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For those of you thinking of installing a Dash Cam into your XF.
Inside view of the car. The Dash Cam's other lens is facing the interior of the vehicle.
The other lens facing the front.
The camera can record what's happening inside the interior, plus it can record if a car rear ends your vehicle. As long as there is no obstruction on the view at the back like occupants & the back headrest should be adjusted further down.
Instead of using the supplied charger power cord, I bought an OBD2 Power Cable that plugs in directly to Dash Cam. There are 2 settings from this device. No need to hard wire.
Conclusion:
It took about 45 minutes to install the Dash Cam. So far, routing the wire from the camera to the OBD2 port on the XF is a breeze. Very easy to tuck in the wire to the headliner down to the weatherstrip. A plastic install tool supplied from the Dash Cam was never used. I will give all the items I bought for this install a 5 out of 5 stars. If I can do it, you can do it
Good luck.
I highly suggest hard wiring your dash cam, this way you don’t have to deal with wires running around your cabin. It may sound daunting, but I did it for the first time in my life with zero experience on my F Type and it took me 20 minutes and looks great! As far as brand and type, I don’t need/want a screen on it to reduce size, so I went with this and the “parking mode cable” to hardwire. If you go hardwire route and use the fuse box like I did, be sure to get a couple extra fuses from wherever or your local auto shop.
I hardwired mine last year using an inexpensive hardwire kit from ebay. Very straightforward to run the cable down the left hand side of the car and into the fusebox. Piggy-backed off the 12v socket supply.
I have dashcams in all of my cars, just run the wires around the passenger side and into the center 12V outlet, but would like to hardwire, can anyone show a pic of the exact fuse you use for hard-wiring as it has to be one that is always on for the parking mode activation to work, thanks
I hard wired mine with a cheap Amazon piggyback fuse lead and have it on to the passenger cabin fuse box into the fuse for the heated steering wheel. This way it's on when the car is on but is an ignition live so turns itself off a few minutes after the car and thus saves any battery drainage issues.
Will my battery still work if I don't drive for a long time? Will it still be recorded if it is parked?
Depends largely how you wire it up and what with. I have a Garmin mini in my Jag as I said above connected to the heated steering fuse with a simple piggyback wire. It stops recording a few mins after the ignition goes off which is what I wanted so doesn't record when parked.
My other car however has an actual hard wire kit off Amazon (roughly 15£) it has a low voltage device fitted in line so it gets wired to a permanent live fuse and when it senses the voltage drop to a certain level it turns the camera off to preserve the battery level. So it does record for a few days while parked.