So, long story short, I recently moved up from a 2002 protege DX to a new (to me) 2018 CX-5. After a long night watching (probably mostly russian) video of people doing retarded things and pulling brake checks on other cars, my (better?) half decided a dash cam was a good investment. This prompts a list of questions. I DID make a purchase, looking at a pretty high resolution system that had the bells and whistles I was looking for. However, my electrical skills are.. well.. pretty bad. I'm a computer geek, but I missed out on the era where we soldered our own boards because they were $2k a pop. (ah, the 70s and 80s).

I have this: Vantop H612T dashcam mirror system along with Vantop's V9H hardwire connection kit:
I'm pretty stable on how to run and connect the lines to the fusebox, with the included fuse tap for the front cam and power, etc. What I'm iffy about is connecting the reverse light red wire and finding diagrams or maybe a video on doing that connection directly on the 2018 models. Seems like everything changed from the 2017 to the 2018 models, nobody has a prewired harness or anything for this model year (my dad swears up and down crutchfield should). The handful of videos I HAVE seen that include '18 CX-5s don't show adding or changing rear cam, I'm assuming due to it already HAVING a backup cam system.

So, I guess the real questions are: 1) Is running that red wire to one of the reverse lights the best way to do this? 2) Is it possible maybe or better/worse to tap the existing backup camera's line for this? (does that run off the reverse lights or is that something pulled directly from the mazdaconnect system computer to tell the OEM camera it's in reverse?) 3) Would it be preferable/relatively easily possible to feed the aftermarket cam into the mazdaconnect system since the resolution is much higher anyway? (I'm pregaming this answer as no, based on resolution of the screen, various other issues).

Anyone that can point me either to video or some schematics that would help me figure out any/all of the above?

 

Heya - I purchased a CX5 after years with my '99 Golf Exciting to have all this new tech available to me LOL I actually tapped into the power running to the rearview mirror of the CX5 using an adapter sold by a company called "Dongar Technologies"
I posted a video on youtube which you can check out here if interested. Search for "2021 Mazda CX-5 Dashcam Installation | Dongar Adapter" - Hope this helps, Cheers.

 

Tap into the reverse light wiring.