let's start here with fuse 21 which is the flashers and unfortunately that has power going to it so fuse 22 which is the auxiliary PowerPoint so like a cigarette lighter and it looks like that one is hot all the time as well and the rest of these fuses are pretty important so I don't want to tap into them but if you notice the fuse diagram some fuse spots like spot number 15 says not used and if you look here slot 15 doesn't have a fuse in it so let's see if we could use this open spot for auxiliary power now you want to be careful cuz sometimes these open fuse spots don't have any power going to them you can see right there there is no metal on that side but that side has a metal prong so let's probe that so with the truck off there's no power which is good but then if we turn the key to the Run position or accessory position boom 12 volts perfect now since there's no fuse in number 15 it's an open slot we don't need to add a fuse to our fuse tap leave it just like that but one thing I do want to mention fuse Taps are actually directional so the outside of of the fuse tap is where the power comes in that means the outside metal prong on the fuse tap has to be the one that touches the metal prong in the fuse block so the outside prong on the fuse tap goes to the metal prong in the fuse box like so and let's test this real quick with the truck off good there's no voltage now let's turn the truck to the Run position good 12 volts so we're good to go here now we can connect that yellow wire to the fuse tap and be sure to push it all the way in and then give it a good tug to make sure it's tight good and finally the last thing we need to do is wire in this ground now we need to find a good ground and you might be tempted to use one of these bolts here and while this does look good because the bolt is bare metal if we unscrew this bolt all the way and then remove it then we can pry this back and take a look and you can see this screws right into plastic not metal so this isn't grounded so even though it's a bare metal screw it's not grounded so although it looks like a good ground at first sight it really isn't it bolts right into plastic so instead let's go use the ground we've been using to test all the circuits right here so remove the alligator clip unscrew the bolt all the way and then we want to slide the ground wire over the base of the bolt right next to the Head now let's carefully get this bolt back in making sure we don't knock the ground wire off and then tighten it down all the way like that good so with the power accessory and ground wires connected now before we go and run our wires up the a pillar over to where the dash Cam's going to be let's go test this out to make sure we don't have any problems now when plugging in the dash camera don't plug it into the side port right there that's an accessory Port not a power in port instead we want to plug in this piece at the top here that it mounts to it just slides right in like that and then now we have our power input right there so let's plug this in now we can peel off this protective plastic and check it out beautiful the camera turned right on now in this case we wired everything up properly the camera is staying on but let's just say your camera turns on and then immediately shuts off and then turns on and shuts off and it keeps cycling like that odds are you have a bad ground so what you'd want to do is either find another ground or maybe just reee so pull your bolt out put that wire back in and then screw the bolt back in and sometimes that's all it takes to fix that problem in this case we're good to go so now let me show you how to properly Mount the camera in the best location possible now when mounting your dash camera there's only a couple simple things that you need to keep in mind the first and most important thing you never want your dash camera to be in your field of view so you're never going to have your dash camera anywhere on the driver's side even up in this corner out of your way it's still in your field of view you want this over on the passenger side you don't want it anywhere over here where you want it is as Center as possible behind the rearview mirror so it disappears out of your view yet it's still high up and centered that way the dash camera has a good view so right here behind the rear view mirror is perfect and let's verify the camera is in a good spot by plugging it in that way we can see what the camera sees and real quick now's a good time to get some alcohol on a microfiber towel and clean the area that we're going to mount the camera to so it sticks properly now we can remove the protective plastic off the mounting tape and don't forget about the plastic protecting the lens next we want to add our po polarizer lens and this just screws on like so good and finally we need to add our high endurance memory card I'm using a 256 GB card which is a good size because it's going to record a little over 30 hours of footage before it overwrites the old files okay so now we could get this in place behind the rearview mirror being careful not to stick it to the windshield by accident and I connected my phone to the app so that you could have a big screen to aim the camera better and I'm glad we did that because you could see the rearview mirror Mount is on the left side of the video so let's move the camera over a little to the right and and perfect and that looks like a good spot right here so now let's press the mount to the glass with a firm pressure to make sure it adheres and now the camera is mounted so with the camera mounted the last thing to do is adjust the polarizer filter by spinning