Quote:
Originally Posted by Sportsguy83
Hey Dave, I am doing my install tomorrow and I was wondering, what power sources can I use to test my camera? I have a 19.2 Volts Li-ion tool battery, but I'm concerned its too much Voltage and would damage the camera. Aside from that, I have a car battery charger I could use and the car battery itself. (Car battery would be ideal I guess, just trying to see if other options work).
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Yeah, 19.2 is probably a bit high. I wouldn't use that.
First, look around your house -- you might find you have something with an A/C adapter ("wall wart") that supplies 12 V.
Or you can pick up an adapter that plugs into a cigarette lighter outlet and has plain wires. Walmart has those fairly cheap. You might have a device sitting around your house that has that kind of plug to run the device in your car (just make sure the plug doesn't contain circuitry to drop the voltage to something less than 12 Volts).
If you're careful, you can take two pieces of small-gauge stranded wire, strip the ends, and shove one end of each wire into the rear of your factory radio harness (on the pins for +12V and ground).
For everyone else who's wondering why he asked about this -- I've heard from more than a few people who received bad cameras (usually the no-name Chinese ones from eBay). Some have arrived completely dead. Others were PAL even though they were labeled and sold as NTSC (Subaru's HU requires NTSC, even in countries that use PAL for TV). And some died just a few days after being installed.
So I recommend people first test the camera on a TV or monitor. Then test the camera using my harness but
before installing the camera's long wire and
definitely before drilling any holes or cutting any wires. That will make it much easier to return the camera if it doesn't work. Plus, your next camera may need a different size hole.
For a no-name camera, I would even go as far as temporarily clipping the camera to your license plate (or inside your rear window, if you're worried about it getting stolen), and simply string the cable over/around the seats into the trunk. Then drive around with it a few days, to make sure it doesn't die.