Some 15 months ago I bought a 7" reversing camera kit and this weekend I was foolhardy enough to fit it. The existing wireless camera had only a 2.5" screen, and worked well, but was difficult to see properly.
So, I checked out the new camera/screen in the garage with a set of croc leads and found out that the wireless range was very poor. However, it did work over 10' so I thought that I could get away with it. None of the other Amazon reviews complained about poor range.
Anyway, we pressed on and installed the rear view camera and it's transmitter, and checked that the screen/system worked when connected to the battery under the bonnet. After tearing out the front overhead console and part of the headlining, we connected up the power in the installed position. No picture. We found that the transmitter was outside the body, which was screening the signal. So, the rear tailgate panels were taken off again and the transmitter moved inside the car. This worked for 10 minutes, a which point it became apparent that one of the 54g power leads had sheared. Back panels off again and reterminate. OK, back to working, just a a small problem of losing 2M of wires under the front headlining and screwing the lot back together. So, check that all is working, drive off the drive and find that there is enough stray
2.4GHz signal around to screw up the receiver and lose the signal. Put car back on drive and all is well again. Today, tried the car out locally and found the rf video signal was intermittent depnding on area. Today, to complete my joy, the rear view mirror fell off the screen. The mounting glue wasn't up to the loading. A quick excursion bought a new mounting pad, I wonder if it will now stay in position.OK, grasp the nettle time, hard wire the video from the camera to the screen. Step 1, remove the central headlining plastic central retaining plugs, Agh! OK I got those out and then found that we had to remove the grab handles and the plastic trim retaining mouldings from front to back of the car and remove the rear tailgate trim. So 3/4 of an hour later we had a cable route from the rear tailgate to the front of the car. Removed the rf receiver module and installed the new cable under the headlining, a fish device was required. Connected up the assembly and it all worked. Installed the rest of the cable in the rear tailgate and checked again for function. The video cable had failed! At this stage the front end had been reassembled, so it was screws out again, find a new video cable, curse a lot, pull the new cable through and reassemble the whole lot. It finally worked. However, I did wonder at times if it was worth starting! We now know how to install this system, having found out the hard way.
The camera used was:-
The camera is OK and the screen visible in daylight, but the wire power leads are very thin and not easy to strip or crimp. I think the camera needs an alternative mounting system, I'm thinking about that. The camera leads do not exit the mounting sensibly, I had to notch the mounting bracket to get a cable hole which was covered by the bracket. The camera is powered from the transmitter module, which is not a good idea.
My impression is that 2.4GHz transmitters are very low on rf output power in a lot of current products.