Blackvue DR650GW-2CH Install

[tliving]

You can install the camera upside down, but I have found that it's pretty "stealth" anyway without doing it that way! Mine is installed right-side up and you cannot tell it is there as the mirror and the front windshield Tesla camera cover it up from sight.

If you install it upside down, the viewer used to playback the videos on an p/c or mac can invert the upside-down recorded videos, and I also believe the iPhone app (don't know about the Android) has an inverting capability also...but every time you want to view the video you will have to invert the picture..... just a pain to have to do that.

Seems as though the only way to use the larger 128GB microSD's on a mac is to do just what wayneone did, Disk Utility, Erase and format as MS-DOS (FAT32).

Also, do remember that SD cards are not forever and they only guarantee them for 6 months or so (depending on use.) They also recommend that you format the card every week or so.

See note #5 on this "important information" list from BlackVue Download page:

http://www.blackvue.com/support/downloads/

And further information about SD cards for the BlackVue from a dashcam retailer:

What SD Cards do we use/recommend?

Hope this information helps....

I know they say to reformat the cards and they only last a short time but i'm running with the original card after 12 months and have never formatted it. Mine runs 24x7 with a permanent 12V connection. Perhaps i've gotten lucky but I spend no time on "maintenance" of the dashcam.

 

[PaulR]

I know they say to reformat the cards and they only last a short time but i'm running with the original card after 12 months and have never formatted it. Mine runs 24x7 with a permanent 12V connection. Perhaps i've gotten lucky but I spend no time on "maintenance" of the dashcam.

They say that the SD cards are consumable and don't last very long... but YMMV I guess.... I got a 32GB card today and it was already formatted in MS-DOS (FAT32) so I guess I would not have had to format it to begin using it. Nevertheless, I usually do - just to be sure. BlackVue says also to format it weekly, and you can do that with the card remaining in the camera by just holding down the camera button for about 10 seconds until you hear a "beep", the let up on the button and allow the camera to finish formatting and to reboot. I have been doing that. Obviously you can get away without doing so. as before YMMV :wink:

 

[JPP]

FWIW, after I go get my car washed (about 1x/week), I do a full walk around to be sure nothing looks amiss. I then do an in-camera reformat of the SD card. Quick and easy. No failures in 2 years on my Blackvue 550 or in 6 months on my wife's 650.

 

[NeverFollow]

I would strongly recommend installing a dashcam as a peace of mind.

I Just installed my Blackvue DR650GW-2CH this morning.

I left home at 10:00am to do an initial testing.

Look at what I recorded at 10:05 am: A car passed a red light just in front of me.

See the two green lights on the background on each side of the minivan.

For a matter of seconds I could have certainly been hit.

If so, I try to imagine how I could have been able to prove that I was not the one at fault without such recording.

 

[Nismode]

Some notes from myblackvue dr650gw 2ch install.
Jumping the Liftgate without Drilling

The one I bought from Amazon - Javafly had the new straight rear cable connector. There were no problems with fishing it through the rear lift gate wire harness rubber boot.Since I had obliterated one of the blue snap plastic fasteners anyways, the wire was run through the middle lift gate side cover fastener hole instead of drilling a hole in the lift gate. But todo so, I had to shave some plastic off the square rear cable connector to make it circular. After which I just used some telephone wire taped to the gold metal plug part to fish and pull it through.

View attachment 107343

Power From the Microphone Grill Cover
In the front, I got power from the microphone cover. A PC case fan connector mated perfectly to the unused connector. On the tesla connector, Grey is +12v, and Black is Ground. I'm not sure what the middle green wire does and would appreciated any info if someone knows.

View attachment 107344
The supplied cigarette outlet cable was cut at the yellow label before the fuse where it says don't cut, then spliced to the cigarette cable.
View attachment 107345

It is okay to remove the cigarette outlet as there is no voltage reduction circuit in the cigarette plug, as some forums have incorrectly stated.


Always On Power May Cause Some Parasitic Battery Drain
Although the kit I bought came with a magic power pro, It was not used. The car does seem to lose just one mile sometimes when parked for a while such as overnight, or during the work day. This may be an indication of some parasitic drain related to the dash cam.

