2012 Reverse camera instal with mirror monitor

[Kludge]

It's taking me a while to install the reverse camera on my 5, but I'm going to post ongoing note here before I forget things. Hopefully later (like, when I'm not at work) I'll post pictures too.

So, I'm installing a rearview camera, if you can't tell from the subject of this post.

Parts I'm using are the Gentex autodimming rearview mirror with 3.5" monitor built into it, and the "Mercedes camera." I got both of these from visorview.

The first thing to note is that the Gentex mirror is about an inch wider than the stock mirror on my 2012 Mazda5. That's not so bad, I just see more of the D-pillars.

Here are the two mirrors side by side:


The disappointing thing is that the Gentex mirror actually sticks down lower than the stock mirror. This is because the ball joint sticks pretty much straight back from the windshield mount vs. the stock unit which sticks up more- this allows the connecting arm to be rotated higher towards the ceiling. This isn't much of a problem since the roof is pretty high on the Mazda5, but I usually like my rearview mirror almost scraping the head liner.

Here's the stock mirror:


And here's the new one:


The second thing to note is the stock mirror removal. Damn, it was hard. I read all the instructions where you stick a small flathead screwdriver up the slot and twist to release the retaining pin. No, there's no retaining pin- it's a wide, piece of spring steel that's wedging itself onto the mounting "button." I was using a way to small screwdriver and actually getting it past the side of the spring steel, doing absolutely no good. Aim the screwdriver towards the center of the mount to get between the spring steel and the button and then slide the mirror up. Really, a better picture will help. Maybe my problem was trying to look at the pictures on a phone.

This is what the back of the mirror mount looks like:

Oh, BTW: click on the pictures for bigger versions.
You can see on the upper left side where my screwdriver was scraping the metal mount after sliding past the thin piece of spring steel in the center. Yeah, the spring steel looks like it did get scarped up a little bit on the corner, but I guess I needed to push more towards the center.

So, this is taking a while since I'm being meticulous.

The first stage was getting the mirror replaced and wired up. I ran the wires down to the passenger side since I figured there was a fusebox there to pull power from. Since I have a Touring model, I pulled power off the seat heater supply wire since I don't even have seat heaters (yet).

Since someone else here mentioned that they should have started at the back when installing their camera, I decided to start with the camera and wire to the front of the car. Snapping all the panels off the hatch wasn't that big of a deal, but I was a bit to hasty in taking off the trim piece that the license plate lights, trunk release, and eventually the camera would be mounted to.

There are six nuts and three clips holding that piece on, but you need to remove the reverse light lenses first (one nut each) and pull that trim piece diagonally downwards in line with the bolts. Me, I broke a few of the bolt mounts and one of the snap clips by being a bit forceful and not removing the lenses. Hopefully my epoxy holds.

Here's the inside of the trunk/liftgate showing the six retaining nuts circled in red, but not the three snaps:


The plate light trim piece has what looks like bosses on one side for mounting a future camera. What I had didn't fit that bolt pattern, but I decided to place the camera in that approximate location. Why are reverse cameras mounted on the left hand side of cars when if you're parallel parking you want to see the right hand side? Anyway, I mounted it on the left hand side since that's where the mounting bolts were which I didn't use anyway.

Here's the whole trim piece/handle:


Here's a closeup on what I assume are the OEM camera mounting bosses:


And here's my camera installed. from the inside:


And from the outside:


Continued in the next post...

 

[Robotazky]

I want to do this so bad and hook it to the stock navi unit. I still can't find any threads on doing it.

 

[Kludge]

Part 2 of 2012 Reverse camera instal with mirror monitor

Okay, so stage one was installation of the mirror and wiring it up with power so my wife could use the car, even at night. Done.

