DIY: Backup Camera
 

Just a straight forward job of installing a backup camera. I got it from Pep Boys for $100. It is designed to mount on the license plate but I cut a square hole in the rotary emblem on the back and put it in there.

First I tried their "Wireless" version but had problems with reception between the mounted transmitter in my rotary emblem and the receiver in the ash tray.

As it turns out there are actually less wires to connect with the wired version but you have to route the long one all the way from the trunk to the ashtray.

The trunk panel removes with 4 pop out things and the reverse wire is obvious.
I ran another wire from the removed cigarett lighter plug to the trunk for accessory power.

You can fish the wires thru a little gap that you can see in the trunk into the rear of the console (under the spare tire) after you remove the jack and several more pop off things for the bottom trunk mat.

Backup Camera part 2
 

It took a while to cut up the ash tray. I made two spacers out of 1/4 inch balsa wood and used black silicon to fasten them into the ash tray.

Backup Camera part 3
 

Here is the end result.

Respectfully,
Kay R. Fisher

P.S. I had high resolution pictures but the system would only let me upload 145K sized pictures.

Man, what the hell did you do to that pic?

Take your high res pic and resize it to like 640x480. That'll fix your size requirement problem.

Done - Thanks

Respectfully,
Kay R. Fisher

I had an interesting problem with the reverse signal.
Reverse on my car is just over 9 volts at the trunk to the backup lights.
That is probably reflecting the voltage drop of the bulbs.
Anyway the camera sometimes would not come on. So I put a relay in the circuit to route the nice 12 volt accessory power to the reverse input to the camera and had the relay energize from the 9 volt reverse signal.

Seems to work OK now.

Respectfully,
Kay R. Fisher

Nice solution

Do you have the instruction for how to wire the camera from the bumper back into the car?

Not really. It's been too long since I did it to remember great details.

The unit came with a wiring harness that seemed obvious. It needed power and ground and the reverse signal. All this had to be supplied in the trunk and a long wire bundle (part of the supplied harness) runs all the way from the trunk to the ash tray. The camera on the bumper has one pair of wires with a plug that you have to route thru into the trunk and plug into the harness. I used one of the holes in the back of the trunk and an existing rubber gromet that was used for sending the wires thru to the license plate light.

The only tricky part was figuring out how to bet the console parts inside the car apart and that was documented in some othere DIY notes here that I followed.

Respectfully,
Kay R. Fisher

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but is there anyway to do this to the front too? I just want to make super sure that I never pull too far forward in a parking spot.

Sure. Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn't have to do it himself!

do you have any idea how to do the same stoff but whit my gps screen

why would you want your GPS screen in the rear accent?

or

why would you want your GPS to come on only when you're backing up?

:lol2:

There was an article about this in the do it yourself section.

Nice job with the screen placement. I don't know if that's where I would've put it, but i guess it works.

Backup cam on GPS, we sell a 'lite' version as well:

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-do-yourself-forum-73/diy-s-video-into-nav-av-electronic-video-switcher-install-44095/

Didn't mean to dig up this old thread but after 2 years of putting this off, I finally got this done once and for all. I bought one of derwankel's rear fog lights (over 2 years ago), painted it black, drilled a hole inside to slip in a camera, and then inserted the finished piece behind the rear accent.

It looks pretty clean from the back but it's pretty noticeable to plain sight since the lens is so large (reason why I went with this one was because it had the best night vision out of all the cams I tested and the lens doesn't have that "bug eyed" look that other wide angle cams have).

In retrospect I would have been better off going with a plain old license plate cam and using derwankel's rear fog light the way it was meant to be used (as a fog light or brake light). The accent is further back then majority of the rear bumper so objects/cars are actually closer to my bumper than they appear. Plus having a cam all the way down there means field of vision is too low. On the display it looks more like a street crawler cam then anything (as you can see in the last 2 poor quality pics below).

I have my config setup so that my video switches to the camera when I reverse like everyone else's, but I also have it connected to another video input so that I can switch to the camera the entire time I'm driving too. It's nice to have finally taken care of this long forgotten project.

If you need a back up camara, there is something wrong with your driving skills.

backup camera to GPS wiring
 

How did you wire it up to the GPS? What kit? any details would be appreciated

Respectfully,
Kay Fisher

truemagellen's post right above mine has a link to the DIY and video switcher kit from AVElectronic that is used to tap into the nav so you can connect a DVD player/Xbox/etc. (https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.php?t=44095) There are two versions of the kit and they all come with an input for reverse cams.

:uhh: Thanks for your 2 cents. Want mine? You've got nearly 9,000 posts on a forum in 4 years. Looks like there's definitely something you need...and it's not a back up camera. (Thanks again for your contribution to this DIY thread though.)