back up camera

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Beerman

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Joined
Jun 28, 2005
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97
Location
Hanna City, Illinois
I need to check the connection from my back up camera to the cable that connects it to the monitor. How do I do that?  Do I have to take part of the ceiling down?  or is there a way from the outside. I have a 33 ft class a ultrastar. I was looking in the manual and I believe there is the camera jack that plugs into a longer wire that runs to the monitor. It should be right inside the body of the rig.
Thanks
Brian
 
Well, first you need to gain access to the rear of your monitor.  There should be a cable connected there by a plug.  The cable should be black and about the size of pencil.  Remove the plug from the monitor.  Next you must gain access to the camera.  If this is mounted on the rear of your RV, there should be some sort of access panel, perhaps inside on the rear wall.  The camera should have a black cable coming from it which is connected by a plug to a cable going inside your RV.  That cable is the one which runs to your monitor.  Disconnect the camera plug from the RV cable.  Now you have the cable disconnected on each end and can do whatever checking of it you wish.

 
Sometimes you can access the rear of the camera though the back wall of the coach, e.g if it is in a closet or a cupboard above the bed. Look for a screw-on access panel.  On some you remove the camera itself from the outside - mine is that way. Carefully strip away the caulk from around the housing and loosen the screws to remove.

The fore & aft wiring may run either thorugh the celiling or under the coach, usually depending on whether the monitor is hung above the dashboard with wires coming from above or mounted in/on the dash with wires coming from below.  If its below, you may be able to find wires under the coach somewhere. Look at the back of the rear cap from below and you may see them coming down from the camera.
 
OK i got the connection out it is still together. is there anyway to see if the camera on the back is broken? like some kind of test? It seems like there is nothing being sent to the moniter on the dash, no video or sound.
Thanks
Brian
 
No idea how you would test the camera itself to see if it was bad.  However, if you unplug the camera from the cable, and the cable from the monitor, the short cable from the camera should plug into the monitor where the cable was.  Now if the camera works, you have a bad cable running to the rear of your RV.  If it doesn't work, the camera may be bad. 

You mentioned sound, that indicates you may have a microphone on the camera and could hear sound through the monitor.  If that is the case, and there is no sound or picture, you may not have power to the camera.  The 12-volt power comes through the cable from the monitor to the camera. 

You have a 4-wire cable if there is no microphone on the camera, and a 6-wire cable if there is a microphone.  If you know how to use a volt/ohmmeter, you can check for 12-vdc on two of the wires coming from the monitor.  If the 12-volts are there, then I would suspect the camera may be at fault. 
 
Thanks for the help guys, it was getting power so I ordered a new camera. I read that the sony ssc-520am only lasted about 6 years anyway and its to be replaced with the 530-am.
Thanks again
Brian
 
Here is a suggestion.... Many of those monitors have an A/B switch,  Find a place where you would like to put a camera (I have a gasser, it's around 30 feet from where I sit to where the fuel hose goes in, so there is a camera in the panel with the gas cap and it's the "B" input on the monitor)  It can be in the side, As I did under the gas cap so I can line up on a gas pump or near the electrical inlet so you can line up on a power pole.  (Actually the fuel side is the entry side so there are other advantages)

Now, the secondary advantage of a 2nd camera is that it quickly tests the monitor, very quickly in fact if it works then you know it's not the monitor that went south.


After having some paint work done on my rig the back up camera did not work.  I stopped at a department store to get some flea be gone cause we'd picked up some.  And as I returned to the rig I spotted the problem.. Climbed up on the hitch gear, pulled the masking tape off the camera and it worked again
 
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