Tag: back up camera

Hey Guys and welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. Today, I will show you how I installed a reverse camera on my BMW Z4. You can apply this method to any vehicle that has an aftermarket head unit as long as it supports backup cameras. If you’d like to see how I installed the head unit in this Z4, click the link in the top right corner. There are, of course, a few ways to do this, some easier than others, but here goes how I did it. Hope you enjoy.

Since I don’t want to drill a hole in my bumper, I started by modifying the bracket to fit my preferred camera. You want to get this done first and make sure it fits well as making changes after you run the wire will be a lot harder.

Here is when the simple project got just a little more complicated. After connecting the power wires of the camera to the reverse lights on the car, the camera would not power on. I assume this car limits the power sent to the reverse light and it’s not enough to power the camera. Solution here is to install a relay that gets triggered by the reverse light and then sends power to the camera directly from the battery. The relay I ordered also included a fuse, so now we have a much safer, fused installation.

So, here is how I wired it. The red wire on the relay connects to the positive terminal on the battery, the blue wire connects to the positive wire of the camera. Then the blue and black striped wire on the reverse light connector connects to the white wire on the relay and black goes to ground. This means when the reverse lights are on the white wire will turn on the relay which then will connect the camera to the battery over the fuse. I hope that makes sense. I do a visual explanation later in the video if that helps!

I decided to add crimp connectors to pretty much every connection that I made on this install. I like it because you can easily disconnect at any point if needed.

So, here is how it actually works from within the car. It’s very simple to use and that’s the entire idea. All you have to do is put the car in reverse and it will automatically switch to the correct app on the Head Unit and power up the camera in the back. The lines move with the steering wheel, which is great and the quality isn’t too bad for an analog camera. So, was it worth all the work that went into it? Honestly, a camera isn’t really needed in a small car like this and it was a lot of effort, but I like tinkering with my cars and I enjoyed doing some wiring.  If you have any questions or concerns, leave your comments below, like the video if you found it useful and I’ll see you in the next one.