128 GB microSD Card Works
The 128 GB Sandisk Ultra microSDXC card worked, but not out of the box.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010Q57S62

The card had to be formatted with FAT32 first. For some reason SDFormatter by Trendy didn't work nor did Windows 7 disk part. What eventually worked was using a Mac with OSX Yosemite to format FAT32. I did this by using Disk Utility, selecting the card, Erase tab, Format: MS-DOS (FAT),Erase… There has to be an easier way.

Automatically Downloading Files to a NAS
I had a use case where I would like files downloaded each day to my NAS each night without removing the SD card. It was tricky as the BlackVue is in AP mode. Eventually it worked, but involved an extra dd-wrt router installed in my garage in client AP mode, NAT, and some routing rules on the main router. My phone is now able to connect to the blackvue in the car while being on my home's wifi that has internet, not the blackvue's wifi. More on this later… Or maybe I should just install BlackVue Cloud and try it.

GPS not getting a Fix

It's been a week and the GPS hasn’t gotten a fix yet, the dash cam was installed in the standard location behind the rear view mirror.

Possible Side Airbag Problems?
Lastly, with the cable tucked in the headliner near the side airbag, could it possibly interfere with side airbag
deployment?

Details on the Auto downloading via NAS? That sounds like such a slick feature.

 

[NeverFollow]

Does anyone know if the camera can be installed upside-down? Would the image reverse?
I am thinking that I may be able to hide the wires better under the rear-view mirror cover if they are on the left

The Blackvue Viewer (Windows or Mac App) provides some buttons under the image display to rotate the image.

Note: There is also a recording of the accelerometers (x,y,z), I don't know if their values can be reversed, but something to consider if you use them for some reason.

 

[hiroshiy]

Has anybody had issues with Wi-Fi connectivity? Recently I had to reformat the microSD with my PC with FAT32 and used BlackVue PC viewer software to configure Wi-Fi parameters. The issue I'm experiencing is that I can't find BlackVue DR650 with my Android phone.

Resolved. After I reformatted the SD card with Blackvue unit by long pressing the Wi-Fi button for 10 seconds, it started working again. Maybe I should format with the unit, rather than on my PC.

 

[JPP]

Resolved. After I reformatted the SD card with Blackvue unit by long pressing the Wi-Fi button for 10 seconds, it started working again. Maybe I should format with the unit, rather than on my PC.

...what I said....

 

[Paul8810]

Details on the Auto downloading via NAS? That sounds like such a slick feature.

+1 sounds like a great alternative to using the Blackvue cloud.

I have a 650 but an early version (pre April 2015) that according to Blackvue has an older wifi module and is not cloud capable. Blackvue offered to upgrade the wifi module for $50, but I need to ship the camera to China.

 

[modelx007]

What settings is everyone using for the different sensitivity settings with the cloud? This part is very confusing to me... I use the cloud with a tmobile Hotspot unit plugged in via USB...seems to work well for live viewing but very slow for viewing recorded.

 

[oogs]

After reading through this, I seem to have missed one particular link - there are lots of references to mounting brackets/clips breaking, having several handy, but are these generic items?

 

[Andyw2100]

After reading through this, I seem to have missed one particular link - there are lots of references to mounting brackets/clips breaking, having several handy, but are these generic items?

Welcome to the forums.

This is a source for one kind of the clips people are talking about:

Amazon.com: 25 Toyota Trim Panel Retainer Clips 90467-10188 Sienna: Automotive

 

[hiroshiy]

...what I said....

Hi, JPP, yeah, thanks for your suggestion. I actually didn't think that formatting with Blackvue PC software caused WiFi connection problem. After reading your post I thought, hey I should have tried that!

