Caravan Rear Camera, look for the lurkers
In March this year I bought from Amazon the revamped 8" Toguard mirror dash camera which turned out to be an excellent product. It comes with both a front facing camera and rear facing camera. However on my Spring tour of France this year there was a lot of very boring video recordings of the front of my caravan, but it made me think. Suppose there was a camera on the rear of the caravan which was used instead of the one fitted to the rear of the car. I bought what I thought was the correct one from Amazon and tried it. Unfortunately it was not compatible giving no picture and I returned it to Amazon who very promptly refunded me. Somewhat disappointed I e-mailed Toguard in China writing in English thinking I would not get much help. I could not have been more wrong. A very helpful lady called Rita replied and explained that the CE39 camera was not yet available in the UK and could she send me the correct one from China. It arrived in about a week and after buying some extension leads again from Amazon I fitted it to my Lunar Ariva and now I have a rear view that allows me to see the lurkers who tuck themselves right behind the caravan. There are three ways you can activate it. Run the red wire attached to the camera to the positive feed of the reversing lights or alternatively connect to the ignition protected feed to the fridge or finally set the picture on the Dash cam to rear camera and if you just touch the screen you can see behind the van.
I have yet try it out in Europe but preliminary tests in th UK look promising.
Chris Atkins retired engineer but still thinking
Comments
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Chris it would be handy to have some pictures to illustrate your story?
David
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I have the inbuilt facility of a rearview camera built in to my Swift Elegance 565 2017. Have not yet used it since I feel I would be distracted by its view of rear approaching traffic. Anyone else have one fitted and any comments/hints to make?
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This Year I bought the Garmin BC30 rear camera to accompany my Garmin Sat Nav, you have to have a transmitter plug-in. I bought an extension lead for the camera as my van is 8 meters long and my car is 4.5 meters so not taking any chances. Once set up, it worked pefectly we drove to Coatia and we could easily see when we had passed big lorries on the Autobahn. You cant really see the approaching traffic in the camera as it doesnt see that far back only about 6 to 8 meters clearly, however we used it to make sure we had cleared trucks that we had overtaken we gave a bit more room and in that case it did what we wanted it to.
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I bought a 7" TFT monitor from eBay and plugged it into the cigar lighter socket of the car and mounted it as a push-fit to the air vents. This has a number of inputs including standard video. I then attached a standard CCTV dome camera (Swan) to the rear leg of the Lunar Clubman bolted through a convenient existing hole that doesn't get in the way of the leg winding down. A shielded 3 core cable then ran from the camera along the underside edge rim of the van using self adhesive cable ties (New van, I'm not drilling it). I put a snatch plug between the caravan and the car and then connected it to the monitor. This was very useful prior to having a mover fitted, reversing the van right up to the storage area back wall, site posts etc and also for how close cars and lorries get to you in heavy traffic.
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