Simple DIY reverse camera / rear view mirror

 
 
 
 
 
 
Pablo
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Simple DIY reverse camera / rear view mirror

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Posted: 27.10.2016  ·  #1
I thought I might post this for anyone considering spending a bundle of cash on reversing and/or rear view cameras. If you have some old android phones not in use, then this could save you a load of money.

I recently bought a small caravan, which I will be using for the next couple of years until I find some budget to get back on the motorhome track.

I have never towed a caravan before and one of my concerns was the lack of rear view mirror. I looked into various systems for reversing and rear view cameras. It seemed to me to be rather expensive and largely meant doing some permanent installation in both car and caravan, which is something I wasn’t really interested in. So I thought I would look into building my own system. This turned out to be really simple.

I have a few phones that are not being used for anything anymore. I have a Galaxy S4 which works 100%, I reckoned this would make a fairly decent monitor/mirror. I recently dropped a Moto G 3rd generation and shattered the screen very badly. The Moto G works perfectly well and has a fairly decent camera in it, so this will be my camera. A couple of cheap (Lidl) car phone holders with suction pads and we are off. The caravan has a rear window so I set up the Moto G to point its camera out the centre of that. I needed to connect the two devices over WiFi and I have a decent little 4G WiFi router that I bought on amazon for about 50 quid. I put that in the boot of the car and connected both of the phones to that over WiFi. No 4G Sim is needed. You could do this last bit also through a third phone’s hotspot.

So for the software:
Camera: On the Moto G, I installed an app called IP Webcam. This is free and simple to use.

Monitor: On the S4 I installed an app called TinyCam which has lots of cool options such as viewing up to 4 cameras on screen at a time and also the ability to flip the image into “mirror” or regular camera. I also installed a widget called Speedometer Widget which provides a GPS based speedo widget which will stay on top of other apps, in my case the “mirror”.

Overall I was delighted with the result especially as a rear view mirror while driving. The image was a little jerky but more than adequate for a driving rear view mirror. For reversing it is not so great as it difficult to see where the edge of the van is, but still good enough to ensure you don’t hit anything obvious and for lining up from about 4 metres out.

Best bit for me was I built this for effectively €0.00 as I had all the bits hanging around the house. I am a cheapskate on a low budget.


Ally
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Re: Simple DIY reverse camera / rear view mirror

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Posted: 27.10.2016  ·  #2
:up:


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