Wireless front parking camera with monitor for front bumper protection

[Akikiki]

Yes, I noticed those rings when I received the spare nose cone before my car was even delivered. Figured they were for parking sensors when Tesla was ready to offer them. But I like the camera solution much more -- seeing what's hidden from view over the hood is much preferable to me than an audible warning.

The red is spectacular. I've never doubted my choice even though it's the first red car I've even owned.

Me too, first Red I have ever owned. More detail, in March I bought a White 60. Loved it. Still do. In July a local girl brought her Red 60 to our first meet & greet. First time I saw the Red for real. I went a little crazy. I put my White 60 on craigslist and it sold in a week. Now, I had to order another MS. So, this time I was committed to the RED and moved up to a P85. Oh such fun.

Back on topic. I've been tracking your "wireless" cam progress here. I too am in when you have defined a "kit". Nice work. We all owe you an adult beverage for your pioneering here. thanks

 

[artsci]

Here are some photos of the guts of the camera. If someone sees something that might relate to reversing the image, please post here.

 

[nolngrgrsngslde]

Could it be the lens itself reversing the image? Can you get another reversing lens in front of the camera lens and effect a double reverse process?

 

[artsci]

Could it be the lens itself reversing the image? Can you get another reversing lens in front of the camera lens and effect a double reverse process?

I doubt it. Usually this is done electronically.

 

[vfx]

Lenses don't really reverse (flop) and image L to R. That would be done with a prism or mirror in the optical path.

Flopping (or flipping)* the image is pretty important for safety. If I were wanting to know how this is typically done I would seek out advice to those that carry these tiny cameras and those that build them. Spy shops, small manufactures, anyone who is really hands-on would be a good place to start.

Many of these manufactures just buy the imaging chips in bulk and create a camera around them for resale. Maybe buying one from a company that will let you talk to an EE who will solder a jumper (or tell you where to clip) would be the way to get the image flipped.

* Flipping L to R can be done or upside down will work if the camera is mounted upside down.

 

[artsci]

I made good progress on the PCB for the front and rear camera switch setup. I self made the PCB using PCB-in-a-box kits. In all I have enough PCBs to make up about 27 kits -- 3 double sided copper plates with 9 on each. Here's one after the circuit pattern was fused on the circuit side.

I cut out three for my own experimental use. Here's what I had to work with. A bit crude but as this will be hidden away, what does it matter?

Drilling the holes in the PCB for the components was PIA. They're very small and alignment was difficult. Here's the circuit side with the component leads pocking through.

Before I solder it all together I'm going to let it sit another day then check everything to make sure there are no shorts and all is in the right position. This shows the component side.

The two camera cables and the touchscreen connection plug into the blue jacks. As the photo indicates, these are male jacks, as are the cable ends for the cameras and touch screens, So I need three short cables with female connectors on both ends to hook everything up. They're being made in China and I won't have them for 1-2 weeks. So I won't be able to do the final set-up and tests until then.

The digital DPDT relay is in the center. The circuit board will be shielded on both sides with conductive shielding foam and the shielding for the cables connects to the three Fakra jack mounting posts. Those will be connected to plain copper back of the PCB. Hopefully this will prevent any interference in the camera images.

Getting close...

 

[WhiteP85]

I made good progress on the PCB for the front and rear camera switch setup. I self made the PCB using PCB-in-a-box kits. In all I have enough PCBs to make up about 27 kits -- 3 double sided copper plates with 9 on each. Here's one after the circuit pattern was fused on the circuit side. ...

Getting close...

First let me say thank you for sharing all your innovative work. I plan to do my best to follow in your footsteps and after looking at you work I decided that my first project would be the front camera. Being a rusty executive I decided to dust off my PCB layout skills and mock up a board very similar to your design. I have made a few minor changes:

1. I have had trouble sourcing a 4PDT relay so I opted to use much easier to find pair of DPDT relays.
2. I added a little circuit protection by using a diode to protect against reverse polarity and a resettable fuse for safety.
3. I decided to layout a board using CADSOFT Eagle and create Gerbers files that can be made at low cost by many different board houses. It has been years since I attempted to etch and drill my own boards (you are brave) and prefer to do the work electronically and send the boards off to get fabricated. If one waits a couple of weeks it cost less than $25 for 3 boards and a small run of 100 or so can cost a few hundred depending one where one does it. The result is a nice silk screened and masked PCB that is repeatable if other want it.

Anyway this is where I am so far:

The schematic

The PCB.