this outer ring so you're going to want to take a look at your dash cam footage and you can see all that glare at the bottom of the screen we'll just slowly turn the ring on the polarizer filter until it disappears like that much better and check out this before and after you can see how the image used to be hazy but now it's more clear and vibrant so that that's how you adjust the polarizer filter beautiful and what you guys are seeing right now is the exact same view I see when I drive this truck you can see out the rear viiew mirror the dash camera is hidden so it's not in my line of sight the only thing left is we have these wires that are just hanging here that need to be tucked in nicely so it looks like a professional install so let me go show you how to do that now when tucking in this excess wire to hide it you want to start from the dash camera and make your way towards where you hardwired it that way you don't get any extra wire wire up here all the extra wire will tuck in over by the fuse box and you want to be very careful when dealing with the headliner never do this what I'm about to do I'm just trying to show you the headliner could fall down very easily and start sagging you see that that would not be good so when you're tucking the wire in make sure you tuck it on top of the headliner there's a piece of cardboard that this material is glued on you want this wire on top of the cardboard and then just push it back just like so and work your way down the headliner towards the a pillar and real quick the wire is falling down over here because the headliner is not tight against the roof since the truck's an older truck so a solution to keep this wire from falling grab one of these wire Clips peel off the plastic to reveal the adhesive then push the wire into the clip like that and then move the clip as high as you could go where the headliner and the glass meet and press it into place so that adhesive sticks to the glass now the wire won't S and this looks really good now work your way across and carefully push the wire into the headliner that way it won't fall out when you hit the brakes all right so now the wire has has been run up from our dash camera across the headliner to our a pillar now this a pillar does not have any airbags the only airbags in this truck are this and the passenger airbag so we don't have to worry about taking this off and running our wire around the airbag I'll show you how to do that in the Prius which we'll do in a second but in this case we do not have to remove this a pillar trim we could just tuck this right in and run it all the way down to our fuse box and we're almost done here so let's finish this up so now I'm going to grab the end of the a pillar trim and pull it back away from the windshield that way I can tuck the wire in behind it like that then you can use the plastic trim tool that comes with the dash cam to help you push the wire into the trim and as you can see this trim tool makes it a lot easier to push the wire in such a tight spot now just work your way down the a pillar tucking that wire behind the trim until it gets to the bottom then at the bottom just tuck it in between the dash and the trim and finally just grab this we're going to pull it down in here beautiful now that it's in here it's tucked away all we need to do is get this all organized tuck it in put our cover back on and we're good to go so just gather up the excess wire into one bunch then grab a zip tie and tighten it down so it keeps the wire together then to cut the zip tie you want to use one of these a Flush Cutters now let's cut the tag end off good and this tool leaves behind no sharp ends to cut your hands or damage wires now with the wire all tidied up next we have to set the voltage to where our dash camera shuts off which is all controlled by this box you can see on the side here there's a switch that has 11.6 volt and 12 vol we want to switch this to 12 volts that way when the car is shut off in parking mode if it sits for a few days without being used the camera will shut off automatically when the voltage drops to 12 volts that way it won't drain your battery and you can still start your car at below 11.6 volts you might not have enough juice to start the car so I rather be safe than sorry so with our shut off voltage set let's tuck the extra wire behind the fuse box then we can get this back there as well and finally there's some more excess wire that needs to get tucked in there now we could reinstall the fuse box cover perfect and there you go that's how you properly hardwire a dash camera into your car or truck let's go start her up and try her out so now let's connect the camera that way we could adjust the settings so when we turn the car off the camera goes into parking mode so just tap the gear icon in the top right then near the bottom you have the parking mode Tab and now we have four different parking modes that use very little battery power when the truck is off and I'm going to use the Collision detection and set the sensitivity to high that way even a little bump will turn the camera on so let's go for a ride and test this out all right so we're on the highway and you can see the dash camera is out of sight behind the rear viiew mirror and here's the dash camera video Even This budget friendly camera has a pretty good image and if we pause to zoom in you could actually read the plate on some cars now when you go to park your truck and shut it off the camera will go into parking mode and it'll let you know on the screen before it shuts down so right now it's barely using any power but if I give the truck a slight bump a couple