Stage two: installation of the rear camera:

As mentioned, I've chosen a location for the camera on the.. let's call it the trunk handle, off to the left hand (driver's) side. That trunk handle is some injection-molded plastic, so drilling through it was relatively easy. The camera needed a slightly elliptical hole since the cylindrical camera stuck through it at an angle. The camera measured out at 1.080" on my dial calipers and I happened to have a 1" spade drill bit. I needed to ream the hole out a little larger with an X-Acto knife. Besides messing up the paint surface at the back (less visible) side of the hole, it went off with no problem. Luckily, I had placed the hole slightly farther outboard- away from the trunk lid- which left enough room for the spring clip to hold the camera in.

The installed camera is pictured in the previous post, but here's a wider angle shot showing the control box held on with the double-sided foam tape that came with the camera:


The challenge was in getting the video cable from the outside of the car in. The trunk lid itself is metal and I didn't want to drill holes into it, especially since the video cable connector was more than a half inch in diameter. Instead, the license plate light was mounted in a cutout that had enough room to snake the cable through. Next time I need to take things apart, I'm going to have to remember to unsnap the license plate light before taking off the trunk handle.

Here's the outside of the liftgate/trunk:


Here's a closeup of the license plate light dangling by the video cable that's snaked through the foam gasket:

Note that I ran the video cable between the gasket and the light-not the trunk lid- in the hope that there would be less chance of water intrusion that way. Also, it's on the downward side of the hole.

And here's a shot of the inside of the trunk at the license plate light hole. The hole had a corner that I tried to bend out of the way to try to reduce abrading on the video cable, but in the end I just added electrical tape to the area:


And here's that same hole with the light mounted with the cable running right along it:


And a shot from the outside:

You can see the video cable just to the left of the light, but I've since tugged on the cable so it's lower down so any gap in the gasketing is on the underside of the light instead of the side.

As an intermediate check, I ran the cabling outside the car then in through the passenger door and wired the camera to the monitor. Skipping wiring into the reverse light, I connected the trigger to the same power line used to drive the camera and the camera+monitor worked. I'm able to rotate the camera a little to get it pointing back for best left/right coverage.

Apparently, I forgot to get a wide angle shot for the car or the video image on the mirror. I'll edit this post later to show that.

Woo hoo! Stage two done.

So, stage three is to run the video cable from the back of the car to the front. Looking at the trunk, the wiring harness actually goes along the driver's side, not the passenger's. I've decided to just follow the harness and zip tie the video cable to that, so I'm probably going to have to move the mirror wiring to the driver's side to (and pull power from elsewhere).

Oh, let me say this- it looks like the "Mercedes camera" has more than 25 feet of cable. There's a short two foot segment of cable from the camera to a circular connector with a control box or something inline with that. Then there's the extension that ends in a regular RCA cable for the video and a barrel connector for the power. That plus the mirror's extension cable (also about 20 feet) means I'll have a lot of extra cable bundled up somewhere.

Since I want to make this relatively easy to unsnap, I want to have connectors at most of the logical junctions- on the inside of the trunk by the handle, at the top of the trunk and somewhere near the fuse panel. The setup has enough sections and connectors for that, but there's really a lot of extra cable. Once I get things stabilized, I hope to cut the cables to length and crimp on new connectors.

I've got the circular connector for the Mercedes camera ending at the bottom of the trunk. The extension is mostly wound up in a coil in the bottom of the trunk too and the other side ends at the top of the trunk (wiring around the rear window is easier than what people had to do on the previous generation Mazda5). That's wired to the video connector for the mirror. That's a short (six inch?) segment of cable with pigtails for power, ground and trigger and an RCA jack for the video. The camera came with a female to female video adaptor which I needed. The other end of the mirror's video cable is a multipin rectangular connector which I've also left zip tied in the top of the trunk.

Here's the cable zip-tied inside the liftgate:

The extra coils of cable are wrapped in a bundle and velcro'd down inside the liftgate. You can see the velcro strap in the lower right of the photo.

I have yet to fish the mirror's video extension cable from the roof to the trunk lid through the rubber housing. I've got some "wire pulling compound" (wire lube) around somewhere, but I can't find it right now. But, to get a head start on things, I've started wiring through the car.

