Wiring rear facing camera

When you are looking at meters, be sure the meter you select can measure voltages in all your needs-flashlight batteries, truck/RV battery, 110 and 220 AC, etc, as well as any special equipment you might have. I bought a cheap one that works fine but not for all things. It can drive me nuts sometimes.

You should get a decent meter and learn how to use it. It can be a good friend for troubleshooting many things.

In addition to the meter advice, isn't there documentation with the camera telling you which wire is which ?? Probably red-positive and black-negative/ground.

It's wireless - I wanted the simplest possible installation

Won't you need to pull a signal wire back to the camera location? Or is this this wireless?

I'm just thinking that, if pulling the signal wire, it wouldn't be that much more expense to pull two power wires along with it. That way, you won't need the truck/trailer lights on to operate the camera. The power wires can be connected to the trailer's 12V or the truck's umbilical power.

Edit: Found a GERI camera system and it is wireless. That explains the use of the running light circuit for power.

Thanks guys - looks like I will have to spring for a cheap multimeter at Lowes. I thoguht the whole point of color coding was to avoid all this stuff, but I guess RV's are "special". Yes, I plan to wire the camera high up just like in the picture and wire it to one of those high running lights...

There isn't always a lot of standardization on color coding. Using a meter to figure out which wire is positive and which is negative is by far the best way to go.

If you have bayonet style bulbs in your running lights, the outer shell is usually negative/ground and the inner button in the middle of the bottom is usually positive. If you have some sort of bi-pin bulb or similar, it's rather arbitrary which contact is which.

On my RV, white with a stripe (I think maybe purple, but my memory is a bit hazy) is consistently used for 12V chassis ground wire connections (in lower power circuits) in the house part, while a veritable rainbow of other wires are used for the positives of the various circuits and whatever other things need wiring. 120V AC wiring is basically all standard Romex.

In the RV World SOLID WHITE is GROUND and any other color including BLACK is HOT. My trailer uses alot of White cables with color stripe in it. These are all HOT...

In the AUTOMOTIVE World BLACK is GROUND and RED is HOT. Something they get mixed together in the RV trailers...

The best solution is to measure the two different colors with a MULTIMETER just to be sure...

Just a thought for you on mounting your rear camera - I would make sure it is up high on the trailer pointing down otherwise if using at night the approaching cars will flare out the screen when their headlight hits the camera. Can't see a thing on the screen when this happens...

Something like this GOOGLE IMAGE install is what I would want to do...


Roy Ken