The Bill of Materials:

MFR	MFPN	VEND	VPN	QTY	EACH	COST	REF
Vishay BC Components	K104Z15Y5VF5TL2	Digikey	BC1160CT-ND	1	$ 0.44	$ 0.44	C1
Diodes Inc	1N4001-T	Digikey	1N4001DICT-ND	1	$ 0.14	$ 0.14	D1
Diodes Inc	1N4148-T	Digikey	1N4148DICT-ND	1	$ 0.12	$ 0.12	D3
		RFSupplier.com	F03-SJPT4-C	3	$ 2.73	$ 8.19	SCREEN,REAR,FRONT
TE Connectivity	V23079A2003B301	Digikey	PB1058-ND	2	$ 2.66	$ 5.32	RELAY2,RELAY1
Murata Electronics North America	PTGL09AR220M6B52B0	Digikey	490-7092-ND	1	$ 1.28	$ 1.28	F1
				1	$ -	$ -	JP1
				1	$ -	$ -	JP2

I used a top and bottom ground plane and made the differential pairs thick. They are not wide enough to be matched to 100 ohms and are not equal in length but short of going to a more expensive and tedious 4-layer board I though this would be just fine considering your earlier tests.

I am not certain I have the pin out correct and that I identified which pins where the pairs. I had trouble finding FAKRA connector documentation and I think the inner pins are spaced 2mm and that I have the hole sizes correct. I have the cables and connectors on order. Thank you for organizing that.

So - next steps?

1. Perhaps change the board footprint to for inside a case from Polycase.com or Newageenclosures.com. I like their cases and if one really get excited you can have them make custom cutouts and labels. Way overkill for now and will just cut holes myself.
2. Deciding if I should wait for the connectors or perhaps bug you for more connector footprint verification.
3. Work out where to mount the camera in a car that has the front license plate?
4. Make a prototype board and test it.

Since you seem to be well down the road on your hand crafted design I by no means want to derail your efforts but if you are interested and if there is any community interest I would be happy to help you with a gen II board if you like. It would be nice to work out how to:

1. Mirror the camera. I think it may be possible by perhaps taking a look at the LVDS to serial chip that is used in the camera adapter electronics. Perhaps there is a way to swap the lines of the bits using an adapter cable before the parallel bits are serialized? Maybe there is a camera guru on this forum. Would be nice just to find and alternative camera of course.
2. Add the homelink switch to the board. Garage door adapter homebrew or Oracle is fine but it would be nice to have a homelink chip on this board. Have not done much digging but I am guessing that Homelink is a licensed technology aka no info and $$$ do not easy to DIY.

Anyway - enough for a 2nd post .... time to go say goodnight to our new Tesla baby and go to sleep.

 

[WhiteP85]

I just posted a long technical response with a few pictures to this post regarding my PCB layout for the camera board. I message flashed up and then disappeared. Something to do with requiring a moderator to review the post. I do hope it has not gone into the ether as it took me about 40 minutes to post. A newbie lives and learns - probably spam protection. Ugh! I will post again later if it does not appear.

Artsci - thanks for the great work!

 

[artsci]

I'm calling Omnivision today to see what information we might obtain regarding inverting the image and adding a 2nd camera to the touchscreen so both front and rear views can be on at the same time. It appears that the OV10630 image sensor used in the touchscreen has those capabilities. I also hope they'll know who manufactures the camera. I did a search for OV10630 which produced a ton of leads and photos but no answers to the questions we're asking.

 

[dirkhh]

I just posted a long technical response with a few pictures to this post regarding my PCB layout for the camera board. I message flashed up and then disappeared. Something to do with requiring a moderator to review the post. I do hope it has not gone into the ether as it took me about 40 minutes to post. A newbie lives and learns - probably spam protection. Ugh! I will post again later if it does not appear.

Contact the moderators. Look at the forum list and pick a couple of people moderating this section (Model S) - NigelM or AnOutsider tend to be very responsive.

 

[artsci]

I just posted a long technical response with a few pictures to this post regarding my PCB layout for the camera board. I message flashed up and then disappeared. Something to do with requiring a moderator to review the post. I do hope it has not gone into the ether as it took me about 40 minutes to post. A newbie lives and learns - probably spam protection. Ugh! I will post again later if it does not appear.

Contact the moderators. Look here and pick a couple of people moderating this section (Model S) - NigelM or AnOutsider tend to be very responsive.

Three cheers for White P85! Thanks to him this project has now become fully open source, and to the better.

WhiteP85, who’s an electrical engineer and has much more electronics expertise than me, has made some improvements in the circuit and can source the manufacture of the PCB at professional levels. This means the once we have tested the circuitry we now have a way to have the PCBs manufactured and mounted in a box for a plug and play level implementation.