Here's the top of the liftgate where the cables end:


The panel at the back of the head liner just snaps out, then you have to route the cable following the wiring harness down the driver's side D-pillar. The trick here is that you need to pull out the lower side panel first. And to do that, you need to pull out the plastic cover by the trunk latch. It helps to lower the third row seat and slide the second row seat forward to be able to remove the lower side panel enough to run the cable behind it.

So again it's: pull trunk lower trim, partially remove the driver's side rear lower panel (I forget if you need to remove the rear door trim on the floor before you can remove the rear lower panel, but you'll have to do that at some point anyway), then partially remove the D/C pillar cover. Route cable down D-pillar and along ledge below window. Route cable down back of rear door jamb and along floor.

Here's a shot of the D-Pillar and the lower side panel pulled away:


Here's a bit farther towards the front:


And just before the C pillar:


And finally, here's a shot from just inside the sliding door at the cables routing down the back of the doorway.


There's a plastic shield/step that the wiring runs under. I'm stopped at this point.

here's the wiring to the base of the sliding door. I've coiled the wire up and stuffed it under the rug in front of the second row seat at the left of the photo:


What I have left- finish routing the mirror extension cable. Possibly rewire power tap. Fish backside of mirror extension cable through rubber boot. Hook up reverse trigger.

Right now, I'm not sure about the power for the rear camera. As it's set up, it looks like the camera is powered all the time (okay, switched by the ignition). I'm thinking that I may want to either power the camera off the reverse lights or put in a relay triggered by the reverse lights. Rather, it probably doesn't hurt to have the camera on whenever the car is on, but the perfectionist in me is opposed to that drain in the electrical system anyway.

Okay, I'm not such a perfectionist that I'm opposed to putting a bit of extra load in the reverse light circuit since I'm sure a camera is pretty low draw. I'm more worried what a spike in the reverse lights would do to the mirror. But then again, the reverse lights are wired directly into the mirror through the trigger anyway, so what if it also goes in through the video input?

Yeah, this is looking long and complicated- if I had just followed the wiper fluid tube for the rear wipers, things might have been easier- that goes up the passenger side A-pillar and presumably straight along the head liner to the trunk lid through the right hand side rubber boot.

Hours of work so far:
Stage 1: 1 hour of getting the stock mirror out. 1 more hour of wiring up the new mirror.
Stage 2: 2 hours of pulling trunk panels off, drilling one hole and epoxying back on the brackets I broke.
Stage 3 so far: 2 more hours of routing cables through the trunk lid, pulling panels off the back driver's side and routing cable up to the second row. And putting the panels back on so my wife can have her car back.

Really, I'm sure this can go faster once I get it all figured out. Hopefully it'll be more cohesive when I can make time to post pictures.

 

[Kludge]

BTW, thanks to twintrbo for the writeup on doing his (her?) 2009 Mazda5- http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123773680-Wired-LCD-Rear-View-Mirror-Cam-Install That's what inspired me to do mine.

Thanks also for the Visor View website link. Though the box has a Mito Corporation label, I bought through visorview because they had a better camera than any of mitocorp's. My only wish is that they would have provided a spare mirror mounting button (in case the mirror didn't fit on mine) and a cable cover.

 

[mpv]

That's a nice write-up, Kludge. I spent last weekend doing the same mirror+cam install. I also started from the back and ran the wire on the passenger of the car, but in the floor. The mirror is installed and wire ran down the A-pillar on the passenger side down to the kick panel.

My current problem is trying to find the right +12v ignition wire and the reverse wire. I've looked everywhere and have conflicting color codes. I have the 2012 model, please share the color codes you're using.

Current wire setup:
white/blue - ignition
red/yellow - reverse
This is not right though, t would come on whenever brake pedal is applied, but not reverse.

Other sources mentioned green/black and red/yellow, then there's the blue and blue/white, etc. The wire on the reverse light is blue/white I think.

 

[Robotazky]

Wow. That's an impressive contribution to our knowledge base for such a new member. Thanks!