 

[rfmurphy81]

Question for the experts here:

I got a DR650GW-2CH just before my Model S was delivered. I decided to make sure the device worked before going through the hassle of running the power and coaxial cable all over. I've found that, while the front cam works, the rear cam is not being recognized at all. I've tried all variety of troubleshooting (reseating the 12v cigarette adapter. re-plugging the coaxial cable, swapping the coaxial cable inputs) but nothing seems to work. The inputs and outputs seem to be properly aligned (nothing looks tweaked). I sent an email to [email protected] but I have my doubts that they'll be helpful considering I haven't seen a response 3-4 days later and they don't seem to have a phone number to call for live assistance. I did a quick Google search and it seems like people have found upgrading the firmware may help (but not always) but then others said the latest firmware actually has a degraded bitrate for the video, so I'm hesitant to do this and affect the video quality.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

 

[Sm4llz]

Question for the experts here:

I got a DR650GW-2CH just before my Model S was delivered. I decided to make sure the device worked before going through the hassle of running the power and coaxial cable all over. I've found that, while the front cam works, the rear cam is not being recognized at all. I've tried all variety of troubleshooting (reseating the 12v cigarette adapter. re-plugging the coaxial cable, swapping the coaxial cable inputs) but nothing seems to work. The inputs and outputs seem to be properly aligned (nothing looks tweaked). I sent an email to [email protected] but I have my doubts that they'll be helpful considering I haven't seen a response 3-4 days later and they don't seem to have a phone number to call for live assistance. I did a quick Google search and it seems like people have found upgrading the firmware may help (but not always) but then others said the latest firmware actually has a degraded bitrate for the video, so I'm hesitant to do this and affect the video quality.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

Interesting. Both of my cameras were working for a month or 2 then the rear started acting just like yours. Thos happened after my rear hatch glass was replaced so I though maybe Tesla damaged the cable. I ordered a new cable, no go. I just purchased a replacement rear camera but haven't connected it yet to try. Hopefully it's not something wrong with the main camera.

 

[4SUPER9]

I just installed my Blackvue on my new MS (production 2/2016). The spare wire harness was indeed there behind the front headliner grill. It was not there on my 8/2013 (15xxx) production vehicle. I ran out of time and could not get to the rear camera yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Installation was ridiculously easy. I decided to make my own new power cable to the Blackvue. This way, I had no need to cut the original power cable, and it allowed for a small cable footprint, easily tucked away in the headliner grill. I did this by purchasing the following components ahead of time (total cost ~$15.00):

• Spare power cable (the free end has the 12V wire (mine was green, not Yellow as in the Amazon photo) and a delicate group of fine stranded wires that are the ground).
• In-line fuse housing (uses the same mini-fuses as the MS. I used a 5 Amp fuse). The link says delivery in 3 weeks, but I got mine in 1. I'm sure these are available at your local Autozone or PepBoys
• Fan adapter. This fit the spare power source perfectly, and being that it has wires already attached, it made the install really simple.

As mentioned above, there is no need for a step down voltage conversion. The Blackvue use a 12V input (confirmed on their website).

Note: On the Tesla side of the fan connector, as mentioned above, Grey is 12V and Black is Ground (green is ???). The fan connector cables change those colors. Coming off the fan adapter: 12V becomes Black (not really intuitive, but oh well) and Yellow is Ground (first and third wires). Your fan connector may have different colors than mine.

I cut the new power cable so that is was only about 12" long, and soldered the main 12V power wire to one end of the mini-fuse casing, and soldered the other end of the fuse casing to the Black (12V) wire of the fan connector. I soldered the loose/stranded ground wires directly to the Yellow (ground) wire of the fan adapter cable. (sorry, I didn't take pics and closed everything up already).

I popped off the plastic housings around the mirror base. Man, they did not pop off easily and I thought they might snap! I threaded my new power cable under these housings and into the center headliner "grill" and simply attached the fan connector/adapter to the spare Tesla cable.

While I had everything open, I threaded the rear camera wire to the Blackvue as well, so I wouldn't have to take off the darn mirror base housings again. I'm looking forward to finishing the rear install tomorrow.

 

[NJ Plugin]

GREAT post write-up 4SUPER9, I wish I had such detailed instructions 2 years ago.

 

[rfmurphy81]

I just installed my Blackvue on my new MS (production 2/2016). The spare wire harness was indeed there behind the front headliner grill. It was not there on my 8/2013 (15xxx) production vehicle. I ran out of time and could not get to the rear camera yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Installation was ridiculously easy. I decided to make my own new power cable to the Blackvue. This way, I had no need to cut the original power cable, and it allowed for a small cable footprint, easily tucked away in the headliner grill. I did this by purchasing the following components ahead of time (total cost ~$15.00):

• Spare power cable (the free end has the 12V wire (mine was green, not Yellow as in the Amazon photo) and a delicate group of fine stranded wires that are the ground).
• In-line fuse housing (uses the same mini-fuses as the MS. I used a 5 Amp fuse). The link says delivery in 3 weeks, but I got mine in 1. I'm sure these are available at your local Autozone or PepBoys
• Fan adapter. This fit the spare power source perfectly, and being that it has wires already attached, it made the install really simple.

