Who is good with rear view cameras? i want it to activate while not in reverse...

i installed a OEM VW rear-view camera that works with my RNS 315. Everything works as it should, but i want to make it work without the car being in reverse. i would like to hook it up to a switch where i can turn it on and off as i please. Reason being is i would like to check out the straps on my motorcycle when i have it on the trailer.

the wiring is pretty straight forward:
red: 12v power
brown: ground
blue: 12v signal hooked to reverse lights

One would assume if you hooked the blue straight to the battery, the rear-view camera would pop up in the display. Doesn't work that way. the car needs to be in reverse and you need 12v to the trigger.

Car is a 5spd so my initial thought is there a switch that triggers when the car is in reverse somewhere. i would need to trigger that switch and have a seperate 12V trigger to make this work.

Have you tried using a switch (you can get cheap ones from Radioshack, Home Depot, etc.)? My old head unit required a trigger wire to be connected to the parking brake to watch videos only while parked, but if I connected it to a switch I could flip the switch whenever I wanted to be able to watch videos while moving.

realcyberbob said:

Have you tried using a switch (you can get cheap ones from Radioshack, Home Depot, etc.)? My old head unit required a trigger wire to be connected to the parking brake to watch videos only while parked, but if I connected it to a switch I could flip the switch whenever I wanted to be able to watch videos while moving.

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a switch wont do it, I can connect 12v to the trigger wire and it wont work. I need to figure out how it knows when its in reverse

it's not the rearview camera that you will have issues with getting to work... it's the radio.
If you search the pinout for the radio you will find no input for the reverse signal. (unless I'm more tired than I thought)
Which means it's on the CAN bus.

You could likely get the trans controller to show reverse... but I'd bet that would likely do other things to the rest of the car that would be less than desirable.

relic1 said:

it's not the rearview camera that you will have issues with getting to work... it's the radio.
If you search the pinout for the radio you will find no input for the reverse signal. (unless I'm more tired than I thought)
Which means it's on the CAN bus.

You could likely get the trans controller to show reverse... but I'd bet that would likely do other things to the rest of the car that would be less than desirable.

Click to expand...

hmm, OK. doesnt seem like it will work how i had hoped then

addictedtogum said:

hmm, OK. doesnt seem like it will work how i had hoped then

Click to expand...

you could theoretically use a signal splitter designed for driving multiple displays off of a single source to feed another display mounted elsewhere.
But complexity (harness and matching video formats) and price is going to suck a little.

I'm curious, where did you get the OEM camera setup?
I'm going to be picking one up soon. (camera/harness/etc)