seconds later the camera turns on and starts recording so our install is working perfect all right and now you know how to hardwire a dash camera but real quick just in case you rather use the cigarette lighter adapter that comes with almost every dash camera on the market I'm going to show you how to wire this up that way you can't see any of the wires it looks almost like a hard wire kit and I'm also going to show you how to run this rear camera all the way to the back glass and finally this next car has side curtain airbags so I'm going to show you how to deal with that so you can safely and properly wire up your dash camera with the airbags so let's go get started so out with the truck and in with the car okay so let's open up the door and for this car the cigarette lighter is located right down here below the radio now we want to verify there's no power going to the cigarette lighter until the car is turned on so let's turn the car on and you can see the light on the adapter turns on and that means there's power and when we shut the car the light goes out so now there's no power perfect so once you find your power source the next thing to do is Mount the dash camera now this cigarette lighter adapter has a bunch of extra wire and it looks like spaghetti right now don't worry all that wire is going to be hidden I'm going to show you a really good way to make this look like a hardwire setup without actually having to hardwire it so we're going to run it up here across up to the a pillar up here and this is very very very important we have side curtain airbags you do not want to just run the wire across and bring it to the dash cam you want to be super careful here we're going to take this off I'm going to show you how to properly run the wire so that you don't make it a dangerous situation if your airbag goes off so once we do that I'm going to run it across and plug it right into the dash cam now just like before when mounting the dash camera you want to keep it as high as possible and hide it behind the rearview mirror that way it's not in your field of vision the only difference here is we have a cabin facing camera and we don't want to block this that way it has a good view inside the car now once you find a good spot remove the protective plastic on the double-side tape and firmly press the mount against the clean glass so next we need to connect the cable that runs to the rear camera now this cable that comes with it is 20 ft long which is plenty long for most vehicles but surprising enough for the Prius we need the 30t long one so I went out and I grabbed this that way we have plenty of length to run it all the way down the rear hatch you'll see what I'm talking about once we get to the back so the rear camera cable gets connected right at the top right here so let's plug this in good now we can angle the camera back up and run the wires so just like in the truck we're going to run the wires along the headliner to the a pillar the only difference now we have two wires so let's start with the rear camera wire because it's further away and we'll just tuck that under the headliner like so and then we can tuck away the wire that goes to the cigarette lighter and I don't know if you could tell but because this car is so much newer the headliner is a lot tighter so these wires aren't going anywhere all right so we'll finish tucking that and once you get close to the a pillar we could leave those wires now we want to remove this plastic now there's an airbag behind here so this plastic is actually not too difficult to remove because it's designed to open up when the airbag goes off now every car is going to be a little bit different you could do a Google search YouTube check the forms for your vehicle but for the most part this is the process on this car what we're going to do is we're going to come out here and remove the weather stripping first and all you need to do is get your fingers behind it and pull it off and now we have easy access to our a pillar trim and this should just pop right out good now most a pillar trim with an airbag behind it will have a strap holding it in that way this plastic doesn't go flying into you when the airbag deploys so in this case our strap is located right down here and you can see how this strap holds the trim in place so to remove the trim you just get a needle those pliers and twist the strap 90° like that now it has the clearance to slide out and you can see the tip of that plastic strap has a hook which locks the panel in which is why you need to turn it 90° to remove it good and now we can set aside the a pillar trim like so so this right here is your side curtain airbag it's best to just leave it alone don't touch it cuz you don't want to damage it by accident but what I do want to show you is many people run their wires without taking the plastic off and just run it right over the airbag like that now if this airbag deploys it might not deploy properly and it can seriously hurt you all because you ran some dash camera wires the wrong way so definitely take the plastic off to make sure you're not running it over the airbag and you can see right up here we have the stock wiring harness from the factory that's exactly how we're going to run our wires so it's out of the way of our airbag so let's tuck these wires into the corner of the headliner and now we want to zip tie them to the factory harness that way they won't get in the way of the airbag and we'll put another zip tie over here that way the wires don't s down and one more where the airbag ends and now the wires are safe and secure now if you don't have a factory wiring harness