Not the most exciting update but it was necessary.
I wanted to fit a dashcam, both for the removal of “he said, she said” arguments in an accident but also as a backup incase my action cam failed on a trackday. That’s a much higher quality camera with 4K 60FPS recording but the Dashcam seems to be pretty good and far better than my previous one.
I bought the MioFive after it winning the Autoexpress Dashcam 2024 test. For £80 it’s not bad value at all.
Nothing irritates me more than getting in a car and seeing the power cable stuck to the A pillar with no attempt made to hide it. Bearing that in mind I removed the A pillar trim and passenger side footwell panels to gain access to the fusebox there. The cable was tied to the existing car loom running down the A pillar.
Identified a Permanent 12V unused Fuse in the fusebox. This is for the camera USB adapter feed.
Next is a switched live. This is only live when the ignition is on. When the ignition is turned off, the camera switches to Timelapse mode to save power and memory. It needs this swithced live input to know when to switch to the ‘standby’ mode.
I used the supplied fuse adapters, they make it very easy to add a supply and allow piggy-backing if there are no empty fuseholders.
Earth is a convenient M6 stud next to the fusebox.
All fitted and the power supply cabletied to the main loom to the left of the fusebox.
From the drivers seat I can’t see the camera much at all, the screen turns off after 30 seconds so it’s not distracting.
Quality is certainly good enough for what I need. Number plates are easily readable. Once I turned off the incredibly “Welcome to MioFive” everytime you tuen on the car, it was ready to go 
Same process was repeated for the GoPro Hero 3+ driver cam which is used for trackdays and removed when on the road.
The footage from this camera is added as a small inset into my trackday videos.
Rear cam was more challenging and I’m still not sure if this will work. Initially I stuck it to the screen in the cabin, but as there is a screen between the cabin and the engine bay AND the rear tailgate screen, the reflections were bad.
We decided to mount it in the Engine bay, so there is only one screen between the camera and the outside. Whether it will get too warm and turn off is something I’ll only find out on track. To make it as secure as possible, we sourced a GoPro threaded mount and tapped it M6x1
A short length of M6 bar was threadlocked into the adapter.
The nut is to tighten the thread into the centre threaded hole in the tailgate frame that’s ususally used for the rear trim.
As the adapter is tightened, it also secures the trim panel whilst adding a very stable mount.
Angle looks weird as the tailgate is open 
We ran the USB plug through the main Cabin to engine bay loom. It was very tight, so the pliers were pulled apart slightly to allow it to fir without damaging any existing wires.
Withthe rear bulkhead trim removed it was easy to access the fusebox on the shelf and repeat to same process as the front.
Far fewer reflections, once cropepd it’ll be ideal for the rear view. The camera is controlled by a GoPro remote that turns on both the rear cam and the cabin cam at the same time.
There is a good chance this will overheat. If so I’ll unscrew it and put it in the cabin with a suction mount
It’s easy enough to remove if that’s the case.
The front facing camera is a challenge. Once I fit the half cage I can mount it from there as I did with the Golf. Until them I needed something suitable and reached out to a few fellow R8 owners for inspiration. They all did it similar, mount a pole to the headrest and put the camera on the end.
I’m always aware of the problem with having a bit of aluminium sticking out of the side of the seat, even if it is a long way from anyone, I’m still not sure. Instead I used some domestic waste pipe. The length is short enough that even on a test drive, it didn’t seem to vibrate at all. It’s light enough and flexible enough that if the worst were to happen, it wouldn’t impale anyone !
It’s at a slight angle, but I can fix that in postprocessing. For the few trackdays before the half cage is fitted, it should do the job.
As you often find with headrest mounts, the view is more interior that what’s going on outside. I can zoom in and get a bit more of the outside but it’s the best I can do.
My last issue is capturing ECU data to be able to monitor oil, coolant and inlet air temperature. I usually overlay RPM and Throttle on the videos but I don’t think the refresh rate is fast enough for this as I’m logging via VCDS which is around 5Hz. For the temperature logging, it’s fine, 1Hz would be enough. It will allow me to see what the oil hit whilst on track and if it stabilises during a session like the Golf used to indicating the cooling capacity is sufficient, or if it continues to rise until it hits the ECU limit of 130 where it sets the RPM limit to 6000rpm.
Thanks for the positive feedback so far, I do appreciate it and any comments or suggestions are welcome. 