We’re also trying to find a solution for getting the image correct on the horizontal plane. I’ll be sending WhiteP85 detailed photos of the camera guts so he can determine if there may be a hack to orient the image correctly when the camera is facing forward.

WhiteP85’s involvement is critical at this stage and we should all be grateful that he’s helping. I certainly am.

 

[gbdesai]

WhiteP85’s involvement is critical at this stage and we should all be grateful that he’s helping. I certainly am.

Nice! Thanks to both of you! I am also a EE by education but never practiced, went a different direction. Anyway I'm so looking forward to the results of the collaboration!

 

[umuhk]

It's been a few years since I've done any work with imaging chips, but usually image mirroring is a built-in function that's either requested during initialisation (via serial EEPROM, for imaging chips with built-in controllers) or set with a mode pin. In any case, if the camera is mirroring the image, it should be straightforward to get it to stop; if it's not, then it's being done in the UI, and the camera data is already fine.

 

[vfx]

Artsci

Have you plugged the Tesla rear view camera on your car into another screen besides the Tesla? Just to eliminate or confirm where the image swap happens?
(sorry if I missed this)

 

[artsci]

Haven't done that.

Artsci

Have you plugged the Tesla rear view camera on your car into another screen besides the Tesla? Just to eliminate or confirm where the image swap happens?
(sorry if I missed this)

 

[Akikiki]

Three cheers for White P85! Thanks to him this project has now become fully open source, and to the better.

WhiteP85, who’s an electrical engineer and has much more electronics expertise than me, has made some improvements in the circuit and can source the manufacture of the PCB at professional levels. This means the once we have tested the circuitry we now have a way to have the PCBs manufactured and mounted in a box for a plug and play level implementation.

We’re also trying to find a solution for getting the image correct on the horizontal plane. I’ll be sending WhiteP85 detailed photos of the camera guts so he can determine if there may be a hack to orient the image correctly when the camera is facing forward.

WhiteP85’s involvement is critical at this stage and we should all be grateful that he’s helping. I certainly am.

Hip-Hip-Hoorah for both artsci and WhiteP85!! WhiteP85, if you start a list of folks that want one (or two) of your Outsourced PCB switches, count me in. And THANK YOU!

 

[pete8314]

Three cheers for White P85! Thanks to him this project has now become fully open source, and to the better.

WhiteP85, who’s an electrical engineer and has much more electronics expertise than me, has made some improvements in the circuit and can source the manufacture of the PCB at professional levels. This means the once we have tested the circuitry we now have a way to have the PCBs manufactured and mounted in a box for a plug and play level implementation.

We’re also trying to find a solution for getting the image correct on the horizontal plane. I’ll be sending WhiteP85 detailed photos of the camera guts so he can determine if there may be a hack to orient the image correctly when the camera is facing forward.

WhiteP85’s involvement is critical at this stage and we should all be grateful that he’s helping. I certainly am.

Great work guys, it's stuff like this that makes this forum such a rich resource.

 

[zax123]

Thanks artsci and WhiteP85 for working on this.

I was just driving in my car with the rear camera on while moving and I had my right arm on the armrest. I was thinking how nice it would be to be able to flip between rear and front camera views just by pressing a button just under the lip of the armrest (red arrow):

A simple push-button toggle switch would be super easy to use. It would be good when squeezing into a parking spot too -- you can just keep your arm there and have the button within reach and just toggle between front and rear views. I completely understand that having the system integrated into Homelink is super cool (I've even bought the Oracle switch already in anticipation), but I'm not sure how practical it would be compared to having it super easy to switch between the two views.

I just don't know what's in the armrest and if there's room for a switch there and how hard it is to get wiring to it... has anyone done that?

 

[pete8314]

I just don't know what's in the armrest and if there's room for a switch there and how hard it is to get wiring to it... has anyone done that?

It would be very easy to run a cable from somewhere behind the screen to under the arm-rest, I've had all of those bits apart, it all just pops off. I'm not sure if I actually got into the specific bit you're pointing at though....still, I doubt it would be difficult, especially in relation to this project overall.

 

[zax123]

It would be very easy to run a cable from somewhere behind the screen to under the arm-rest, I've had all of those bits apart, it all just pops off. I'm not sure if I actually got into the specific bit you're pointing at though....still, I doubt it would be difficult, especially in relation to this project overall.

Pete,

Thanks for the reply, that's good to hear! If ever you have the armrest taken apart again, if you could snap some pictures, that would be great. I'm just curious about room for the back of a toggle switch/button which can sometimes be deeper than the visible part.