Thread: 2004 Honda Accord, Dual Climate Control, interface and Car-PC Touch screen control.

Looking good. My feeling on the quality is that the BBR are really only made to give the watcher an idea of what is going on, if the footage is recovered. Basically to prove a point. Now I will add, mine is a little bit more choppier because I am not using it the way it was designed. It was only meant to use 2 cameras, and Ive hacked it to use 5. Also when you use 2 cameras, it takes frame rate from the main image to give to the second one. See this is what the purpose is for these balck boxes.



With both people have two different stories of what happened, my camera footage was able to show that the guy in the Volvo was speeding and didnt even stop to check for traffic. The footage also proved that the light was green. Coral Gables Police thought it was kind of cool that I was able to email them what happened.

Thanks PhilG, actually the case was really easy to make compared to the thought, effort and numerous ply and cardboard templates used to allow construction of the case for a perfect fit.

HiJackZ1, agree about BBR design point. Nice video BTW, I like this unit because of the super capacitor battery that runs the unit for 30 seconds or more after power fails and finalises the recording. With 15 second pre-shock trigger and 30 second post recording written to a safe folder it should be invaluable if the worst happens and it should survive a reasonable accident with the recording intact on the SD card. I imagine most of these units are similar and it’s that set and forget always “on” recording that is so appealing.

BTW I still have to add the rear camera so frame rate or resolution will drop a bit once I do that. Still looked smooth in a quick test I did though.

I thought my PC system had suffered its first failure yesterday when the DAB radio appeared dead. FM was ok but seemed a little weak. I haven’t used the radio module for a while and was about to start testing the DAB-FM changeover relay when I thought about the Black Box rear camera I had installed 10 minutes earlier, I unplugged it from the main Black Box control unit at the front of the car and I immediately had 100% signal strength on all DAB stations.

Why is it that every piece of commercial equipment I purchase has some kind of RF problem?

Anyway, as the rear camera is only a low cost addition to the main BB recorder I decided to screw the warranty and take it apart. Would believe they are running Video and power over a 5m UNSCREENED cable, just 3 bits of wire no coax!, no screen!

So, going to pick up a thin bit of 50 ohm coax tomorrow and do a trial run with correct cable. If it’s still a problem then I’m thinking of just dropping the rear Black-Box add-on camera and use my rear Web cam which can auto start with the carpc. All GPS tracking, speed etc will be available on the front BB camera and as the time stamp on the PC is synchronised to the GPS, it would be easy to tie the video together if needed.

Originally Posted by Mickz

Thanks PhilG, actually the case was really easy to make compared to the thought, effort and numerous ply and cardboard templates used to allow construction of the case for a perfect fit.

HiJackZ1, agree about BBR design point. Nice video BTW, I like this unit because of the super capacitor battery that runs the unit for 30 seconds or more after power fails and finalises the recording. With 15 second pre-shock trigger and 30 second post recording written to a safe folder it should be invaluable if the worst happens and it should survive a reasonable accident with the recording intact on the SD card. I imagine most of these units are similar and it’s that set and forget always “on” recording that is so appealing.

BTW I still have to add the rear camera so frame rate or resolution will drop a bit once I do that. Still looked smooth in a quick test I did though.

Yea, mine has a 20 second capacitor. I think its mainly to close out the files and keep them from corrupting. What unit did you get? I most likely missed it in your posts.

Originally Posted by Mickz

I thought my PC system had suffered its first failure yesterday when the DAB radio appeared dead. FM was ok but seemed a little weak. I haven’t used the radio module for a while and was about to start testing the DAB-FM changeover relay when I thought about the Black Box rear camera I had installed 10 minutes earlier, I unplugged it from the main Black Box control unit at the front of the car and I immediately had 100% signal strength on all DAB stations.

Why is it that every piece of commercial equipment I purchase has some kind of RF problem?

Anyway, as the rear camera is only a low cost addition to the main BB recorder I decided to screw the warranty and take it apart. Would believe they are running Video and power over a 5m UNSCREENED cable, just 3 bits of wire no coax!, no screen!

So, going to pick up a thin bit of 50 ohm coax tomorrow and do a trial run with correct cable. If it’s still a problem then I’m thinking of just dropping the rear Black-Box add-on camera and use my rear Web cam which can auto start with the carpc. All GPS tracking, speed etc will be available on the front BB camera and as the time stamp on the PC is synchronised to the GPS, it would be easy to tie the video together if needed.