running above the airbag that you could zip tie your wires to another option is to use those clips that we used before just peel off that double-sided tape stick it right to the painted metal you put one here put one down a little bit further and so on so forth and then run your wires through that instead that way this holds your wire in place you don't have to worry about it falling down over the airbag and causing a safety issue but in this case we have a wiring harness we're able to zip tie to so we're good to go so with the wires secured now let's run them down the a pillar right here and just tuck it in behind the plastic Dash like that now let's make sure the trim piece still fits in at the bottom with the way we ran these wires good and next we can run the wires down the side of the dash just tuck them back here which will be covered by the weather stripping and then now we can reinstall the a pillar trim so we want to align that plastic strap then push it through and now we just need to turn it 90° to lock it in and once you verify it's locked in now just press the top of the trim to snap it back in place so with our panel secure the last thing to do is to run the weather stripping to close this Gap but before we do that we want to grab our skinny wire which goes to the cigarette lighter adapter and we want to run it underneath this plastic trim here across to the cigarette lighter in a way that hides the wire so let's slide this wire between the dash and kick panel plastic good next we need a remove the glove box so get everything out of it uncp the shock from the side of the glove box and now you want to grab the sides of the glove box and push inwards to remove it and just so you understand why we need to press the sides of the glove box inwards if you take a look right back here most glove boxes in most cars have a little stopper you can see that stopper there it prevents the glove box from going down but if you push that in you could work that stopper out and then now you can drop the glove box so bend the sides inwards and carefully drop the glove box down like so now we can take the cigarette light adapter out and we want to fish it up under the dash behind the glove box and then pull all the wire through next we want to bundle up any excess wire and I'm going to zip tie it to the stock wiring harness back here that way you don't have a big mess of spaghetti behind the glove box and finally you can take the cigarett lighter adapter and drop it back down under the glove box now we can put the glove box back by reattaching the shock on the side then simply push the glove box closed like that now you can see the end of our wire down there so grab this and let's push it into the cigarette lighter hole and and finally we want to hide this extra wire that's still exposed so let's tuck it behind where the upper and lower dash meet like that beautiful and that's how you do a super clean install of a cigarette lighter adapter the only exposed wire runs from there to there and that looks very clean plus with the cigarette lighter adapter now you have a USB port so you could charge your phone now with that done we are going to install our rear camera the last thing to do we have this excess wire right here and we are going to be running it down along the door sill because we don't want to run it up over by the side curtain airbag and get in the way you can see right here we have our side curtain airbag we don't want to mess with that so in this case we're running down here along the door sill along the dill in the back up right to our rear glass and don't worry I'm going to show you some tricks to make this very easy so let's finish up this install since we're going to be running our wire under the Dills the first thing we want to do is remove the Dills so get your fingers underneath and lift up and the dorsal should pop right off now we can run the wire behind the plastic kick panel so just tuck it in and it's a little tight over here so I'm going to tuck it in at the bottom and just pull it through perfect now we could run our wire along the door seal but we don't want to just lay it on top like this because it could get damaged you could see there's sharp plastic pieces in here and all the vibrations everything could chafe this wire and then cause it to short out the factory harness is in this nice clip here also the rear windshield wiper fluid hose is in this nice clip as well so we could run our line through either one of those and I like the idea of running our cable with the washer fluid hose since it's going to the trunk as well so we're going to run our rear camera cable just like this it is nice and secure then when we get to the B pillar here just pop this out like that and you can see there's another clip here to hold our wire in good next we want to get the end of our wire and send it through the B pillar trim but before we do that let's come over here and let's remove this door trim and then let's pop this out as well good and now we could run the wire through from the other side so let's fish this wire through like this until it reaches the other side and on the other side look at that our wire is right there just waiting to be pulled through so pull the wire all the way through and make sure none of the wire gets knotted or hung up once the wire's all the way through we can run the wire along the door sill pushing it into the clips holding the rear washer fluid hose now we want to run the wire up the side to the back like that so just remove the weather stripping and set it out of the way for now and then tuck the wire in behind where the weather stripping