Motorhome rear cameras - finally

I wired up and fitted the expensive rear wireless cameras to the motorhome - yes, I used power tools and things on my £70k motorhome and survived - eeeeek!  Come with me on a magic carpet ride of wonder on how to set these marvels of technology up....and watch me fail, yet again - well, technically, I didn't fail, the technology failed, which then made me fail... but maybe I will find a solution.. we'll see.

As explained previously HERE, I need to have eyes in the back of my head - okay, at the rear of my motorhome.

I purchased some cheap cameras, but they had their own issues as explained previously.

PROBLEM: as mentioned, I just want/need to reverse off my driveway without killing people - yeah, I know, it sucks having to be good - but y'know, sometimes you have to conform.  In order to do this today, I ask my missus to stand the other side of the road with a walkie-talkie and she uses her eyes and brain to determine if/when I can reverse the 4 1/4-tonne weapon of mass-destruction off our driveway and into the path of incoming traffic.  I'd prefer not to use the missus in this way and my missus agrees - she states she is not getting up at 06:30am to help me doing this if I want to take the motorhome to work - so an alternative approach had to be found.

Hazzah! I think I found a solution. Wireless cameras.

I can have 2 cameras, 1 pointing left, 1 pointing right and I can view them on the screen in front of me - all connecting in a closed-loop system, therefore, no internet connectivity, no doing anything they shouldn't, just wireless direct connections.  sweet.  Let's get installing!

As you may (or may not) notice I crunched this corner of the motorhome on the first day of owning it - so I have no issue with unscrewing this light fitting.  The interesting thing is - these are NOT indicators, as I thought they were, these are just "running lights", they come on when you turn the lights on.  Now, that is handy as they will be connected up to 12v.  As is usual, I'm in the kitchen preparing the components for installation.  You can see the wireless camera and the size of the orange indication light - the have about the same coverage size:

The head-unit is a nice size, the buttons however are a bit odd, they do not press in, you merely rub over them - if that makes sense?

Right, we're armed with all the "stuff" - yes, I even gave the instructions a little read this time:

Let's get cracking (not literally, as that is fibreglass...):

That's the passenger rear side - as you can see it's not been washed in a while - ignore the white duct tape, nothing to see here, move along...

Yeah, I reckon that will fit nicely in that gap - I spent a fair amount of time pondering if I wanted to mount the camera "inside" the fibreglass, so that you just had a flush fit camera - but then I remembered the wireless aerial connected to the back and there would probably be an issue with connectivity if I did that.

Time to remove & clean up the driver rear side - you can tell, due to the lack of duct tape.

Before continuing, I thought that maybe I should fit the head-unit.  However the head-unit, comes with an old style 12v cigarette lighter connector and some nice person has fitted 5v USB connectors - time for a bit of dash removal:

That wasn't "too" painful - but I'm not too happy about that temporary 12v cigarette lighter fitment - I will be getting online and getting a matching new black one that I can screw into place and hold it tighter to the dash.  For now though, let's continue.

I did some connection tests and wondered if the connection was not so good, so dug out a 12v battery to do some testing.  okay, I fitted 1 camera and I can now see 1 camera output!  woohoo!

Let's go see if that matches what the camera can see:

Well, there is the camera - you can just about see it!

That's what is showing on the head-unit

...and that is me putting the phone camera in the same place.

Yep - that looks good to me! apart from the image being flipped - but I'm sure there is a setting for that.

Passenger rear side fitted.

Driver rear side fitted.

The view from the rear - they stick out a little bit, but not that bad!

...and now to pair both the cameras at the same time.

So, oddly, I can get the perfect image from 1 camera OR the other camera - but not at the same time!

Hmmmm... a little baffled, I wondered if it was down to several things:

As both cameras are being powered on at the same time, are they "fighting" over connectivity to the head-unit and only 1 wins out, which is why I get one OR the other?  What if I delay the powering up of the 2 cameras when doing the pairing exercise? (will potentially need to extend the 20second pairing time)  I'll also have to figure out a way to switch the cameras on/off outside of the light switch for the motorhome.

Maybe one of them is a dodgy camera? or they are both set to be "camera 1" somehow internally?  So purchase another camera and see!  Okay, maybe a bit pricey option - but having 3 cameras isn't a bad thing, I can add it as an "extra" camera to the system someplace.

....

UPDATE: I opted or another camera....and same thing happened.  Grrrhhhh... then I had a thought, maybe it's the power tot he head-unit?  That dodgy old cigarette lighter fitment is mega old and was for the Vanguard originally, I wonder what would happen if I connect directly to a 12v battery.  Hmm...well, that seemed to not work.  Let me turn off camera 3 and 4, so it doesn't scan for them.  Hang on a minute.  Whoa! did I just see 2 images at the same time?  woohoo! wrong way around, but I'll take it!

Right, now to connect back to the motorhome power and retry - yep, still working.  Ah ha, maybe that was what it was?  either way - end result achieved.  Will try it again in a couple of days time to make sure it still works when firing everything up.  I'll also purchase a new power connector or even look to wire it up to the radio.

For now though - happy days.  Mission accomplished.  As to that "spare camera", I might hook that up in the centre rear bottom of the motorhome as another rear camera or might even fit to the front...who knows...it'll go somewhere that I can power it up.  Might even stick it above the house front door - then if I reverse the motorhome onto the driveway I can use that to help guide me backwards / know when I'm aligned to the garage door?

UPDATE: BTW - I tested these out last week, and they worked GREAT! I could see to the end of the road on both sides of my motorhome, having 2 cameras on 1 screen sqwishes up the image a bit, but it's def. viewable and I am pleased to say it did he job.  Let's see how it does around Wales during October.