LOL, thats the nature of the game I guess. I had an issue where I would have issues with GPS lock. Would show me 2 miles off my actual course. Once I moved the GPS to the front and wifi in the rear, all the issues went away.

Yes but the extra work just sucks doesn't it, and highlights again the fact that what works in one install breaks in another. I mean if the equipment was designed correctly with respect to spectrum immunity and radiation interference then we would have less of these problems. I’ve got two GPS RX’s, one front one rear and the Hi-Power WI-FI antenna is 3” away from the rear GPS and does nothing to it at all. Just luck of the draw these days.

BTW I thought I had found the answer for the camera as I had 20m of CCTV surveillance lead with power video and audio in one small lead, cut the bastard in half and WTF – unshielded 4 wires. Man if I did that 15 years ago I would have been shot!

Well after all of that it’s a no go. By running separate cables I was able to disconnect video from the rear camera but leave power – zero digital radio reception.

Hacking the camera connector to allow separate cables also allowed me to try another camera – perfect!

Fault: The small supplied 2nd camera has a huge radiated signal that completely wipes out the DAB radio spectrum. I’m running a roof mounted DAB-FM aerial and with the camera sitting on the car floor it still totally kills every DAB station. Junk one camera!

I have to say that the response from www.visiondrive.net.au has been fantastic. Every email has been answered, sometimes within 20 minutes. They have been talking to the manufacture about this problem and it seems there are some other reports filtering through on the optional 2nd camera. Apparently it's a redesign of the VD-7000 2nd camera in use prior to the release of the VD-8000. In the meantime they are sending me a 2nd camera from the VD-7000 to test.

Getting any after sales service these days is hard enough but great service like this is a pleasant surprise.

The older version of the 2nd rear camera was exactly the same, no DAB reception as soon as the camera is powered.

I borrowed another (different) DAB receiver and placed it in the workshop. It was connected it to an external aerial mounted on the roof of the building. With the camera powered on and 1m from the coax, the DAB signal strength almost vanished. I tried an older CMOS reverse camera and that was perfect, even wrapping the coax around the camera caused no loss of DAB signal, same in the vehicle. Two other reverse cameras, one CMOS and one CCD in aluminium housings also killed the DAB signal and this with only power connected. It appears that DAB reception is too easily interfered with to coexist near most small cameras.

As a last resort I tried using the CCD reversing camera mounted outside the vehicle just above the number plate. It had absolutely no effect on DAB reception. I modified the reverse camera system to send that cameras video output to the Black Box unit while still allowing reverse camera video to the front LCD.

Circuit Connections:



Video is always supplied to the Black Box unit as there was no visible effect when video was parallel connected with the front LCD screen when the vehicle is placed into reverse.

Dual power is supplied to the reverse Camera: One 12v input from the reverse circuit which also switches the video to the AV1 input on the front LCD screen, this automatically detects video and switches to that input. The other supply comes from the Black Box supply circuit.

It works great and all DAB stations are perfect. That CCD rear camera will kill DAB if it’s ANYWHERE inside the cabin. Power and video all run to the front of the vehicle as they did before, the interference is not in the cables, it’s radiating from the camera body. If mounted outside the car and away/shielded from the DAB roof top aerial its fine.

Thoughts - What idiot decided that DAB radio was the way to go for the future of Radio Broadcasting- #$%^. Try looking up DAB interference and reception problems, goes on forever!

If you run DAB radio and you plan on mounting a camera inside the vehicle then you really need to try the camera before purchasing or installing it, and that’s not always possible!

How lucky was I that the main Black Box recorder with its integrated camera has no effect on my DAB reception.

I decided to make another mod to the reverse camera control and add a 2nd reverse camera.

The reverse camera mounted above the rear number plates has a very wide angle lens @ 170 deg. In that location it shows the total rear bumper across the lower part of the screen and from the groung about 8" behind the bumper up to sky above buildings. It allows me to back up to within an inch of an object. However it’s often advantageous to have a view from a higher position and further forward.

The top of the rear windscreen in an ideal position for this, I had installed a tiny glass mounting bracket when testing the B-Box reverse camera and hadn’t yet removed it, I decided to utilise this bracket and the unused BB-Reverse camera and place a switch on the centre console to flip between camera views.

I now have the option of having the reverse view from either a low or high-forward position and of course the B-Box Recorder will also be fed from the selected camera. I still have the problem of killing DAB – Radio reception whenever the higher camera is selected, but at least I have the option of recording or viewing something from that perspective when needed with just the touch of a button.