So I picked up a new touch screen radio for my 01 Forester. I'm finally getting around to wiring it up. It's beginning to become quite the little project. Looks like I can power the camera with the aux/amp power output lead. Is it a good idea to keep it powered all the time? Or should it be powered on when the car is put into reverse. That's the next question, how do I hook up the radio to the reverse signal? Is it off the harness or simply off the power wire that lights up the reverse lights? I'm assuming the radio is looking for a power signal. Then the parking brake wire. Is this even required? It's an automatic and the parking brake is rarely used. I assume this is a ground or something and if so, can I just ground it out? The rest should be pretty easy. Run the gps antenna, mic, usb cables and camera. Anyone have any diagrams or pictures or whatever that might help? In case you're wondering which radio I got, here is the link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2KDVXW/
Camera comes with 3 wires? If so, power wire (I'd wire this to a fused aux source), trigger wire (you can use the signal wire at one of the backup lights), and ground. Or is it 2 rca cables that split to video signal, power, trigger, and ground? re: parking brake wire, not sure what that's for since it looks like you got a non DVD unit. Probably locks out video output unless brake is on or if it's off but is getting signal from the reverse light. You could wire in a relay/switch if you want to be able to toggle the reverse camera image on while driving.
Camera has an RCA and a power wire (+/-). The long RCA cable has a tracer wire for power from the front, ground in the back near the camera. Might have to try to set it up without the brake wire. I've been trying to find a closer way to the reverse cable, but finding that it might be easier to run a wire from the tail lights to the head unit along with the RCA cable. This head unit has outputs for ever speaker channel and multiple inputs including a front camera and dvd. Even has inputs for steering controls. So many connections... plus wifi and bluetooth.
I got the main harness soldered up today. Had a bitch of a time tinning the ends of the Scosche harness. Didn't think much of it until I started connecting the two harnesses. That cheap crap harness didn't want to take solder and one or two had to be re-stripped and retinned. Then of all things, I ran out of connectors for the remaining wires like brake and reverse. And my dog chewed up the directions for the camera. Good thing that part is simple.
Got the radio installed a few days ago. I really like it. It's a bit slow booting up, but not a big deal. The micro CD card got corrupted somehow (cheap chinese crap), so I had to re-download the maps program. Have yet to reinstall that as it's internal. Other than that, it cam with the Torque app pre-loaded and worked immediately with my OBDII Bluetooth reader. The screen is nice and sensitive, however the touch panel on the side for volume is a bit slow.
Oh man, I just saw another one the seller has for sale. Has buttons on the side and an actual volume knob and DVD. Bummer... Same price too https://www.amazon.com/Navigation-Seller-navigator-steering-wheel-multimedia/dp/B0748DYR3S/
