I've been trying to follow a few different guides posted on the forums for tapping the rain sensor wires to provide power to my dashcam (Street Guardian SG9665GC). It needs 1.5A, 5v.

I tried to tap one of the pink and white wires going into the drivers side plug for the ceiling console (the console for the SOS/ceiling light/sunroof buttons). On my multimeter these read as 5v, but I they do not power on my dash cam. I also tried making a tap using this 12v to 5v power supply but I couldn't find a 12v wire to tap.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong.. could someone who has done this successfully give me some advice?

 

I routed my dash cam to the drivers side footwell fuse box. I tested 2 fuses and found one that was powered only when the car was on.

 

Err, this is not a good idea.

Tapping into a wire which appears to have a standing dc voltage on it without knowing its source can result in grief. It may be a signal wire or it may not have the capacity to supply the additional current needed. At best it could stop something working or bring up a fault lamp; at worst it could damage your electrics.

The correct solution is to connect to the fusebox or back to the cigar socket at the rear of the central console.

A further word of warning. I mounted a dashcam and found that this gave rise to errors on the satnav. My display was telling me I was driving through fields about 4 miles from the road I was on. The combination of a cheapie E-Bay dashcam in proximity to the satnav antenna (under the dashboard cover) was the likely cause.

 

Could you tell me what fuse you tapped into please? i need to tap into that same fuse for my radar detector.

 

Tapping into the rain sensor wire for the radar detector is just fine. I've had this on my car for 2 years now with no issues. And its right there at the top, super easy to do.