Back up camera issue

I recently had a new head unit installed (Kenwood ddx374bt) and had my back up camera (which had been working fine in the rvm) switched over to it as it had an input for it. The camera will pop up on the head unit in reverse but is losing the signal at times. The screen goes blue and indicates no signal. If I put it back in park then reverse again still no signal. If I turn the ignition off and restart the truck then it will come back on once I go to reverse but will eventually lose signal again. Any ideas why this is happening?

 

Bad connection I think is all it could be

 

Put the original head unit back in and see if it’s fine after a few days, if so, bad connection or, bad head unit

 

Any chance of a voltage mismatch, causing a protection circuit to kick in? 6V vs 12V?

 

Probably shit connections within the camera itself.

I am currently experiencing a connection issue myself with my camera's. I have high suspicion to believe that both of the camera's I have are intermittently defective as the connection is just pure blackout sometimes and nothing corrects it. It just sort of comes back to life on it's own. Unless the RCA I fabbed up to work with the headunit is internally defective within the wiring.

 

Also had a Kenwood headunit that would intermittently blue screen with the OEM camera. It would come back on its own but was really annoying. I kept the camera wired into an RCA connector and put an adapter on the OEM headunit and swapped back and it worked fine, so I don’t think it wasn’t the wiring in my case.

I really didn’t care for the check your surroundings message that you had to clear to see the camera in reverse and loss of some other features so I’m building off the stock deck instead.

 

This is my guess. Factory camera is 6v isn't it?

 

Bumped to try to get confirmation on this...

If it is 6v what do I need to do to correct it?

 

Just wanted to update with the response I got from Kenwood technical support:

"I understand you are inquiring about the DDX374BT. The message will appear if the camera is powered off and not providing a signal. I recommend that you inspect the power control wire for the back up camera and confirm it is not loose or exposed. You can test the wire with a volt meter as well to verify if it is losing power."

It seems as if it may be a protection circuit kicking in shutting camera down. What's the remedy or if you can at least point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated!

 

After digging around in the forum I believe I've got it figured out. Looks like I need a 12v to 6v step down converter. Axxess part #

$24 ax-cam6v 12-volt to 6-volt camera stepdown

ax-cam6v. $13.99 on Amazon!
I'll report back once installed!

 

Did you forget to report back?

 

Sorry, I thought I had it figured out but apparently not. I went back to my installer with the newfound info and the step down converter but he didn't think that was the issue because he said he didn't do anything with the power connection, only routing the video wire to the head unit. Regardless, he got it working without using the step down converter and in my glee to finally have it working I forgot to ask him how he did it. I reached out to him but he's been so busy he can't remember! Can't blame him I guess. One thing I noticed however is now, when shifting to reverse the rearview mirror will show a blue screen for the image briefly (a couple seconds) then disappear where before it didn't pop up at all. I tried to disable the rearview mirror image through the mirror menu but that will keep it from displaying on the head unit.