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Rearview Camera is Affordable but Hard to Install
Dec 03 2008 by Sara Lacey
What if the car you desperately desire — or the car you already own — doesn’t come equipped with a backup camera? Don’t throw your arms up in the air and say, “I give up!” You’re a parent now; you better just eliminate that from your vernacular. Instead, check out Audiovox’s wireless rearview camera that can be installed on any car.
Audiovox’s AC250 Wireless Vehicle Rear Observation System (rearview camera) is available for $129.99, although a Google search found them priced as low as $89.99. An Audiovox spokesperson said the company wanted this camera to be affordable so people wouldn’t have a cost barrier preventing them from making their cars and families safer. Applause, please!
So far this year, children have been hurt or killed in 732 non-traffic-related automotive incidents, including backovers, trunk entrapments, window strangulations and more, according to our friends over at KidsandCars.org, which tracks non-traffic incidents and works to prevent them. Installing a rearview camera in your car could help prevent your kids from becoming a statistic. It should also be noted that the Kids and Cars website has endorsed Audiovox’s rearview camera. We love that.
The kind people at Audiovox sent me a sample camera to test, and I decided to install it myself. Included in the package is a camera, a monitor and a bunch of wires. The camera is mounted on your license plate and wired to your reverse lights. Whenever you back up, the camera turns on and sends a signal to a display screen that you can mount on your dash or windshield. When you shift out of reverse, the camera turns off. Audiovox includes detailed instructions, and there’s even a YouTube video showing the installation process to boot. In the video, it looks really easy to install.
While I had the right-sized screwdriver and electrical tape, my main hitch is that electrical stuff scares me. I gave the installation a good try, but I had problems when I had to connect the wiring through a very small hole behind the license plate. If you’re like me, what do you do? Call a handy friend, family member or get it professionally installed.
I’m so happy that Audiovox has created something for those of us who want safer cars without compromising my kid’s college fund. Now we can have our safety without compromise.
I’ve installed one of these in our Envoy and I have only three gripes about it, two being the unit itself and the other the vehicle’s fault.
1) Seeing other systems with the monitor in the rearview mirror, I kind of wish mine were the same and not have a little monitor stuck on the dash board or whatever. I prefer a clean, professional looking install and this appears more to be a gadget. Besides, when backing up, you’re looking in the rear view anyways…why not have the monitor there too? But this was cheap so I can’t complain too much and I could mount it up on the windshield and run the wire along the edge to a power source. Fair ‘nuff.
2) The monitor tends to flash on/off sometimes due to some interference that I can’t identify even though the truck is definitely not in reverse. If it stayed off or on, I wouldn’t care, but the flashing is a distraction.
3) The camera gets power from the truck’s rear back up light circuit. The problem with my truck was that the license plate was on the liftgate, but the reverse lights were integrated with the rear corner lights. This made me route the power wire through the rear gate, through the harness at the top hinge, down the rear pillar and to the light circuit. If your back up lights are mounted to the liftgate, you wont have this problem, but if not beware the time sucker you face installing this…not hard, just tedious.