Dash cam installation in Bankstown

A dash cam is only as useful as its installation. Run it off the cigarette lighter and you get a cable dangling from the mirror, a socket you cannot use for anything else, and a camera that switches off the moment you turn the key.

Hardwiring means the power comes from the fuse box, via the right fuse tap and an inline fuse, and the lead goes up the A-pillar and along the headlining out of sight. The finished job looks like the camera came with the car.

Getting the trim off without breaking it is the skill, and it is the same one we use every day in detailing. The A-pillar cover on most modern cars sits over a curtain airbag, and the clips are designed to release in a particular way. Lever them and they snap, or worse, they get in the airbag’s way.

Parking mode depends on it too. Without a permanent live feed from the fuse box the camera cannot stay awake while the car is parked, so a socket-powered camera never has parking mode at all, whatever the box says.

Parking mode is the reason most people hardwire. It lets the camera watch the car while it is parked and unattended, which is where a great deal of damage actually happens: shopping centre car parks, street parking, workplaces and apartment garages.

The obvious worry is the battery, and it is a fair one. A camera drawing power for days will flatten a car that only does short trips. The answer is a low-voltage cutoff, which powers the camera down once the battery drops to a set threshold and leaves enough charge to start the engine.

In Australian conditions that threshold usually wants to sit around 12.2 to 12.3 volts. We set it with your driving pattern in mind, because a car that does twenty minutes a day needs a more conservative setting than one that commutes an hour.

Most dash cam installations we do happen alongside other work, and that is the efficient way to book it. The car is already with us, the trim work overlaps, and it saves a second visit.

It pairs particularly well with window tinting, because both involve working around the top of the windscreen and the A-pillars, and with a new car preparation where everything gets done before the car goes into service.

On a work vehicle a dash cam is protection for the business as much as the driver. A dispute over who reversed into whom on a site costs a day of arguing and an excess. Footage ends it.

Fleet installs want the same camera in the same place in every vehicle, wired the same way, so any driver knows where it is and how to pull the footage. We can do a run of vehicles at your yard in Bankstown rather than take each one off the road.

Vans need thought on the rear camera. A panel van has no rear glass, so the rear camera mounts outside on the door or by the number plate light, and that is a different cable run and a weatherproof camera.

Drivers doing rideshare or taxi work often want a second lens facing into the cabin as well as the road. It is fitted the same way, from the same hardwire, and it usually mounts as a single unit behind the mirror with a lens each way.

An interior lens needs infrared to see anything at night, and cheap ones do not have it, so check before buying. Whether passengers need to be told is between you and the platform you drive for.

Combined with a rear camera that is three views on one card, which makes the high-endurance card and the regular format more important, not less.