Our dash cam died, so during the Amazon Prime day specials, I ordered a new one.
The new one was a mirror style camera that came with a rear camera…The camera is really good, so if come up behind me at a stop light, don’t pick you nose; it’s probably recording you in hi-def.
Anyways, we didn’t want to put any holes in the car to mount the rear camera, so I made a new frame to mount the camera. Worked out very nicely. I didn’t realize there would be a cable sticking out since my husband was installing it, so next time I’ll have to think about it some more, like an additional hole and a path to run it so that it sits flush without being seen.
Our old plate frame I made too, and we had the issue of the area around the “f” in “alfa” kept snapping off. So I made some changes and it’s a bit sturdier.
The base plate frame is one I got here in the Free Files section a couple years ago I think that I altered for my car and plate, so the for the looking great part, have to give credit where credit is due.
Not sure. It was 11 feet long I think. He had enough wire to go through the trunk, the side of car and keep all the wires hidden. Not sure about a Honda Pilot, but so far we really like it. The only issue is that the “mirror” is so smooth that the light coming in from the back window casts a shiny reflection, so it’s hard to see. We just added a film to it to diffuse the reflection.
I spent a few hours running wire and installing this, drilling a hole through the car. I need to figure out the angle of the camera because it seems to film the road pretty well, but doesn’t really want to angle upwards. Hmm
We had the opposite problem. The way we positioned it, it would point straight back or in the air. So we unscrewed the hinge and reversed it, so now it will point at the ground and straight behind us, which is more helpful than watching the planes fly by.
After all of the shimming, and messing around, I finally figured out today that you could just swipe your finger up and down on a certain part of the screen and it would re-position the camera… wheee
If you swipe your finger to the left in the left corner, it changes the view too. What memory card are you using? I’m starting to get a slow recording error, but I can feel the area with the card heating up like crazy.
The warranty customer service is really responsive, but they let me know that their camera is currently out of stock, so they can’t send me a new one right now, though I could return it for a refund. It still works, so I don’t think that I’ll be doing that.
I would assume it was a sandisk 128… not sure of the class as Costco had a 2 pack. I haven’t palpated over the memory card but i will. I can’t imagine returning it after disassembling the back of the truck and drilling a hole into it. .
My husband said if we get a different camera, it better use the same cables. He’s still looking. The camera is great when it’s working, but it’s just too hot here. He said rather than having to remove the thing and install something else, he might just make a little cooling system for it. If I order another one, I’ll wait to see if it takes the same cables before sending back the original. If you haven’t had this issue, it might just be a fluke on our camera, because it happened pretty quickly on our first car trip into the heat.
It hasn’t been too hot here, 85ish.
The installation process has caused a little more ceiling sag. Ah well. There is probably an easy fix for that which I should google. Hmm.
Ours doesn’t go through the ceiling. With ours, he didn’t drill any holes. From the trunk, he’s got the wire going through an existing license plate hole we never use. It’s been around 100-ish where we’ve been driving, so there’s that.
We did. Unfortunately, it really wouldn’t stop overheating. It wasn’t recording anything because of the heat. So we returned it and exchanged it for a 3 camera system.
The cameras aren’t part of the mirror for the new systen, so less heat going on. It hasn’t had a problem recording once. Unfortunately though, there is no battery in the mirror for it to work while the car is off and parked, and no voice command.
Husband was able to route the cables through the same way, but there were more for 3 cameras, and it took him hours to make sure everything was hidden. I now I need to buy a hardwire kit so that we can actually use the other functions.
The new system came with anti-glare film though, which was a huge bonus, no more shiny reflection in my eyes.
