Adding a front camera

Just got a call back. Chris told me they are about 2-3 weeks out from finishing up the harness. Price would probably be around $50 for the harness alone. Camera option is up to you. He told me anything with an rca should work. Will wait to hear from him again soon. Sounded like he will be sending me a prototype to test and will get some pictures of the install as soon as I talk to him again and he send me the stuff.

 

$50 for a freakin' harness? That's 40 ft of 16 gauge wire and a toggle switch. The letter said including camera in about a week... That was 9 months ago, and now he wants another 2-3 weeks with no camera? The bright side for you is the tester of a prototype that posts pics on TW should by all rights get his harness for free.

Meanwhile, I've decided to go braille with a row of spikes mounted on my front bumper. Maybe I'll park behind that dude one foggy night.

 

The first guy I talked to said they will sell both with and without the camera. He mentioned that the price for the kit with the camera might be a little steep so its cheaper to just get one off Amazon. The second guy I talked to didn't mention prices but did mention to me that he has a harness made, but doesn't have any way to test it out. The braille thing would work a lot better with a plate bumper. Only reason I miss my frontier was the metal front bumper that I would bump my neighbors with when they parked too close.....good times...

 

I've been thinking about doing this. Trying to find schematics for the camera system. This shouldn't be that hard to tap into and if it's RCA inputs, there are several RCA switches to go between video inputs. Shouldn't be too hard to tap into the backup camera above the reverse relay, and splice a manual switch to activate the video switch for another camera.

 

The problem is that its not an RCA input on the radio and without changing the entire head unit and camera out, it'll be really hard to add anything else.

 

Awesome @mCat, keep us posted! I would buy the harness for $50 all day long! You can get RCA cameras for $15 on eBay. Haven't ever looked on Amazon

 

So the latest news is that the sales guy is sending me the prototype of the harness. He asked me to send him a deposit for the stuff just so I don't take it and run(made sense to me) and I will take some install pics and write some instructions and will get my deposit back. They only have one unit built right now but he said they can start making more selling them very soon after I test everything and get the instructions done.

 

Sub'd

 

Sounds cool, I'll keep an eye on this.

 

Sounds like a plan.

 

Have you seen the prototype harness yet @mCat ?

 

It's supposed to be getting to my house tomorrow some time. Will take pics when I get it.

 

So the stuff came in the mail. Seems pretty easy to install. Does anyone know of the wires for the acc power and constant power going to the radio? Non jbl 2014. I only got the camera mounted and ran the wire into the cab for it. The rest will have to wait till Monday after the weekend backpacking trip.

 

Thanks for the update @mCat! Exciting to see it coming together. I don't know of the power wires. Ill see if I can find a wiring diagram.

 

Subscribed

 

Awesome. I found a few older miring diagrams but nothing for the 14. I guess they changed if after 12? I'm feeling lazy and don't want to get the tester out to test every wire

 

I would love to do this mod for tight city parking, especially when there's low obstructions I can't see below the hood.

 

Just saw this thread but when I lived in South Africa we drove a Prado that had both a front, rear, and side cameras and it was pretty slick. Rear camera was activated in reverse like ours do. Front camera was fixed into the bottom of the front grill and it even had indicator lines that showed the direction your wheels were facing similar to the digital parking lines shown when the rearview camera activates on our trucks. Side mirrors were built into the bottom of the mirror housings and were really slick. The display was in the headunit in the dash.

They aren't speaking english but if you scroll to the one minute mark you can see what it looked like. If someone could sort out a kit for our trucks I'd buy it in a heartbeat as I loved it.

 

fantastic idea, sub