Installing a reverse camera in a T5 campervan - how-to guide.

RichieB

New Member
Hi,
this is my first post when I have put a wireless reverse camera on a T5.1 campervan.
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I could have put it over the numberplate where the view point would be poor and the camera may pick up water/ dirt from the road OR at the top next to the brake light out of the way, but close to the bike bike where there might be a limited picture. I particularly liked the design of this ebay camera that is integrated with the brake light.
However when I received it, it had no screw holes for the light nor a connector for the LED lights !
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So I had to swap the black housing, so the camera and red case had the old light fixing. This was fidgety and I broke some of the clips on the new black housing that I was discarding anyway.
Next was the wire the light and camera. The existing LED connector was fine. Now the wireless transmitter module (from ebay) was connected to the camera and the power that powers up the transmitter needed to be connected to the 0v and 12v reverse light. So the module was stuffed at the top in the chassis near the light. Amazingly the signal is ok for most of the time. A wire was then threaded on the outside of the door across the mechanism to the flexible rubber wire loom.

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This was a really difficult job to do as the wire got stuck even when I used a stiffer lead wire. Once done I threaded the wire back through the large light housing grommit and put a 3.5 power plug on (using soldering).
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Now the light housing needed have a socket. I didnt want to cut or join any wiring loom wires and I wanted to be able to disconnect the plug of the light housing. Again using a soldering iron and a power socket.

I was surprised that there is enough power from the reverse light to power up the transmitter.

The next big problem was the Pioneer radio that had a reverse light input and video camera input. The receiver connected easily to the radio, but the power was an issue. I tried 2 types of CAN bus decoders that you connect to the CAN bus and that extracts the reverse gear and puts 12v on. This connects to the radio reverse wire and the power to the receiver. I could not get the modules to recognise the T5.1 van CAN bus. In the end I connected them to a T5.1 switch on the front dashboard. When you switch it on the radio shows the camera when you are in reverse.
I'll put more pictures on if anyone wants more details.

This is inside the light housing/ cluster.
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