I keep getting emails from all the gadget sites with all the new toys on offer.  One thing that I have noticed recently is that spy cams are becoming more and more popular with very small cameras now available at reasonable prices that run on 12v and transmit a picture wirelessly or wired.

It got me thinking about how easy it would be to add one of these to my car to act as a kinda of reversing aid as the view out of the back of the Camaro isn't the greatest.  I already had 12volts in the back of the car for the car audio and the AV switcher was in the boot with free ports and of course the screen in the headunit was already installed, so I was hoping that there wasn't going to be too much work involved.

After having a look around I decided to go for this camera from Maplin.  It was small enough for what I wanted, ran on 12volts and should of been of decent enough quality.  It also had a good wide viewing angle.

When I got the camera home I grabbed hold of a composite cable and cut off one end.  Connected the video strand to the yellow cable on the camera and the ground to the black cable on the camera.  I then got a 12v battery and attached that to the red and back wires on the camera to test it all out.  The camera worked a treat and the picture quality was very nice for such a small device.

I then basically did the same test in the car.  Took that cable I had just made and plugged it into the AV switcher and used the 12V batter to see if I could get a pic on the screen in the car.  That worked well. 

Next step was to run cables from the AV switcher to where I was going to put the camera.  I spliced the ignition and the ground from the wires that were going into the AV switcher and I also grounded the composite cable at the AV switcher as well.  I ran the 3 wires from the boot to behind the number plate.  The Camaro already had a hole in the bumper where the number plate was, it just wasn't big enough.  I had originally planned on having the camera on a small bracket below the car but I finally plucked up enough courage to pick up a drill and enlarge the hole that was already there to take the camera.

The hardest bit for me was actually working out how to attach the camera to the car.  I didn't want to screw it in in case it came through the bumper so in the end I decided to basically gunk it in.  I covered the camera in bathroom sealant to hopefully make it a bit more watertight and it would let me pull the camera if I ever needed to remove it as its not as permanent as glue.

The last thing for me to do was to finish off the camera with a small washer to make it a little neater.

So far the results have been good.  How well the camera will endure a few rain soaked journeys remains to be seen.

This is a pic of the camera set just below the number plate on the rear of the car.  There is a black washer around the cam just to finish it off.

You can click on this pic to enlarge it.  It shows the headunit with the picture from the cam.  The cam is wired to the ignition and is always on as long as the car is on.  It's only on the screen though when I actually select the cam using the AV switcher. 

The only thing I have noticed so far is that the image is actually a mirror image of what you would see if you turned around and looked at the back window.  While this doesn't matter for what I want to use it for it would be nice to have it the right way round but am sure you can probably get a black box to feed the image into that would do this this..but i'm not that bothered.  I have achieved what I set out to do and am pleased with the results.

23rd July 2010 Update

Car Cam mark 1 died due to it not being very waterproof.  On ebay now there are loads of cheap purpose built reversing cameras for cars that are waterproof, have a reverse picture, work in low light or had LED for night vision and are easy to attach to a car bumper.  I have since replaced the original camera with one of these.