I Don't Need A Dash-Cam, but I DO Need To Mount A Backup Cam To My Trooper's Tailgate Door

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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,601
2,009
126
[TWO DAYS LATER]

I pierced the rubber boot for the rear-body-to-tailgate wiring at the joint where it plugs into the body-panel anchoring the tailgate hinges, just below the tail-light. I thought I would do damage to this marvelously well-preserved boot, but the wires I passed through it make a really snug interference fit through the hole, and it can be sealed with RTV silicone adhesive-sealant as a finishing touch once I've finished with the wires,, the dashboard switch and the camera itself.

The antenna and power wires from the camera to the wiring harness behind the rear luggage panel fit nicely behind a thick weather-stripping that merely mates with the top of the tailgate. This weather-stripping I describe here does not have the purpose of sealing the interior from exterior weather, but the wires seem to fit behind it without distorting it in the least. The wires are routed neatly around the edge of the sealing weatherstrip for the tailgate and out of the way -- and out of sight -- as if they weren't there at all.

When I started contemplating the various options for mounting my camera -- machine-screws and nuts, strong adhesive or Neodymium magnets -- I was very wary about the last option. The second-hand observations I gathered from other forum posts elsewhere seemed to warn about handling the magnets, keeping them away from small children who might suffer more than having their fingers merely "pinched". And on the other hand, I also wondered if the magnets could slip off and drop my camera onto my tailgate window. How would I know? I've never had any experience with Neodymium magnets until now.

So I alternately fretted over whether the magnets would be too strong or too weak. That is, I wondered if there would be difficulty attaching them to the camera bracket, or whether they could be jarred loose going over an unexpected speed bump. And as I conferred with my electronics friend in Virginia, he argued that there would be risk of mounting the camera askew from its intended location on the body metal, and he told me there would be paint damage for trying to adjust them.

So he was upbeat and very positive about my strategy from lining up the camera bracket with magnets to drop the assembly precisely on the desired area.

Here's the jig I devised to seat the bracket/magnet assembly on my air deflector panel:

Jig for Camera Bracket.jpg
I could think of a few ways to temporarily mount this foam-board block on the deflector panel. I didn't have any two-sided tape. I could glue the block to the deflector with any of three different adhesives -- including Flex Seal Glue. I've already proven that large zip ties will hold the bracket to the car, so they might have worked equally well to hold the foam-board block. In fact, I wish I had tried the zip ties first, after having chosen to use glue.

I'm only glad that I didn't use RTV adhesive/sealant. The Flex Seal seemed to prove a possibility I might have used it to mount the camera on bare windshield glass. That stuff is a very strong adhesive. But foam-board breaks up and pulls apart with enough effort and force, and Flex Seal can be removed with paint thinner and the use of something like a Dobie dishwasher pad. I would say, after this, if you want an adhesive to stick something on metal, Flex Seal is the better choice over RTV.

Even so, I coated the round magnet surfaces with RTV, having seen some of these magnets with a rubber coating meant to avoid damage to the mated surface. This was also my Virginia friend's recommendation.

The jig worked perfectly. But then, when I thought to remove the jig, I used an Xacto saw and put a scratch in my paint. In the process, I also discovered that the RTV behaves more like a lubricant before it sets. I accidentally moved the magnet/bracket assembly a millimeter or two. Luckily, I had marked the four corners of the bracket on the deflector panel with a white paint pen. So it was easy to move it back into place.

After the sun comes up in a few hours, I'll wait for the right amount of daylight and take a snap of the mounted camera, to post here.

As for the scratch I made in the paint, I had a bottle of Bronze Blue Pearl touchup paint in the garage refrigerator, and another little bottle of primer. I also had a clear-coat paint pen. You can probably see the paint touchup in the right light, but otherwise it looks as though nothing had changed about the deflector panel's paint. It's an old car. It's not perfect. So I can live with the paint touchup. (You should see the little shiny paint dimples I put on the hood of the Trooper last year to repair chips from years of encountering small stones bouncing up from the highway!)

It's been 10 hours since the bracket/magnet assembly was installed with the RTV on the magnet surfaces. For all intents and purposes, the RTV has set.

That camera ain't ever gonna come off that deflector panel! And it ain't ever gonna slide around or move out of place!


I'll post that snap later today -- as I said, after the sun comes up.

These are the only things I have remaining to do. The ground wire from the camera was secured to the driver-side luggage-compartment grounding point hidden behind the interior trim panel, so I didn't need to extend that wire. The Camera power wire has to go all the way forward to the dashboard, for connection to a five-pin rocker switch. I've already routed it as far as the pillar between the driver's front and rear door, so that job will likely be finished tomorrow after some tedious soldering and crimping.

I've learned now how these five-pin rocker switches work, and it's rather simple. They have two LED lights: an illumination light intended to go on when the side-marker and parking lights are turned on with the steering-wheel combination switch and its illumination control lever; and a second LED which also lights up when the switch is flipped to the ON position.

The LED connection to the tail-light relay switch and circuits (all in parallel) needs to be made at some convenient location, and I can do it later after connecting a coil of yellow wire to the appropriate pin on the switch. All these wires need to be installed in advance. It's a bitch to remove the knee-bolster lower dash-panel, so all the wires need to be ready for connection -- to the camera, the fuse-box extension and the parking/side-marker harness (somewhere) . . . .

