Andream reverse camera

[Gad-Westy]

Anyone installed a reverse camera to their Andream unit? Mine has just arrived and of course there are no instructions at all and none of the wires are labelled.

I've installed an Andream unit itself before so I'm comfortable with that aspect. The set is going in a manual pre-LCI E91.

This is the bag of label shy spaghetti I'm confronted with.



Bottom left we have the boot handle and camera itself which has a blue black cable that will connect to the car harness for normal boot opening. The other cable from that has a yellow RCA type cable and a red female RCA looking cable.

To the right of that is a power cable with red and black cables, bare at one end and at the other end feeding into a male plug that can only fit in the the red female connector on the camera/boot handle itself.

To the right of that is an unnamed box which I believe is a capacitor.

The bundle in the top left is a long cable with yellow RCA connector at each end and also a short red bare ended cable at each end.

The main Andream Loom on the right has a few loose ended cables. There is an orange unlabelled wire. A pink wire labelled as cam power. A brown wire labelled as 360 detect. A purple wire labelled as DVR IR. A brown RCA cable labelled as DVR CVBS and a yellow RCA cable labelled as CCD AVI. I think from this bundle I'm only really going to need to be interested in the pink cable and yellow RCA. But what the hell is the label shy orange one for?

From reading around online I think there are 2 ways to tackle this.

1. Firstly to route the yellow RCA cable from front to rear of the car and 'hard wire' everything.

I think in this scenario. I'd connect the pink cable at the Andream end to the red take off on the long RCA cable. RCA to RCA. At the camera end, I'd connect the yellow RCA cable and I'd connect the red take off cable to the black red cable section and then the black cable to earth somewhere. And I wouldn't use the capacitor or any of the other gubbins. Does that sound right? If so, any guidance anywhere on ripping an E91 apart to route a cable from tailgate to head unit? I can't imagine that being much fun!


2. The other option seems to be to use wireless transmitters like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B093RL96HZ/ref...

I think in this scenario I'd power the camera itself from the rear light cluster via the capacitor?

And the front receiver would connect to the pink cable and a suitable earth then RCA to RCA.

But the rear sender unit would connect to what? Would I tap into the same power feed that camera is using? Effectively powering everytihng from the reverse light feed?

I like this second option generally because I don't think the cable routing sounds much fun on option 1 but is this option actually reliable?

[Gad-Westy]

Bump. Anyone?

[4004]

The camera unit is a generic chinese jobbie they've been selling unchanged for years, so that should have lots of documented installation guides online - I don't think it matters what car it is installed on, as the hardware must be pretty much the same.
Your main issue would be to understand which signal feeds your chinese headunit is using - see this image
Wireless transmitter , if supported by the system, is an option.

[Gad-Westy]

4004 said:

The camera unit is a generic chinese jobbie they've been selling unchanged for years, so that should have lots of documented installation guides online - I don't think it matters what car it is installed on, as the hardware must be pretty much the same.
Your main issue would be to understand which signal feeds your chinese headunit is using - see this image
Wireless transmitter , if supported by the system, is an option.

Thanks 4004.

I had spotted that but was confused by some aspects.

It doesn't show the the red connector from the camera being used but I think that is just the way the drawing is presented and I need to connect the male plug to the capacitor and then connect that to the red cable's socket. But then why is red power feed from the reverse light also jumpered onto the yellow cable (I guess scotch locked or something equally ghetto). Is that to send power a signal to the pink cable at the head unit end to say that engage is reversed? Would seem weird if that is the case because the head unit already knows when engage is reversed or certainly did on my E61 with rear sensors as the Andream screen changed to show reverse screen. I just didn't have a camera at the time. I think I'd assumed that pink wire was sending a signal out to say reverse is engaged rather than the other way around.

I like the idea of the wireless transmitters as I think it will simplify the install and they're only £10 but I want to make sure I understand the wiring a bit first.

[pmorg4]

I've fitted these to two E91s now (my now sold 330i and current 335i) both times using the wireless transmitter as it avoids the pain of routing cables into the tailgate. The wireless transmitter at the boot end is wired to the reversing light, and it has a yellow phono cable and a DC power connecter that plugs into your camera cable. Very easy. At the head unit end, connect the transmitter to the head unit's reversing camera wire and the phono connector. With my transmitter I didn't need to connect the ground cable as it's internally connected with the phono ground, which is also the case on the head unit end, so there's no benefit in connecting it given the tiny currents involved.

