12V to 5V DC - Mini Usb needed

I have a dash cam in my car which is using a Mini usb at the cam to a cig lighter. Naturally, the cig lighter connection is intermittent. There are a lot of 12v to 5v kits for hard wiring, but every one I find on Amazon has several reviews about the kits quitting after a few months. Seems it's all junk. Any suggestions of how I can accomplish this with a hope that it will last? Brand suggestion? Thanks

Roger

You can buy a female cigarette lighter socket and hardwire it to the vehicle. Use fabric tape which doesn't stretch with heat to secure the power plug to the new socket. You could also disassemble the cigarette plug and solder wires to the connections inside and then connect those to the vehicle. Make sure to use the contacts that would join to the two points which contact the socket's 12 volt points. Check to see if the manufacturer has an accessory hardwire power harness instead of the cigarette plug style.sparky

sparkie wrote: You can buy a female cigarette lighter socket and hardwire it to the vehicle. Use fabric tape which doesn't stretch with heat to secure the power plug to the new socket.

That is what I've done, EXCEPT I didn't use fabric tape, I used elec tape which of course could stretch. Although, I don't think it's been hooked up long enough to stretch out. Something I thought about was trying to disassemble the male cig lighter connector to get access to the 2 wires that make contact to the female plug contact points, and hard wire those. What do you think of that? Seem feasible?

sparkie wrote: You could also disassemble the cigarette plug and solder wires to the connections inside and then connect those to the vehicle.

Oh, I think you are saying the same thing. For some reason I interpreted that to mean the female part.

sparkie wrote: Make sure to use the contacts that would join to the two points which contact the socket's 12 volt points.

You bet.

sparkie wrote: Check to see if the manufacturer has an accessory hardwire power harness instead of the cigarette plug style.

JFYI...they do have one, but it too has comments about a short life. I will admit that of the numerous hard wire kits, in some cases, the percentage of complaints vs. positive feedback is low. But then also, I suspect a high percentage of folks don't bother to post again after it ultimately would fail. I appreciate the feedback. I will try to taking apart of the male plug and see how it goes. Thanks

Roger

Well, there is a kink in the plan. Now that I have taken panels out to get to it, it turns out that the wire coming down for power to the cig lighter is not a male cig lighter end. It is a USB-A which is plugging into a male which plugs into the cig lighter socket. I am presuming I could cut that connector off. From what I find on a wiring diagram search, the USB-A should have 4 wires. There would be a red for positive, and a black for ground, and I should be able to pull off of those and hard wire it. Does that make sense? Thanks

Roger

I would suggest finding the correct adaptors and then hardwire a female power outlet. Plug them all together and tape them up well to prevent any movement. This will free up any dash power outlets and keep the wiring hidden inside the dash.sparky

sparkie wrote: I would suggest finding the correct adaptors and then hardwire a female power outlet. Plug them all together and tape them up well to prevent any movement. This will free up any dash power outlets and keep the wiring hidden inside the dash.

That is the the way I had it, including tapeing. But it still worked maybe only 25% of the time. So I'm wanting to achieve a hard wire method with no chance of any movement causing a loss of connection. I did realize a bit ago that the last thing I asked about eliminated the 5v step down. So that won't work. Thanks

Roger

You can't run the USB directly off 12 volts. If the cables and adaptors are good you shouldn't have any issues. I would suggest checking them to see if your can get them to cut out and replace the bad ones. Don't go for the cheap parts as they are prone to fail.sparky