I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on:
I recently installed a new Kenwood head unit and now I want to install a reversing camera for it, the problem is that Amazon has like a million options and it’s hard to tell which one might actually be decent, since the reviews can’t always be trusted.
I’m leaning towards this one, does anyone have it?: Reversing camera
Also open to other suggestions, not necessarily only from Amazon, it’s just the most convenient site.
The camera itself is attached to the plastic cover, that sits inbetween the 2 numberplate lights on the boot lid.
As for the long cables that go from the head unit to the camera I routed them via the back of the glovebox, down the back of the fuse panel at the passengers feet, under the sill trim along the existing wiring, fed it passed the seatbelt area along the rear quarter and into the boot.
I then fed the cables up the rubber grommet, up the existing wiring, through the other grommet and through the boot lid.
Red & Yellow wire.
I remember now, because that’s what the wires for the reverse parking sensors are connected to.
I added a length of wire to the very short red wire that came with the camera and connected it to that Red&Yellow wire.
I didn’t need to remove the big panel behind the seats, but did remove the 2 panels shown with the Red X’s on the second photo above.
Once those are removed, it’s just a matter of feeding and/or “fishing” the cables to the boot.
I used that Airpuxem camera on my 2016 Mazda3. At 170 degrees it has almost too wide an angle of view, and care is needed in aiming it to minimise the classic wide-angle barrel distortion in the useful part of the picture. A 140 degrees camera might be better.
It replaced the previous obsolete make that suffered from condensation inside the lens. That Mazda3 uses the same hole profile in the boot-lid tin-work as for the plastic blanking plug on the MX-5 NC, but slightly less complicated surgery needed (Junior hacksaw and file) on the CX3 camera bracket I actually used, plus some packing. I’ve added some pics to my review for the Airpuxem.
I used a step-up converter from the 6V supplied from the head unit to give the camera 8V, but it’s not needed on the NC. I had to trim the leads to be short and tidy with relevant plugs and sockets as part of the boot loom.
I used a similar camera in my 25AE NC, but here took the 12V from the reversing lamp. The clever bit is using a slightly greater diameter umbilical to the boot lid, so it looks OEM with no leads added on.
Inside the car is an exercise for the student and depends on how one accesses the display, just make sure there are suitable plugs and sockets to allow removal or fault finding, as here in the NC.