 

[mpv]

I finished my install today. For anyone with a 2012 Mazda5, here are the colors for the wires on the passenger side:
+12v ignition = green/black with silver dots
Reverse = blue/white with silver dots

 

[Kludge]

I finished my install today. For anyone with a 2012 Mazda5, here are the colors for the wires on the passenger side:
+12v ignition = green/black with silver dots
Reverse = blue/white with silver dots

I pulled the reverse at the top of the liftgate- it was blue with a white strip. I decided to power the camera off the reverse light so it wouldn't be powered all the time, so at some point, I may pull reverse off in the passenger compartment and route that to the mirror's trigger so the signal's not going from the front of the car, back to the liftgate, and wired back to the mirror at the front of the car. But that's not really high on my priority list right now.

I think I mentioned that I pulled power from the back of the fuse panel in the passenger compartment. I just pulled from the supply to the seat heater since it wasn't being used for anything at all.

Erm, here's a shot of that fuse panel, though I pulled the seat heater fuse. Not like it mattered since I don't have a seat heater. Yet.


Sorry, no picture of the back of the fusebox.

 

[Kludge]

Conclusion!

Unfortunately, I just wanted done with this install so I didn't take that many photos.

When last we saw our intrepid video cable, it was along the second row door sill. I didn't mention how I got the cable under the plastic step cover beside the second row seat- I pretty much removed a few screws and pulled it up as best I could. It's difficult to actually remove the cover since the second row seat rail prevents you from pulling it straight up and out. I guess you could remove that seat, but I wasn't up to it at the time. I was able to get the cover up enough to get a couple of hands in there enough to put on two zip ties.

The next step was to get the cable up the to front door. Actually, there seemed to be a branch of the wiring loom tunneling across the second row to the passenger side of the car, but it seemed like a much smaller bundle of wires, so I decided to follow the main bundle.

Getting to the front required taking the lower cover off the B-pillar, which in turn required pulling the lower sills from the sliding door and the front door. I forget, but there may have been a plastic bolt or something I had to remove.

This is where it got fun. Again, the wiring loom branches- one part went farther to the front of the car under the dash and another offshoot went under the driver's seat and across the car. Well, since I had wired the mirror to the passenger side of the car, I decided to follow the branch across the car.

Going across the car there required pulling out the driver's seat, which I figured would be good experience for when I install a seat heater. I was able to push the video cable to where the harness branches to the drivers seat bundle- seatbelt detector and bolster air bag. It's about here that I ran out of zip ties and decided that I just want to get this done.

From the driver's seat wiring branch, I needed to pull the center console, run the wires up and over the center hump (short as it was) and to the passenger's seat wiring branch (occupant sensor and side bolster air bag).

Since I decided to give up on running zip ties, I was free to be more sloppy with my wiring. To that end, I used some 12 gauge solid copper wire and fished the video cable to the passenger side door sill. From there it was a straight shot up into the fuse panel. I coiled the extra cable (which didn't seem like all that much left, not surprising given the path I just routed the darn thing). Anyway, I coiled the extra cable and just left it behind the passenger's kick panel.

Back at the liftgate, I had found my electrician's lube, so I was able to fish the video cable through the rubber.... erm, conduit (what was that called again?) between the roof and the liftgate. The lube made it a very quick job (always a fun sentence when taken out of context!).

I got lazy and just pulled the reverse signal from the top of the liftgate. That signal is wired through the video cable bundle to the front of the car to trigger the monitor in the mirror. I'm also using that signal to power the camera, so it goes back down to the liftgate and to the camera.

As an aside, let me tell you about the wiring for the mirror video. There's an extension cable that consists of the video and ground in one insulated bundle with silver/grey insulation over it. Taped to that at about one foot intervals is a red power cable and purple trigger wire. Now, since I decided to power the camera off the reverse wire, I no longer need that red power wire. At some point in the future, I'll also find the reverse signal at the front of the car and get rid of needing the purple wire running so far back.

So, everything's wired up. How does it work?
There's the view from the mirror:


Here's the view out the back from the driver's seat:


Here's a view looking towards the camera: I apologize if the image is the wrong size- it looks too big in my preview, but I think Photobucket may just be having caching issues.


