Garmin DASH CAM Mini: Review and Install in a Ford Transit

Garmin DASH CAM Mini: Review and Install in a Ford Transit

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People elect to install dash cams for several reasons: evidence in case of accident, prevent fraud, capture footage of a road trip, etc. In the article below, we documented how we installed the Garmin Dash Cam Mini in our Ford Transit and why we chose it. Hope that helps!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click a product link and buy anything from the merchant (Amazon, eBay, etc.) we will receive a commission fee. The price you pay remains the same, affiliate link or not.

Portrait-FarOutRide-Isabelle-Antoine-Van

Time Spent

0 HOURS

Total Cost

$ 0 USD

Material

ItemQuantityLink
Garmin DASH CAM Mini1Amazon
Parking Mode Cable (Garmin)1Amazon
Micro SD Card, 64GB (Class 10)1Amazon

Understanding The Garmin Dash Cam Mini

How Dash Cams Work

Driving Mode

This is the basic function of all dash cams, including the Garmin dash cam mini: it records continuously when driving, but not when parked. Most dash cams start recording when they receive power and stop when power turns off (power = auxiliary socket).

Parking Mode

Dash cams equipped with parking mode allow to record when parked (requires power at all time). To save on power and memory, recording is triggered by a vibration or movement sensor (depending on the model) and stops after a certain time.

Power

In driving mode, most dash cams are powered from an auxiliary socket (cigarette lighter). // In parking mode, most dash cams are hardwired to the vehicle power system (positive, negative and ignition).

Video Files

Because recording continuously takes huge amount of memory, old videos are automatically deleted to make space for new videos. Most dash cams use sensors to detect an event and will "lock" the event's video (before/during/after), preventing unwanted deletion.

LCD Screen

Dash cams without screen are smaller and less distracting. Videos can be watched via another device (such as a Smartphone). // Dash cams with screen allow to watch "live" videos and playbacks. Some of them have "driver awareness features" such as forward collision warning and lane departure warning.

Dual Dash Cams

Dual dash cams feature a front and rear camera as well. The rear cam is commonly hardwired (cables) to the front camera. The rear camera can either face back into the car’s interior (taxi/uber cams), or it can look through the rear window and record the road behind your car.

Field Of View (FOV)

Common field of view found among dash cams is 120 to 140 degrees. While a larger field of view means wide image is captured, this comes at the cost of distortion and decreased resolution, particularly around the edges. Therefore, a wider angular field of view isn't necessarily better.

Resolution

Better resolution means more details are captured, allowing for example to zoom-in on licence plates. 1080p resolution is considered standard these days, but some dash cams records up to 4k. Remember that higher resolution means larger video files, more power and less night video quality; so it isn't necessarily better.

Dash Cams that caught our attention

Apeman Dash Cams

Apeman's are the most popular dash cams on Amazon. While the reviews are generally good, digging deeper reveals the typical issues common with low-end products: they "almost" work like the more expensive ones, have occasional bugs, have incomplete or badly translated manual, have questionable customer support. That being said if you're looking to get a decent low-cost dash cam, this is the one to get!

Apeman Dash Cam

Garmin Dash Cams

Garmin is well known as a GPS devices manufacturer, but they also ventured into the dash cam market. They offer higher-end dash cams, from the advanced 66W to the simple Garmin Dash Cam Mini. All Garmin dash cams feature the Auto Sync: Auto Sync wirelessly connects up to four Garmin Dash Cams at the front, back and sides of your vehicle to provide virtually complete 360° coverage.

Dash-Cam-Garmin-66W-vs-Mini

Our Choice: Garmin Dash Cam Mini

We tried different lower-end products (Joying radio, electrical connectors, etc.) and each time we ended up regretting our decision. We’d rather pay a bit more and get a product that works as it should, is reliable and durable. So Garmin it is. What we personally expect from a dash cam is to record videos; that’s all. We don’t want a large distracting screen packed with “driving-assist” features that we won’t use. So the Garmin Dash Cam Mini (amzn.to/2QJzg7n)  is the perfect match for us! We don’t want the dash cam to be powered from a 12V socket (our dash is already clustered with smartphone’s USB cables already!), so we’ll be installing the Parking Mode Cable (amzn.to/2FiLXRf) for a clean look.

We’ve been using the Garmin dash cam mini since January 2020 and it lives up to the expectations we have from a quality product: both the cam and the app works flawlessly. Only complain is that it takes a while for the app to connect to the camera (for live feed or to review footage), but we honestly don’t use that often so no big deal… 

Garmin Dash Cam Mini Sample Footage

Garmin Dash Cam Mini Installation to our Ford Transit

1- Install the Garmin Dash Cam Mini to the Ford Transit windshield

1.1- Clean the surface with isopropyl alcohol:

1.2- Peel the tape off and apply pressure to the support:

2- Hard-Wiring the Garmin Dash Cam Mini to the Ford Transit

There are 3 connections required to hard-wire the Garmin dash cams: positive (constant power from battery), negative (a.k.a. ground) and accessories (a.k.a. ignition). We recently upgraded our radio and we are well aware that we'll easily find these three connections there. So our plan is to route the dash cam cable around the headliner, to the A-pillar, under the steering column then to the radio:

2.1- Pull up the unclip the top panel (no screws).

