Dashcams have become a crucial in-car accessory for motorists throughout the country. Its popularity is a result of its numerous advantages, which include the acceleration of insurance premium purchases and claims. A dashcam also saves motorists from paying wrongly claims from motorists looking to swindle others. A dashcam provides 100% accurate factual data. Nevertheless, mounting a dashcam is only one step in the process of installing a dashcam in your car. It also needs to receive power, so how is dashcam powered? Keep reading to find out.
There are three ways a dashcam is powered and the most popular option is hardwiring the dashcam to your fuse box. The second option is powering the dashcam with the cigarette socket power cable, and the third option is to use a dashcam battery pack. Each option provides a different amount of power, convenience, and advantage. What’s the best way to power your dashcam from the above options? Hardwiring a dashcam provides a neat installation while running the dashcam power cable into your Cigarette port is the easiest option. A dedicated dashcam battery pack reduces the load of your car battery and supports dashcam additional functions such as parking surveillance recording.
Can you power your dashcam yourself? Learn the intricacies of powering a dashcam without hiring a professional and save money on installation. Nonetheless, it is crucial to correctly follow installation instructions to avoid damage to your vehicle’s components.
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Powering By Hardwiring The Dashcam
Hardwiring a dashcam involves connecting the dashcam cable to a hot-in-start port in your fuse box. The process will take about 15-30 minutes depending on your level of experience and competence. You need a hardwire installation kit to successfully hardwire your dashcam.
Hardwiring a dashcam relieves your car battery, improves dashcam performance, and expands storage capacity. It also provides a neat installation as the wires are well hidden and out of sight.
Powering via Cigarette Port
This is by far the easiest way to power your dashcam. All that’s needed is to connect your dashcam to a free cigarette port in your car. However, this option can be messy as the wires are visible. Nonetheless, it doesn’t require technical know-how and can be done by just anyone, notwithstanding their dashcam knowledge.
Powering with Dedicated Dashcam Battery Pack
This option saves your battery from quick wear and tear as it reduces the load on the capacitor. It also increases the recording time of your dashcam and improves storage. There are several ways to power your dashcam with a dedicated battery pack, which includes hardwiring installation and a cigarette socket.
These vary from the traditional dashcam installation as the dedicated battery pack gets connected to the electrical circuit instead of the dashcam directly.
What Is The Best Way To Power Your Dashcam
If you want to conserve battery and record while your car is parked, we recommend hardwiring your dashcam with a dedicated battery pack. However, users that want a quick installation and have multiple cars and a single dash cam would benefit from the cigarette port installation.
A dash cam can cost up to $150 with advanced brands costing a bit higher. Buying two or more units for all your vehicle put a strain on your finances.
Nonetheless, for maximum car security and coverage, we recommend that each of your vehicles is equipped with a dedicated dashcam. The constant transfer may also damage the unit and the installation process.
Choosing the best power source is also budget-dependent. Hardwiring your dashcam requires more materials which cost more, while the two other options are considerably cheaper and easier.
Can I Power My Dashcam With USB Cable
Some Advanced vehicles come without a cigarette lighter port, and just a USB port meant for charging phones. This eliminates certain dashcam power options. But does it mean you have to hardwire your dashcam to power it or can you power with a USB cable?
Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no. USB ports in most cars provide only 5V/500mAh while a dashcam requires up to 1000mAh/5V to function optimally. This would be vastly insufficient to power your dashcam. Any attempt to use it as a power source would either prove abortive or cause damage.
We recommend hardwiring the dashcam as the best alternative.
Can I Use A Different Power Cord To Power My Dashcam
High-end aftermath power cords are a great option to power any device in your vehicle. However, can you use just any power cord to power your dashcam? The long and short answer is No. Each dashcam comes equipped with specially designed power cables for that particular unit, to provide the right voltage amount to power the dashcam.
Using another power cable may damage your dashcam. To avoid such, we recommend using the power cable that follows your dashcam. You can get a replacement power cable from the manufacturer or by specifying the right amount of output that powers your dashcam.
Would Hardwiring Drain My Car Battery?
One of the advantages of hardwiring dash cam is to conserve car battery. However, motorists are concerned if hardwiring would drain the car battery to the point where the car fails to start. Hardwiring wouldn’t drain your battery.
On the other hand, it even prevents your car battery from dying. The dashcam kit has low voltage and is designed to power off when the battery cut-off has been reached. So don’t worry about dashcam killing your battery.
However, powering your dashcam with your cigarette port may cause it to drain your car battery quickly. This is because the dashcam may continue to run endlessly, without a cut off-limit. This may leave you stranded if you lack an alternative. Hence, why hardwiring remains the best choice to power your dashcam as the hardwiring kit monitors the car battery.
Benefits Of Powering Your Dashcam Correctly
The stress of powering a dashcam would be worth it if the benefits are immense. So, what are the benefits of installing a dashcam? And how does it benefit you?
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Faster Insurance Premium Purchase
Insurance companies favor motorists with dashcam installed, as it proves to the company that the driver is 100% sure of his/her abilities. The cost of Insurance premiums is only expensive for vehicles without devices that are actively monitoring the driver.
Insurance companies are seeing the importance of dashcams and are even offering free dash cams along with cheaper insurance premiums. Nevertheless, your insurance company will scrutinize the installation of your dashcam to check that it is correctly installed before offering a cheap insurance premium.
So, save money on insurance by installing a dash cam today. We offer the best dashcams for all types of vehicles here.
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Evidence
While your dashcam may provide you with evidence to claim compensation from your insurance company, the source of power may impede it from recording and keeping important footage. For example, if you don’t have parking surveillance, your dashcam won’t record when the car is parked.
We recommend hardwiring directly to your fuse box or with a dedicated battery pack to ensure that it records all the important events, to provide you with evidence at all times.
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Safe Driving
The presence of a dash cam helps drivers to obey road and speed rules. This is because drivers know that driving 61km/h in a 60km zone can deter their insurance claim. This improves road safety on the road, thereby reducing accidents and collisions.
In addition, some insurance companies monitor the dashcam of their customers before offering insurance premiums. Drivers with higher scores are given cheaper premiums while drivers with lower scores buy more expensive premiums.
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Prevents Theft
The presence of a dash cam deters thieves from a mile away, especially hardwired units. Connect your dash cam to any supported device via a wireless network to monitor your vehicle 24/7.