The only issue is that the reversing lights use pulse width modulation (PWM) when the engine is running, to keep the bulb voltage stable. This will upset the transmitter and cause the signal to drop out. The solution is to code out PWM using NCS Expert or similar, but if you don't have the tools you can try the capacitor option, which might work but I haven't tried it.

[pmorg4]

I should add - none of this affects the head unit knowing when the car is in reverse, that information (along with the parking sensor data to show the bars etc) comes over K-CAN.

[Gad-Westy]

Many thanks PMorg 4. That's really helpful. Can I just check then. The pink cable that is labelled cam power from the andream harness. I assume that is what I would connect to the receiver? So presumably that is a 12v output rather than something that is looking for a signal from the reverse light? I'm just a bit confused on this point because if you look at the example diagram above it would make it look like there is a 12v signal coming from the reverse light and from the Andream which seems odd.

Or does my mystery unlabelled orange wire have anything to do with it?

[pmorg4]

It's a 12V output to power the camera, or in this case the wireless receiver. You can test this by changing the settings in the Andream unit to use an aftermarket camera, and when you put the car in reverse it should show the camera screen despite there being nothing connected (it will show "no signal" or similar on a black screen). If you really want to check you can then use a multimeter on the wire to test for the 12V output.

[Gad-Westy]

pmorg4 said:

It's a 12V output to power the camera, or in this case the wireless receiver. You can test this by changing the settings in the Andream unit to use an aftermarket camera, and when you put the car in reverse it should show the camera screen despite there being nothing connected (it will show "no signal" or similar on a black screen). If you really want to check you can then use a multimeter on the wire to test for the 12V output.

Cheers. That is why the wiring diagram above is confusing. What purpose is the 12v connection at the andream end serving as there is already 12v coming from the tail light. Seems strange.

[pmorg4]

Gad-Westy said:

Cheers. That is why the wiring diagram above is confusing. What purpose is the 12v connection at the andream end serving as there is already 12v coming from the tail light. Seems strange.

The standard installation (without a wireless transmitter) normally involves running the phono cable and 12V wire the length of the car to the camera. That avoids using the reverse light which can introduce a whole host of problems (particularly PWM voltage regulation) that many people would be unable to solve.

[Gad-Westy]

pmorg4 said:

Gad-Westy said:

Cheers. That is why the wiring diagram above is confusing. What purpose is the 12v connection at the andream end serving as there is already 12v coming from the tail light. Seems strange.

The standard installation (without a wireless transmitter) normally involves running the phono cable and 12V wire the length of the car to the camera. That avoids using the reverse light which can introduce a whole host of problems (particularly PWM voltage regulation) that many people would be unable to solve.

Yep. Makes sense cheers. Just weird that diagram shows a connection to the light as well.

[nrjessup]

Hi thanks for all the input on this tread, I found it helpful in trying to do the Andream reverse camera installation. I did have a question, on the Andream MMI box that I have there are three backup camera related wires. One is the yellow input which you all have eloquently explained. The second and third are a 12v power out and a backup/reverse detection wire. It seems to me the power connection has been explained in this thread but I do not see an answer to the detection wire. I know that if I wired this to the tail light it might be solved but I also do not want to go that route. I am wondering if I connect the yellow video input and the 12v power output, do I just leave the detection wire unconnected? Does the MMI have some other way of knowing that the car is in reverse? Thanks in advance!

[pmorg4]

nrjessup said:

Hi thanks for all the input on this tread, I found it helpful in trying to do the Andream reverse camera installation. I did have a question, on the Andream MMI box that I have there are three backup camera related wires. One is the yellow input which you all have eloquently explained. The second and third are a 12v power out and a backup/reverse detection wire. It seems to me the power connection has been explained in this thread but I do not see an answer to the detection wire. I know that if I wired this to the tail light it might be solved but I also do not want to go that route. I am wondering if I connect the yellow video input and the 12v power output, do I just leave the detection wire unconnected? Does the MMI have some other way of knowing that the car is in reverse? Thanks in advance!

I don't know specifically about the MMI unit, but for the replacement screen it listens for the reverse signal over the CAN bus so no need for a separate wire. I'd be very surprised if the MMI doesn't do the same - it's listening for a load of other CAN messages such as iDrive controller inputs.

You can easily connect up the camera inside the car to test it while everything is apart, so I'd do it that way before properly installing everything.