goes okay so with the cable all tucked in on the side of the seat here now we're at the C pillar and if we take a look inside the car you can see it says side curtain airbag so we don't want to run this up and then cross the side curtain airbag instead we're going to run it right here through the plastic back there and then run it up and over to our rear hatch so let's pop this off and run it through so get your fingers behind the trim and give it a good pull so with this popped open now we want to run our wire in that little spot right there it's definitely going to be a little bit difficult and we need it to run all the way in the back so what we're going to do is we're going to come around here and and we're going to pop this trunk open and we need to get the wire right back here that way we could run it up around the airbag to here up this into our rear deck here and don't worry I have a little trick that makes running this wire nice and easy and that trick is using a snake in this case it's just a long metal wire that has a little bit of a backbone to it that way we could just push this right down here just like that and once you snake this through you can see we have exited the other side so we're good to go here you come around here and check this out this is perfect we're right through where we needed to be and now we can connect the wire to the snake so get some black tape and wrap the wire and snake together a couple times making sure to tape all the way past the end of The Wire that way it doesn't have any edges to get hung up on good now all we need to do is pull the snake out with the wire attached and look at how easy this is so a snake works great to get the wires through quickly and easily so let's pull the rest of the wire through good now let's run it up the headliner like so and to make sure the wire doesn't move around I'm going to zip Tire it to the factory harness that runs right along here and this will keep the wire away from the airbag which is located all the way back there next we want to run the wire up here like this so remove the weather stripping and now we can tuck it into the headliner up to the factory rubber grommet next we want to pop both ends of the grommet off and we'll start right here at the roof this one's a bit of a pain but just work that plastic pry tool under the Rubber and you want to remove it from the plastic clip like that and then we want to get the other end off at the trunk as well good so now we're going to get our wire and run it under the headliner we'll pop it up through here bring it through this grommet and get it through this hole right here so it's in the hatch so first let's get the wire under here being sure not to damage the headliner then we'll work it up into the clip like that and now we can pull a wire through making sure you get all the slack out of the wire and now you're going to want to run the wire up through the grommet but these are usually so tight you're going to need the help of your snake again and even with the snake due to the angles inside The Grommet it's really tough to push this through so a trick a good friend of mine taught me is to use some silic silicone spray so just spray a little bit inside The Grommet and the silicone won't damage any of the wires or the rubber grommet itself then we can try pushing the snake through the grommet again and look at that much easier so get the end of the snake in front of the factory wires okay now let's tape the end of the camera wire to the snake and then carefully pull this through and the snake just makes this so easy to do then pull the rest of the wire through that way there's no slack left just like that good and finally let's pop off the trim on the trunk then we could fish the wire through the trunk pulling it all the way through and then let's zip tie the wire to the stock wiring harness that way the wire doesn't move around so it won't make any noise and it won't chave beautiful so our cable is run away from the airbag under the headliner up through the factory grommet into the hatch and then ends up right here now for most people you'll be able to run your rear dash camera right here and call it a day that's why you would only need the 20ft cable I need the extended cable cuz I need to run it all the way down to the rear glass which is right here the reason being is this glass is such a shallow angle for aerodynamics you can't get a good view out of it let me show you so the view actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be but there's a lot of Reflections and part of the view is cut off by the spoiler in the back so instead of mounting the camera right here we'll run our wire up along the trunk and mount it to the back glass right there and to do that we need to remove the plastic trim piece and the other side as well then we need to get the trim off the deck lid starting with this piece right here and finally this last piece could come off now we could run our wire up the factory harness like that and let's zip tie it so it's secure and it doesn't bang around so with that wire secure now we just need to run the wire right to our camera which will Mount right there the problem is we have a lot of extra wire so what I'm going to do is I'm going to run this wire this way along the wiring harness and I'll zip tight all the way up to here and then I'll run it back and zip tie then bring it right here so that'll use up all this extra wire and keep it nice and organized under the trunk here so let's take the extra wire and run it along the factory harness like so then we want to run it back and let's make sure we have a good length of wire