First, I'll use the temporary cigar-lighter plug and wire that came with the camera to test the new antenna. The antenna sits behind the lower luggage trim-panel, just behind the back seat of the Trooper. Input from my Virginia electronics friend makes me hopeful that extending the antenna to the SUV interior will pose no problems or drawbacks. But I want to test it before I reinstall the interior trim panel.

So -- again -- I'll take that snap of the mounted camera and post it later today . . . [there MUST be an interest in all my prolix ramblings here: the number of hits on this thread now exceeds 1,000. So I'll continue with this journal of my backup camera project under that encouragement.]

PS By the way. despite all the web-forum stuff about the Flex Seal products being an overhyped promotion hoax, I must tell everyone -- the Flex Seal Tape and Flex Seal Glue are really good adhesives. Anything you put together with the glue is not likely to come apart, and the stuff is troublesome to remove. In hindsight, I wish I'd used it on the magnet surface. But the black RTV I used is definitely good enough.
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,601
2,009
126
OK -- back again to report.

First, the new $8 "Bingfu" wi-fi antenna works great. So I'm almost ready to re-install the luggage area lower trim panel.

Second, as I said before, that camera with the two magnets is never going to come loose or slide around. In addition to the 100-lb-each magnetic force, there's a layer of black RTV silicone adhesive filling in the space between the magnets and the slightly, imperceptibly curved deflector panel surface. And the RTV is an adhesive that will make it difficult or impossible to move those magnets horizontally.

I took some cautious pulls on the assembly, and it seems to be as rock-solid as if it were attached with four machine screws, washers and nuts. Here's today's snap of the final mounting for the camera:

P8160513.JPG

My friend in Virginia knows about my experience replacing all the parking / side-marker and courtesy lights with LED equivalents. At some point, with insufficient resistance in the parallel circuits wired to the tail-light relay, turning on these lights at the combination switch will cause the fuse to blow. In other words, the only thing that keeps it from blowing at the moment is the incandescent license plate bulb, and if that burns out, the fuse will likely burn out with it.

So my friend advised me not to wire in the LED light that illuminates the camera rocker switch at night.

If anyone has any insights or solutions to the problem here -- or the risk of it -- let me know. I'm aware that one solution is to wire in some "equalizer" resisters to one or more pairs of light circuits connected to the tail-light relay.

I think I'm going to connect that yellow wire to the rocker switch anyway, and I'll coil it up and stuff it under the dashboard until I'm confident what to do about this risky "LED situation".

ALSO!! Many thanks to Herm0016, Mindless1 and Nutbucket for their input!! The idea for the magnets was great, as were the other thoughts. And I would not have thought to ask my electronics friend in Virginia about the magnets if it had not been mentioned.

WE-E-E-E-EEEE DID-IT!! IT'S DONE!!!
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,601
2,009
126
The biggest drawback with the Rohent Wi-Fi Back-up Camera might be its resolution, which is lower than 1080p. In fact, it's somewhere below 720 and above the old analog TV standard. However, as I see it, that's plenty. For me, the advantages are integration with the Android, simple and robust software, build-quality or durability, waterproof standard IP69K, and solid mounting options. Thus, I wouldn't have two LCD screens to put on my dashboard -- a place for which clutter should be discouraged. It seems to operate reliably, with a minor caveat explained below.

Another drawback -- until I fix it -- is the rear view of the camera as opposed to the mirror. The mirror sits as much as 8 feet in front of the camera position and approximately the same height. Yet the mirror display presents images that appear nearer to the Trooper than does the camera. With the camera, a driver who almost seems "right on your tail" in the mirror seems a safer distance behind the Trooper. I still have to explore possibility of a "Zoom" feature in the camera software.

One more observation here: The camera seems to operate with total reliability, in terms of quickly establishing or even re-establishing the Wi-Fi broadcast. But here and there, over say a 20-minute or half-hour drive to another town, or a multi-stop circuitous grocery errand, there are "frame drops" -- appearing to be single momentary frame drops. The screen turns white with a message to enter the wi-fi setup, a frame or so only allowing the user to see that there is a message with a word like "Setup" but no time to read it. The rear-view image is instantaneously restored after that frame-drop. This was reported by another user, in a truck application operating as "always on".

CORRECTION: According to the camera's specs and manufacturer Amazon promotion, the Rohent camera indeed does have "1080p". What ever it is, it is more than adequate.
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,601
2,009
126
NEW DISCOVERIES!

I couldn't say how all the "new stuff" like Android receiver head-unit, voice-recognition and voice-navigation, backup cameras -- the dashboard LCD displays -- affect people's inclinations about what to do with their money. Do people buy new cars for this stuff? I wouldn't know.

So I got the Rohent camera installed, wired, switched. No problem making the Wi-Fi connection to the Android tablet when I start up the car. All a big success, although some would say "What's so great?! Big deal!"

Now I've had maybe a couple weeks to drive with this camera. Occasionally, I would think "Gee! All that trouble, so I can have a second rear-view mirror. So what?"

Last night -- a moonless night -- I decided to take the car out for a drive at 3AM in the morning. Ever hear that old expression, when someone asks you "Do you know where I'm comin' from, Man?!"

NIGHT VISION!! NIGHT VISION!! There's your advantage for having a backup camera (call it "rear-view camera". That's a quantum leap in night-time driving. I'm totally amazed. The night vision makes it totally "worth it'. I can see "where I'm comin' from". You look in your rear-view mirror on a moonless night, you can't see shit. With this? "Yes, you can! Yes, you can!"