I’ve wanted to add a rear view camera system to my truck for almost a year now. I have a 2000 Chevy K3500 that I drive and tow my 20′ travel trailer with. Having a rear view camera makes hitching up to the trailer a breeze. I had one on my last truck and I could hitch up in one shot.

I added a camera to my last truck and learned a few things in the process. First, E-bay cameras work well enough (and are cheap!), but the voltage regulators in them are not designed for continuous duty. I had hooked the camera power up to the 12v aux line for the trailer connector, so the camera was powered whenever the truck was running. Depending on the temperature, the regulator would enter thermal shutdown after 20-40 minutes of driving. I did that so that I could turn the camera on whenever I wanted.

Version 2.0 will be an upgrade from the previous version. Features include:

1. Up to 3 camera inputs
2. Ability to activate camera without being in reverse
3. AUX input?
4. Provision for powering the cameras from the controller (avoiding the problem of overheating the regulator)
5. Look cool!

I’m a big fan of ATMEGAs and Arduinos, so they’ll be my development platform of choice. I’ve found a Quad Analog Switch works fine for switching video. In the past I’ve used a CD4066 Quad Analog Switch. There are lots of parts that will work – I actually ended up using a different part because its what I could get locally.

Bill of Materials:

• 1 ATMEGA 328p
• 1 74HC4316 Quad Analog Switch
• 1 16MHZ Capacitor
• 2 22pf capacitors
• 2 10uf capacitors
• 3 2N4401 transistors
• 3 2N4403 transistors
• 1 2N3904 transistor
• 1 L7805 voltage regulator
• 5 10kΩ resistors
• 3 4.3kΩ resistors
• 1 3.3kΩ resistor
• 1 0Ω resistor (you could also just use a piece of wire)
• 1 4-pin dip switch
• 3 PTC fuses

The Display

I also needed to come up with a display for the system. In doing some internet research, I found that my truck has the mountings cut out for an overhead console behind the headliner. All I needed to do was to cut the headliner to expose it. In my first junkyard trip ever, I managed to find a short overhead console out of a Suburban. I removed the rear AC controls, and designed my own front panel for it. To make a template for the panel, I scanned in the AC controls and edited the image in Adobe Illustrator. I was able to make a vector outline of the panel and designed my own front panel. I then used a the template to laser-cut some clear acrylic. I lasered in multiple passes- first, I cut only the paper backing where the monitor would go. I then removed the rest of the paper backing, and spray painted the acrylic with some cool looking metallic paint. I then cut out holes for buttons and etched labels for the buttons.

Before doing any of the laser cutting, I first had to acquire a screen. Ebay was my friend again, and for $18 shipped, I ordered a small 3.5″ monitor with RCA inputs. I had read on another blog post that some of these displays were shipping with touch overlays – but alas, my luck I didn’t get one of those. I removed the display from its housing to verify it would fit in my overhead console. I also measured the viewable area so I could size it properly in my template.

Now all I needed was a user-interface. It would be really neat to be able to display things on the video screen, but due to cost and simplicity, decided against it. I decided I would have 2 buttons and 2 LEDs just above the buttons. I laid out a small board with Eagle that also had provisions for video passthrough and power passthrough to simplify things.

Bill of Materials for the Interface Board:

• 2 Piranha LEDs (I chose blue!)
• 2 tactile pushbuttons
• 1 330Ω resistor

That’s it! The interface board is meant to be driven by the control board.

I’ve attached my schematics and template. I meant to write part 2, but never got around to it. Sorry.

 CamControl.zip
CamControl++.pdf
CamControl++-board.pdf
CamControlInterface.pdf
CamControlInterfaceBoard.pdf