wireless rear view camera experience

[wiredgeorge]

I have a wired backup camera on my tow vehicle (license plate type) which came with a 4.5" monitor. Works fine. Install wasn't bad. Thought I would go with a wireless camera for the trailer to provide a rear view camera for use when rolling down the road.

Bought a $63 generic oriental made wireless camera/monitor combo. Picked this unit as it has an AV1/AV2 switch on the monitor with video inputs for the wired backup camera and of course, for the wireless rear camera. The monitor is 7" so that would be helpful as well as 4.5" would be a bit hard to see for a rear looking camera. The other feature was that the transmitter for the camera and monitor are integrated into the units so no figuring out where to stash the camera transmitter.

This system cost $63 with free shipping on eBay. How can you go wrong? I mounted the camera next to the middle/upper backup lamp on the rear of the trailer. Tapped into the wires and the install looks pretty clean. Couple of notes here:

1. The AV1 input doesn't work so I have ended up with two monitors in my cab.
2. My trailer has an aluminum frame and fiberglass skin and is only 22 ft. long. The tow vehicle is a crew cab 96 F250. The receiption is a bit sketchy. I have purchased two small antennas; they have 10 ft. leads and are connected to the antenna jacks on the camera and monitor. The antennas have magnetic bases. The one will go on the top of the cab and I will probably silicon the other to the middle of the top of my trailer where they have line of sight with each other. This should improve the clarity and stability of the picture.
3, The rocket scientist who designed the camera mount only allowed to to be placed atop something and not on the side. Strange as this is supposed to be used as a backup camera. When you attempt to rotate the camera in the supplied mount bracket, the antenna hits the bracket and points downward too far to be useful when mounting on a vertical surface. I had to fab a new mount that was about 3/4" deeper to allow vertical mount next to the rear marker lamp on the back of my trailer.
4. Wires coming off the unit for hot/ground are super fine. I cut off both the male/female plugs which terminated in the hair-fine wires and soldered some 22 ga. wire so I could make good connections. I would have like to have soldered the connections to the marker lamp but it was raining a bit and I used wire nuts as they were quicker. I cut a small channel out the side of the middle marker lamp so the wires, covered in shrink wrap, going to the camera couild pass through and the lamp could be re-mounted flush. I siliconed the place where the wires come out.
5. Because power comes from the marker lamps, the headlights have to be on for the camera to be powered so looks like headlights will be on while driving.
6. I had to use the sun shield on the camera that came with the unit as there was too much light, even on a cloudy day for good images to the rear otherwise. I didn't use the original mount screws for the fabbed bracket and sun shield as they were not long enough; they wer M3x6 and I used M3x8. I stock a variety of metric fasteners for my business. I attached the bracket to the fiberglass skin using sheet metal screws after drilling 3/16" mount holes in the bracket. The braket is on snug.

The unit is supposed to be water proof. We shall see. The unit I purchased looks identical to the many I have seen on eBay and Amazon with wildly different prices so not sure if this applies to all of them. The unit had no maker on the box and was called a TFT LCD monitor on the box... not sure if the camera was added to make it a "system". Image is OK and hoping its stability imroves with the addition of the external antennas. Will follow up on that.