And this is what it looks like from the side:


Use the shadow of the tree to see how close behind the car you can see. It seems that the fisheye effect makes "objects in mirror are closer than they appear." But I think that also means that you can get really close to whatever's behind you. Just be careful when on a downhill incline since it's sometimes hard to back up smoothly.

Finally a note about the camera:
As mentioned before, it was Visor View's "Mercedes" style camera. And to tell the truth, it does seem much lower profile than their "OEM style camera." The funny part is that in the description for the Mercedes camera, they say that it's "designed after the factory installed cameras on Mercedes vehicles."

Funny, because the packaging shows pictures of it installed on two Hyundais and a third car I can't identify:


So, I chose Visor View mainly because that's who twintrbo used, and because they had that "Mercedes" camera which was pretty slim and used a Sony CCD.

In the future, I might be more inclined to shop around more to find a company that would also have the cable cover that goes from the mirror to the head liner. Now I've got to find a place that carries it and probably pay as much for shipping as the part itself costs. edit: A quick check on Amazon shows the mirrors available for the same price, but with the cable cover. Cable covers themselves are priced from $9 and up (including shipping). So, lesson learned- shop around more to get everything at once.

So, would I do this all over again? Or at least, what would I do differently? Well, as I mentioned before, you can probably just run the video cable all the way from the top of the A-pillar to the back of the car and save yourself a lot of time and effort, but then you have to worry about the cable possibly rattling around and you have to be careful not to damage the window washer hose.

Me, I figure I've routed the video cable the "right" way and should have no worries about any problems in the future. Yeah, my wife was probably wondering what I was spending all my time working on the car, but it's done and she should notice no problems due to the installation (besides where somehow I got the ambient temperature display switched to Celsius. It took a while to find how to change it in the user manual and the index really sucks. How obvious is it that to change the temperature display, you have to hold the automatic climate control button down for five seconds?)

Certainly, I don't want to discourage others from performing these kinds of modifications, but it did take me much longer than I was expecting. I hope that this thread makes it easier for others.

What I'd really hate is if someone finds a much easier way, but I'd still want to hear about it.

What I learned here by routing the video cable all along the wiring harness is that there is an awful lot of tape used in wiring harnesses. When I interviewed with an automotive parts manufacturer over twenty years ago, they said that the wiring harness was expensive, and I just got a feel for why that is so.

 

[BodegaBay]

Excellent DIY thread Kludge! I've installed rearview cams on my previous vehicles and can understand the effort it takes. For our 5, I plan to use a CCD flush keyhole camera through the bumper. But this won't happen until there's an aftermarket fit kit to replace new 5's OEM radio unit. I prefer a full size double-DIN unit instead of the reaview mirror. I did replace the OEM review mirror with a Gentex auto dimming unit last month. I'm sorry I didn't post it up yet but I found a easier method to remove the OEM mirror. I feel your pain though; it was tough to figure out. Many thanks for the detailed panel removal pics; it'll help 2012+ owners here that need to open up panels.

And...good choice with the Metro Gray (thumb)!

 

[Kludge]

BodegaBay- did you notice the difference in range of motion with your autodimming mirror too? I've got the front ball pivot joint turned up as much as possible and still I want to move it up more.

I must say, my 3.5" mirror monitor isn't all that bright. Yeah, I guess it's adequate, and it's not distracting at night, but still, it would be nicer if it were brighter.

Also, the monitor is advertised as "high resolution" but I haven't been able to find an actual number. The 3.3" version of the mirror seems to be 480x234 pixels, which is way less than what the camera puts out (something like 720x380) and that's nowhere near "HD." I guess that due to the reflectivity of the mirror, it's not too much of an issue in this case, and it's still adequate to see what's behind you.

 

[BodegaBay]

Kludge,

I see your point about the factory mirror's swing arm being longer and how you prefer your mirror canting down from higher. I personally prefer a compact swing arm and how the mirror sits closer to the windshield; it's just a look I prefer. One thing I did do was add a Gentex wire cover. It made it a clean installation.