at the end this looks perfect now I'm going to use a couple of zip ties to secure the wire to the factory harness again this is pretty important you don't want these wires to be banging around as you're going over bumps beautiful and if you take a look over here you can see the end of our wire is at the perfect length and we don't have all that excess wire just dangling around over here so now let's go and install our rear camera so first first clean the glass with some alcohol then let's pull the plastic off the double-sided tape and now line up the camera making sure you don't put it on the heating element and finally plug the wire into the camera now here's a problem you might run into when reinstalling your trim you can see the wire is in the way here so an easy fix is to Mark the spot where the wire is then we can remove the plastic trim and let's make a little cut out for the wire and to do that I'm using a drill and drill bit just get the bit spinning fast and since the trim is only plastic the metal bit easily cuts into the trim piece so I'm just working the bit sideway into the plastic cutting out a little spot for the wire and then once you're done cutting grab some sandpaper and wrap it around a small screwdriver this is 180 grit and then you could use this to sand away any plastic shards that not only don't look good but they could cut into the wire over time good and now you just want to feel around the cutout and make sure there's no sharp edges and this feels nice and smooth so let's get this trim piece back in place and see how it fits perfect and that little cutout gives relief to our cable so it's not at a steep angle and it won't chafe also it allows the plastic to go flush against the glass so it looks good and won't make any noises now with that done the next thing to do would be to put all these plastic pieces back but before we do that you always want to test out your work that way you know everything is working properly so let's go start up the car so just hit the start button and let's check the camera great and as you can see the rear camera is on and now that we know our rear camera is working let's go and reinstall all the plastic bits some of the weather stripping get this car back together so we could finish up this job and all these Pieces Just snap in so give him a good hit good now let's reinstall The Grommet that way we don't have rain water leaking into the headliner so just push that in there and then give it a little pull out to seat it in place now the other side is a bit more tricky so pop out this plastic piece and I'm going to carefully use appliers it's going to help me grab the Rubber and stretch it around the plastic like that now we can push this plastic clip into the roof so it clicks and then reinstall the weather stripping by pushing it all the way down next let's get the C pillar trim back in followed by the rest of the weather stripping and again make sure you push it all the way down so there's no leaks and just like that the entire trunk has been put back together you can't tell any wires have been run it looks Factory fresh it looks so good I love it okay so we're done back here now let's go over to the passenger side and right over here we do have our trim that needs to be popped in good and then we could come down here let's pop that door seal trim back back in and then reinstall the weather stripping around the door beautiful everything back here has been reinstalled so now let's finish up the last piece in the front so get the weather stripping over the pinch Weld and work your way around the door and finally let's get our last piece of trim in and with that done now your dash Cam's completely installed all right so we're out for a test drive let's check the front cam good and this is a top of the line model so for a dash camera this picture looks really nice now let's check the cabin camera and as you can see Cooper came from for a ride but if you're an Uber driver or do deliveries or anything like that this is a great feature to have and finally let's check out our rear camera and look at that now we have a much better view with no obstructions in the rear all right so now you know how to safely install a dash camera in a car or truck that has airbags also how to run the dash camera all the way to the back but there's one more thing I want to show you so you know how to use the cigarette lighter adapter to get power you know how to use a hard wire kit to get power there's one more way that I just wanted to include real fast and that is using a OBD2 adapter to get power so if you have a vehicle that's 1996 or newer you could power your dash camera by coming to the driver's side underneath the dash and look for your OBD2 port and in this case it's located right here and then all you do is grab your adapter and it plugs right in just like that and then you'd run this wire to your dash camera and that's one additional way you could get power to your camera all right and now that's everything you need to know on how to install a dash camera in your vehicle I'll be sure to include a link to all the tools and the products I used in this video down in the description so you could easily find it from the dash cameras to the hardwire kit to the special memory cards everything will be down there that way you could do the same exact install if you have any questions at all feel free to comment below I do my best to answer as many comments as I can as always if the video is helpful remember to give it a thumbs up and if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing cuz we have a lot of really great videos coming up soon\n"