For a 2012 Prius, is there any power in the headliner/map-light area that switches on/off when the car is switched on/off? I'm installing a dash cam and it would be super convenient if I could get power from up there.
Thanks for the info. I'm not sure which mirror is in there (my wife's car), what identifying marks should I look for to identify it as homelink or not? Also would the car not be wired for a homelink mirror even if it didn't have one? My thought is it's a snap-in option, but maybe I'm wrong?
Dealers have a battery powered homelink mirror they can add which requires no wires. The easiest thing to do for a dashcam is to run a power wire down to the fuses and install a fuse tap. You can get unswitched 12v and ground at the map lights or pickup everything at the interior fuse box. Some dashcams can be wired to unswitched 12v and use logic to go into a sleep mode based on a loss of the higher charge voltage when running. Others will wake up if their impact or motion sensor detects something. This is what your map light will have: As a side note, if you manually turn on a map light it will not turn itself off when you leave the car. A guaranteed dead battery in the morning.
Thank you very much, this is extremely helpful info about the plug! I was thinking of using the voltage as a trigger, so the camera can act as a security camera for a short time after the car is turned off (as the battery voltage naturally comes down). In my truck I have one of those things that is supposed to run the camera until the battery voltage hits 12.x volts, then turns off the camera so as not to kill the battery... but it's a bad design and the device itself kills the battery after about a week of sitting (I work from home so it sits a lot). So I might make one myself that's more efficient. I can tell by the headlight brightness on the Prius that the 12v voltage comes up significantly as soon as the car boots up, so it should be a pretty easy trigger.
I use a12.7V relay to trigger the fogs for use as DRLs. Works fine. Has about a 30 second dwell after ignition cutoff.
I've used a similar voltage-controlled switch and been happy with it. Turns on when the car is made READY, and can be set to stay on for a certain amount of time once the car is not READY (but will always turn off anyway if the battery voltage gets below a lower setting).