I agree with you that it's odd Gentex didn't publish the screen resolution. At this size all that really matters is the PPI density. Now if I could get a Retina Display type of display in the mirror...

 

[Kludge]

I see your point about the factory mirror's swing arm being longer and how you prefer your mirror canting down from higher. I personally prefer a compact swing arm and how the mirror sits closer to the windshield; it's just a look I prefer. One thing I did do was add a Gentex wire cover. It made it a clean installation.

Actually, it's not the length of the swingarm. I just measured and mine is only 1/8" longer than the stock.

No, it's how high I can get my mirror. With the stock mirror's pivot being angled slightly upward, I'm able to get my mirror pretty high up and out of my view of the roadway. With the Gentex, the mirror obstructs my view of the road and I have to move my head around to see around or under the mirror.

Here's a shot of the stock mirror adjusted as high as I can get it. Just how I like it.


And here's a shot of the Gentex adjusted as high as it can go at the same camera angle.


With the stock mirror, you can see more of my garage door (and the grime on the windshield) under the mirror vs. the Gentex. Part of that is due to the Gentex being taller than the stock mirror, but most of it is due to the lower range of motion.

And I'm not all that tall. I run the seat height about five or seven pumps from the lowest position, but I also like the higher position and the view it affords me when it's not being obstructed by the mirror. Not to mention that it's fewer pumps to set it back to the height my <4'10" wife needs it at.

I'm tempted to try to change the forward ball joint so it's on the stock mirror's mount, but trying to undo a swage fitting and then redoing it on a different ball joint is probably beyond my skill level.

Yeah, I like how the wire cover makes things cleaner, that's why I suggest anyone try to get it all together at once. Shipping for a wire cover is going to be almost as much as the wire cover itself costs. Some suppliers actually throw them in for free. Unfortunately, the place I bought it from didn't. I even asked about it in the "Customer Notes" section of the order form, but they apparently ignored it.

 

[BodegaBay]

Ok I see what you're talking about. However that has never bothered me or even made me noticed. I will say that your Gentex mirror has noticeably larger dimensions vs. their regular auto-dimming mirrors (most likely due to having to accommodating the 3.5in LCD screen). My Gentex mirror is closer to size of factory mirror and never seem imposing or hindering any view.

 

[Nurburgringer]

Excellent thread Kludge.
We've had our 5 for a few weeks, and I'm considering adding a rearview camera.
I know what you mean about the height of the mirror. Until I pushed ours up it seemed to be hanging rather low.
Will be referencing this thread if and when I go forward with the backup cam!

 

[twintrbo]

I'm a HE fwiw....... lol Glad you were able to reference my install and glad you went with Visor View, they were great to deal with. You took a lot more of the hatch apart than I did but I guess you had to? I'll re-read this again when I have time to go over the text more thoroughly. I feel its the best money you could spend on this car, makes parking a breeze and a slam dunk for safety.

 

[cubaninmiami]

Removing liftgate panels

Snapping all the panels off the hatch wasn't that big of a deal, but I was a bit to hasty in taking off the trim piece that the license plate lights, trunk release, and eventually the camera would be mounted to.

Hello Kludge,

Do you have any tips on how to remove the inside panels of the hatch? I am planning to do it this weekend... Thanks!

 

[dieseldriver]

The cool factor on this project is A+++. I just wish that I can install a factory-like parking sensors on the bumpers without drilling holes in them that works and reliable. I missed having that feature which was on my Honda Odyssey. Maybe Mazda will sell an OEM kit that I can replace one of those dummy switch on LEFT of the driver's seat.

 

[twintrbo]

Why would you need sensors if you have a camera? A video is worth 1000 beeps.......lol FWIW you can easily install that if you want it. They make all sorts of kits for that purpose.

 

[dieseldriver]

Just like simplicity -- camera is nice but I rather keep it simple yet effective. It will be used as a parallel parking aid only. I usually turn my head during parking but having sensors would be of great help.

Why would you need sensors if you have a camera? A video is worth 1000 beeps.......lol FWIW you can easily install that if you want it. They make all sorts of kits for that purpose.