As mentioned above, there is no need for a step down voltage conversion. The Blackvue use a 12V input (confirmed on their website).

Note: On the Tesla side of the fan connector, as mentioned above, Grey is 12V and Black is Ground (green is ???). The fan connector cables change those colors. Coming off the fan adapter: 12V becomes Black (not really intuitive, but oh well) and Yellow is Ground (first and third wires). Your fan connector may have different colors than mine.

I cut the new power cable so that is was only about 12" long, and soldered the main 12V power wire to one end of the mini-fuse casing, and soldered the other end of the fuse casing to the Black (12V) wire of the fan connector. I soldered the loose/stranded ground wires directly to the Yellow (ground) wire of the fan adapter cable. (sorry, I didn't take pics and closed everything up already).

I popped off the plastic housings around the mirror base. Man, they did not pop off easily and I thought they might snap! I threaded my new power cable under these housings and into the center headliner "grill" and simply attached the fan connector/adapter to the spare Tesla cable.

While I had everything open, I threaded the rear camera wire to the Blackvue as well, so I wouldn't have to take off the darn mirror base housings again. I'm looking forward to finishing the rear install tomorrow.

I also have a very new Model S and am having difficulty right now. I'm hoping you can help step me through what you did. I managed to get the power from the 12v in the microphone grill (using the same fan adapter and power cable from your post; by the way thanks for pointing out which color corresponds with which!) which seems to power both cameras perfectly. Where I'm stuck is trying to get the power cable and the coaxial came from the microphone grille area to the where the front camera will be positioned. I was able to pull off the "tip" directly behind the rear view mirror, but hadn't pulled off the housing directly above the rear view mirror. It seems extremely tight in there, since that's where the AP-specific camera is located. I was able to even out and slide a wire hanger from the front into the microphone grille (after several attempts pushing and poking); however, when I try to wrap the two cables on the wire hanger and pull them through, they just slide right off the wire hanger. It seems like the right angle of both cables is a benefit here. Did you go have the cables go in from the other side or did you do a different trick? I could really use your guidance since you just went through this! Thanks!

 

[4SUPER9]

I also have a very new Model S and am having difficulty right now. I'm hoping you can help step me through what you did. I managed to get the power from the 12v in the microphone grill (using the same fan adapter and power cable from your post; by the way thanks for pointing out which color corresponds with which!) which seems to power both cameras perfectly. Where I'm stuck is trying to get the power cable and the coaxial came from the microphone grille area to the where the front camera will be positioned. I was able to pull off the "tip" directly behind the rear view mirror, but hadn't pulled off the housing directly above the rear view mirror. It seems extremely tight in there, since that's where the AP-specific camera is located. I was able to even out and slide a wire hanger from the front into the microphone grille (after several attempts pushing and poking); however, when I try to wrap the two cables on the wire hanger and pull them through, they just slide right off the wire hanger. It seems like the right angle of both cables is a benefit here. Did you go have the cables go in from the other side or did you do a different trick? I could really use your guidance since you just went through this! Thanks!

Kind of confusing to answer in writing. Well, I could, but it is too much to write back and forth. We are neighbors. I will PM you so we can talk and walk it through. For everyone else, I took off the bottom two covers, below the rear view mirror, by just pulling them down with a spudge. There is not a lot of space there, but enough to pass through these small cables. No need to use a hanger if you pop off these two pieces.

 

[Maximus8]

I want to thank all the contributors to this thread. I spent many days reading and rereading the installs and experiences everyone has shared. A special shout out to @CHG-ON, all I can say is "amazing directions." I was actually in Disneyland waiting in one of the many lines when I received the message from @CHG-ON and after reading it, I wanted to jump off the line and start the install (there was a little problem...leaving kids alone in DL, not a good idea). For all those who want to keep the wires hidden WITHOUT drilling, @CHG-ON figured a way and I can verify it works.