2.2- Pull back to unclip the front panel (no screws) and detach the airbag & the hazard plugs.

2.3- Pull back to unclip the panel under the steering column (no screws):

2.4- Pull up to unclip the cup holder (no screws). Don't be shy!

2.5- Pull forward to unclip the A-pillar trim. Don't take it completely apart as it is retained with a plastic cable; just take it about 1" away, that's good enough.

2.6- Now that everything is out of the way, we can route the parking mode cable. We started by fixing the adapter with tie-wraps under the steering column:

2.7- Route the cable up to the radio and into the A-pillar (via the cup holder):

2.8- From the A-pillar, route the cable along the headliner by simply pushing it in (you can use a plastic thingy to help):

2.9- From the headliner, push the cable inside the rear-view mirror cover (no need to remove the cover, you can gently pry it away from the windshield to make it easier):

2.10- Connect the cable to the USB port of the dash cam:

2.11- Connect the positive, negative and accessories to the radio wiring harness:

Here is the color code if, like us, you installed an aftermarket radio unit (faroutride.com/radio-upgrade). See items in bold:

ITEMAVH-W4500NEX COLORMETRA HARNESS COLOR
GROUNDBLACKBLACK
BATTERY CONSTANT POWERYELLOWYELLOW
SWITCHED POWER (ACC)REDPINK
ILLUMINATIONORANGE/WHITEORANGE
PARKING BRAKELIGHT GREENN/A*
FRONT-LEFT SPEAKER (-)WHITE/BLACKWHITE/BLACK
FRONT-LEFT SPEAKER (+)WHITEWHITE
FRONT-RIGHT SPEAKER (-)GREY/BLACKGREY/BLACK
FRONT-RIGHT SPEAKER (+)GREYGREY
REAR-LEFT SPEAKER (-)GREEN/BLACKGREEN/BLACK
REAR-LEFT SPEAKER (+)GREENGREEN
REAR-RIGHT SPEAKER (-)VIOLET/BLACKVIOLET/BLACK
RIGHT-RIGHT SPEAKER (+)VIOLETVIOLET

3- Initial setup

3.1- Make sure the dash cam is powered (turn your keys to "run" position) and insert the SD card.

3.2- Format the SD card by pressing the microphone button for 8 seconds.

3.3- Download and install the Garmin Drive App to your smartphone. Make sure your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are ON. The App is very intuitive, so we won't go through all of it; you'll figure it fast enough!

General Menu
Settings
Parking Mode Settings

To prevent the battery of your vehicle from draining, you can disable the parking mode after a period of time. We personally have a pretty big battery bank in our Ford Transit, so we leave it at "Always On":

4- Using the Garmin dash cam Mini

4.1- To use the dash, just forget about it! It turns on automatically when driving your car. Remember that old footage will be automatically deleted, unless the dash cam detects an "event" or unless you manually choose to save a video.

4.2- If the Garmin dash cam is hard-wired using the parking mode cable, it saves videos when an event is detected (using the motion or impact sensors). Saved videos from parking mode don't get automatically deleted; they will stay on the SD card until you manually delete them.

That's it, drive safe!

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Hello! We’re Isabelle and Antoine 🙂 In 2017, we sold our house (and everything in it), quit our engineering careers, and moved into our self-built campervan. Every day is an opportunity for a new adventure... We’re chasing our dreams, and hopefully it inspires others to do the same!

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4 thoughts on “Garmin DASH CAM Mini: Review and Install in a Ford Transit”

  1. It is a wonderful article dash cam, which can be the best option as per your need. I like how you have researched and presented these exact points so clearly. Thank you for this article! This is really very informative for us.

    Reply
  2. Did you consider locating the cam in the rear mirror shroud? I think there might be power in there, as that’s where the lane avoidance camera/rain sensor normally goes in vehicles for the driving impaired.

    I think you can search for “goiter” in the Ford Transit Forum and find limited info on it, including picts to take the thing apart.

    Cheers,

    -d

    P.S. Why do you even have a rear view mirror there?

    Reply
    • With my Ford Transit, the factory installed back-up camera is in the rear view mirror. I’m guessing that’s why they still have theirs as well.

      Antoine, while watching the Mexico footage, I was curious to know about insurance in Mexico — is your van paid off, or did you finance it? If the latter, how are you insuring it out of country? I thought I’d read that you can’t get insurance south of the border unless you hold title to the vehicle. Appreciate your response.

      Reply

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