My 05 E53 3.0D has reverse camera fitted by dealer. Pretty useless after all this time. Image cuts in and out during reversing. Very poor quality image during daylight, completely useless at night. Quality and consistency improved when I recently replaced the rear screen and went over all connections by removing and reconnecting but now back to poor. Mine has same notch taken out of rear handle trim

Most people don't realize that a ccd camera dies over time. All of the ones I bought that are over 8 years old now on my cars are pretty much blind now. The sun roast them.

Just replace the camera with a cheap Chinese one and problem solved. The newer cameras are (pardon the pun) night and day difference in quality over the old ones.

The low level night output is awesome now compared to the old ones.

The new camera can be spliced into the old cameras harness so its not hard to swap them.

I have my camera pics and the botton for the front camera also, how can i upload them?

Cheers Crowz
Never thought about doing that. I am planning to upgrade the entire Stereo unit in the future so will add new rear camera to the package

That is correct!

I'd really hope that if the camera was fitted by a dealer that they would have done a better job of fitting the relay in. It is extremely dodgy and looks like something that someone who isn't trained has done - I did better work when I was younger fitting stuff to my cars. Stereo's, driving lights etc.

I still want to chase the wires out for the relay and the camera. I do have a Chinese camera which I may try and install - Once I sort out the wiring.

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So today gave me a chance to look a bit further into the reversing camera situation. Attached are the photos of what is some sort of "interface" box which is tucked away near the rear window wiper motor.

The small 4 core cable goes to the camera. The other connector appears to be just like a factory BMW connection, which is attached to a very factory looking loom. However, the one give away is that the loom for the camera box thing is run alongside all the other wiring on the upper tail gate.

I did do a couple of voltage checks and found that there is only 6 volts going out to the camera from the interface box. May be right, may be wrong. Perhaps something is fried in the interface box and that's why I only have 6 volts, and why my camera isn't exactly fully functional.

At this stage, I really don't know where the cable from the interface box thingy goes. BUT, there is around 1 metre of cable in the battery compartment area which looks very similar to that cable. It's probably the same cable at a guess. But I'm not sure where it connects.

Anyway, that's today's findings.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...7adbc20d7c.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...bbc08bef87.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...b443981321.jpg

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That's not oem, however it's pretty easy to swap out the camera. I added a camera to mine about a two years ago and the quality at night was outstanding, the camera on my E70 is absolutely useless at night, while the $20 camera i installed on the E53 is crisp (as crisp as it can get on that resolution)

For anybody wanting to install a camera take a look at this : Audio Video AV Input Lead Cable Adapter You can pretty much add anything to it after that.

I also suspect that these rear cameras are aftermarket installed.

When I put the Eonon GA6166 unit and rear camera into my X5 I experienced shaky and intermittent camera images.

I finally learned what others had learned in that picking the voltage off the reverse lights directly to trigger the camera picks up some really weird voltage monitoring stuff going on by the BMW brain.

The solution others have suggested and the one I also employed is to use a relay to isolate the camera "signal" from the actual reverse light voltage feed wire which has all that BMW brain stuff going on. Here is what I did to get a better rear camera experience.

https://xoutpost.com/1100757-post199.html

Mike

Guess that explains the funky relay box on the backup camera I just bought for my x5.

It has a positive and negative that come from a key switched source and then a positive and negative that go to the reverse light wires themselves.

When I was testing it about 30 minutes ago it took all 4 wires hooked up to actually power the camera. That would give 100% isolation from the voltage testing the car does.