2009 E90/E91 Fuse Box Type 2 - My Search for 5amp Constant Power for Dash Cam

[Ooonst 4]

Thought I would post this up in case it helps anyone else out there.

I bought a Dash cam and wanted to hardwire it into my '09 E91 and found a lot of conflicting information out there.

I was looking at the Fuse layout behind the glove box. Easy enough to access once you remove the 2 screws either side on the plastic covering plate. One YouTube video encouraged me to remove some plastic pin to drop the glovebox lid/door down a little. Don't do this. I wasted 5 minutes trying to reinsert the little plastic pin to the pneumatics that drop the lid/door and did not gain any additional access when I had it out.

I think there are 2-3 different types of Fuse layout for these cars, I think the first 1-2(?) types of layout are mostly found on the earlier models and mine was a Type 2, post-2008. I used this page - https://fusesdiagram.com/bmw/fuse-box-diagram-bmw-3-e90.html as a reference but some of the info in there seemed a bit off. The Type 2 diagram half way down appears to match my layout and fuses pretty closely.

I was looking for a 5Amp feed when ignition was off for the Dash cam. A lot of posts out there claim that Fuse 81 and 83 are good candidates for always-on power but no comment as to how many Amps they are. I thought this information a bit suspect as Fuse 81 and 83 on my board appear to be pretty high Amps 30-40Amp sockets. Also a lot of people complaining that the "always-on" fuses that they located will function for 1-2 hours then power down afterwards. 

This post - https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125203 and specifically this post - https://www.e90post.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11060092&postcount=21 was the key. (TL:DR) Fuse 2 turned out to be the one!! Dash cam all wired up to this bad boy and worked like a charm on motion sensor mode all night long. The only problem now seems to be that the cam looks like it melted sitting in there all day in the summer sun... (See pic)

[Cammsport 391]

Cheers @Ooonst, where'd you mount the camera and did you route the cable/s through the a-pillar? 

[Ooonst 4]

Initially I went for an off to the passenger side of the rear mirror mount and left it over night on a test run but the wide angle of the lens actually picked up some of the mirror mount! So I simply pealed off the weird clear antistatic thing you attach the GPS mount to and whacked it right square in the middle beneath the rear vision mirror. Yes, I routed the cable off to the left and down the A-pillar and then into the fuses behind the glove box.

The hardwire kit seems to drain quite a bit of battery even when I leave it in G-Sensor (as opposed to Motion detection) mode so am constantly coming back to the car complaining that the battery is getting near flat. On the plus side the car seems very capable of managing it's own electrics to prevent the battery going totally flat so that hasn't happened to me,... yet. I even suspect (but have not yet proven...) that the GPS Mount that you slip the camera into is draining battery without the camera docked into it so have now started unplugging the USB cable from the mount when not in use to see if that makes a difference. Went for a nice cruise out to Wainui beach yesterday so was thinking the battery would get a good charge. Then pissed about cleaning the upholstery with the radio going and no motor running for an hour or so and proceeded to run it nearly flat again. Oh well - Good excuse to take it for another long drive I guess?!