Back up camera

[TerminatorX5]

Originally Posted by SlickGT1

I'm going to get this sucker. Once its in my hands, I will figure our a proper location.

Waterproof Night Vision Car Color Rear View 170° Angle Reverse Backup Camera JT8 | eBay

shiny!!!!
i like the design of this camera... i might consider it - considering that the previous install is reversible

[patrickkc]

wow that one does look very OEM terminator! do you have any night shots of the license plate lights?

[TerminatorX5]

i will do some night shots tonight... as a matter of fact, i have the LED on the camera side and the OE on the other side, looks weird... I also have the Check License Plate Light warning in the dash - never got around to turn off the cold monitoring... I consider those two issues easily resolvable and will get to them once i get off my lazy butt... lol... ebay has a lot of LED license plate light for sale and i will be considering the 2-LED versions as the camera side has 2 LEDs.

[patrickkc]

thanks!

Also, I was looking at this one on ebay,

700T Wired Car HD Reversing Backup System Rear View Mirror Camera Components | eBay

I'm assuming those leds around the lens are infrared for the night vision? or else it's going to look ridiculous if I throw it in reverse and a ring of leds light up my backup camera.. haha

[TerminatorX5]

The consumer cameras with the IR LEDs to light up the camera view at night is a nice gimmick used by the sales people...

It is much better to get a camera with the lowest rated LUX rating (lowest as in smallest number of lux, like 0.1 or 0.05), as opposed to camera that has the LED for the infra red lighting... those IR LEDS are not powerful enough to light up anything...

Take it from me, I do do things for living (i work for US gov-t), and that includes cameras.

the camera in that link looks like the bumble bee camera but a bit bigger - in that case the bumblebee camera is much better - i had it for many years on my 4.6 until I came across the license plate camera for the 4.8... As a matter of fact the bumblebee camera had better night performance than the license plate camera...

this camera has 1.5 lux rating, the shiny camera from slick's link has 0.1 lux - the slick's camera is much better...

[patrickkc]

thanks again Terminator! huge help!! I really know nothing about these backup cameras at all. I'm just looking for keywords, HD & Night Vision. Now I will look at the LUX rating as well

[TerminatorX5]

the one that i bought is from this guy Wireless Car CCD Rear View Camera for BMW 1 3 5 x3 x5 x6 E39 E53 E46 E82 E88 M3 | eBay

i just checked out his lux - it says, less than 0.5...

night picture is crappy...

so, i might get another one, with better rating - thank God, i did not drill anything, so i can experiment with different cameras!!! lol... it is very low on my priority list, to be honest - the camera works, and when i have nothing better to do, i might venture into it again...

[SlickGT1]

Term, so did you wire it to the PDC, or reverse light?

[TerminatorX5]

Wired it to PDC, pins 7 for the signal and I think pin 6 for ground... I will do a write up, as i did take a lot of pictures, including the soldering of wires and whatnot...

Once I do the write up, I will post to one of the reverse camera threads that spawn on this forum, like there is no tomorrow!!!! hahaha

camera comes on as the gear goes to reverse, stays on while i back up, and stays on for a bit longer as i drive forward and then flips off, as the PDC shuts off at certain speed forward...

my kids are having blast turning the camera on manually and making faces into the camera when i am parked with engine running...

[SlickGT1]

Lol, when do you plan this writeup? Hopefully soon. I'm just a camera away from finishing this epic Journey of parts. Lol